The Sex Life of Food
When Body and Soul Meet to Eat
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"The sex life of food" doesn't mean that the strawberries have fallen in love with the oatmeal. It's a look at food—and sex—and how they go together in our daily lives much more often than we realize. There are so many ways that hunger and desire act on each other, and so many things that can influence our preferences. Not only are people moved by the taste, texture, and the shapes of the food they eat, but even the names of some dishes can kindle hunger—of both kinds—in some. As the author writes, "Sometimes cooking is foreplay, eating is making love, and doing the dishes is the morning after."
The many things Bunny Crumpacker shares with the readers of her fascinating book almost could have inspired her to write a novel, sending Adam and Eve (with their apple) traveling through history as the icons of our passions. Instead, she has gone far beyond the obvious to bring us unexpected and tantalizing knowledge of how much and in how many surprising ways we assuage our hunger for both food and sex and how where there's one, there is often the other. The result is a continued delight. There's history and humor, obvious connections and truly amazing ones. The author enlightens us on a myriad of topics, including food in fairy tales, what politicians eat, comfort food, and manners at the table.
But enough! There's too much to say. Turn the pages and let Bunny Crumpacker introduce you to The Sex Life of Food.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sensual, comforting and "tangled into every human emotion," food has long evoked love in all its forms, and Crumpacker (The Old-Time Brand-Name Cookbook) explores how our two most raging appetites play upon each other to soothe, satisfy and seduce. Dishing out gobbets of gastronomic history candied with sweet-tart musings, Crumpacker slices into provisions from apples to wedding cake as symbols beyond mere sustenance. In her gloss, both what and how we eat are expressions of the psyche, unremitting quests to fulfill our most primal urges. She takes particular pleasure in teasing out food's more piquant associations (such as "dripping, fleshy mouthfuls" of fruit). Parsing the subtexts of American chow, she considers fast food (wolfed down in bites, it reflects our aggressive, anxious national temperament), ethnic food (oozing with "a rich, fatty kind of love") and salad bars (delighting with array and abundance), and also makes a case for the restorative intimacy of cooking. The obligatory list of aphrodisiacs appears, though Crumpacker debunks their mystique, sticking to her thesis that "we are all beautiful when we are well loved and... well fed." Though seasoned haphazardly with purple prose, Crumpacker's clever insights and lyrical aphorisms blend into an indulgent read.
