On Food and Cooking

Kimchi, Cucumber    Pickles,    Olives

Sugar   Preserves

Canning

We turn now from milk, eggs, meats, and fish,
all expressions of animating protein and
energizing fat, and enter the very different
world that sustains them and us alike. The
plant world encompasses earthy roots, bitter
and pungent and refreshing leaves, perfumed
flowers, mouth-filling fruits, nutty seeds,
sweetness and tartness and astringency and
pleasing pain, and aromas by the thousands! It
turns out that this exuberantly diverse world
was born of simple, harsh necessity. Plants
can’t move as animals do. In order to survive
their immobile, exposed condition, they
became virtuosic chemists. They construct
themselves from the simplest materials of the
earth itself, water and rock and air and light,
and thus transform the earth into food on
which all animal life depends. Plants deter