"Carry the Weight"
Isabel Cristo, Grub Street:
The philosopher Simone Weil was a devout Catholic and mystic. She also died of voluntary starvation at the age of 34, which makes her an unlikely choice for guidance on the topic of dinnertime, but she offered a perspective in 1949, in The Need for Roots, that captures my own feeling: “Obligations, whether unconditional or relative, eternal or changing, direct or indirect with regard to human affairs, all stem, without exception, from the vital needs of the human being … We owe a cornfield respect, not because of itself, but because it is food for mankind. In the same way, we owe our respect to a collectivity, of whatever kind — country, family or any other — not for itself but because it is food for a certain number of human souls.”
~
Link:
- The Case for Cooking (Almost) Everything From Scratch, by Isabel Cristo, Grub Street