ISSUE NINE Winter 2010

Alimentum editor Peter Selgin’s essay of first love entwined with Norwegian cheese, Paul Silverman’s story of reluctant horse-eating, Richard Schmitt’s story of power-hungry kids, interview with James Beard Award-winning cookbook author Deborah Madison, guest cover artist Marilyn Murphy brings us the “The Pie-Wangler,” Alimentum art director Claudia Carlson delights our pages with illustrations, Louis Dunn journeys along more Food Maps, poems by Jen Karetnick, Peter Marcus, Craig Cotter and more...

Plus: Mulberries make friends, fruitcakes dance, beans cause a fistfight, apples aid in war maneuvers, supermarket close encounters, starving at a macrobiotic health spa, frying eggs in the middle of the night, a pig man makes barbeque, shoe salesman wins fame for eating “The Big Juan,” a special section on Coffee & Cake, and much, much more...38 writers and poets in all!

From Sacrifice in Fukuoka by Paul Silverman

If Keith was hungry for anything it was to take back his order. He began making excuses to himself at once: That a horse wasn’t a dog or a cat. That horse is still eaten in parts of Europe, and so on. But every excuse was trumped by a personal reminiscence: an experience he had had with an individual, living horse. Either he had ridden it or stroked it or simply admired it at close distance. In each case the horse had had a name, an owner he knew, a home and a unique life. He stared at the flesh the chef was knifing and began to imagine it as something ceremonial and even hallowed: not an anonymous carcass but a very distinct corpse.

From Chocolate by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

Chocolate
is sex on the tongue, piece by piece
pumicing my wet fingers.
I once read how Marlene Dietrich
harbored so many lovers at Avenue
Montaigne that she couldn’t keep
track of all their names. Isn’t this
the case for chocolat romances?

From Gjetost by Peter Selgin

She fed the first slice softly into my mouth, her small, pink, piano-playing fingers grazing my lips. At first it tasted, I thought, like a cross between peanut butter and caramel, but saltier, and with a hint of gaminess that burst into full-blown rankness as I chewed. I had never tasted goat cheese of any kind before. Its funkiness spread to every corner of my mouth and pervaded my sinuses. The sweetness made it both better and worse. The sticky cheese stuck to the roof of my mouth; I had to pry it loose with my finger. Reidun laughed. "Do you like it?" she said. She had the best smile. "Mmm, mmmm," I said.

From Front Yard Fruit by Ellen Estilai

To an Iranian, mulberries are manna. That achingly evanescent period in late spring, when the fruit appears in high-walled courtyards or along village roads, is a time for sharing and remembering. It comes early in the Iranian calendar, a few months after Nowruz, the March 20 New Year celebration of renewal and promise. On any day in June, from Mashhad to Kerman, from Isfahan to Tabriz, you will see street vendors, their carts piled high with baskets of white berries or tin buckets of the juicier red ones, wending their way through broad avenues and narrow passageways.