Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades, and Apulia
by Patience Gray
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Description
A literary memoir of life, food, and travel in the Mediterranean.Tags
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Member Reviews
I have dipped in and out of this book for years, but decided this weekend to do it all in one go. A great work of imagination, history, and culture. Not much for cooking here, I think, as I can't imagine making Pigs' Tongues with Pomegranate Sauce for any occasion. But lovely prose and very evocative.
Perhaps the best of those cook books dealing with the life as well as the food. Gray's partner was a sculptor, so they move from quarry to quarry, learning about Mediterranean poverty and how it gives rise to certain types of cooking. Insightful and well-written.
120. 1st ed. Superb commentary on traditional foodways of the Mediterranean Basin she inhabited. 'The weed from which I have drawn the honey is the traditional knowledge of the Mediterranean people...'
Fasting and feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia.
A book I treasure. Bought at Waterperry, near Oxford
A book I treasure. Bought at Waterperry, near Oxford
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... including a book that I especially treasure - Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia, which some food writers call the finest cookbook ever written in English. (Superlatives do make me nervous.)
added by prosperosbook
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Food Memoirs
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Author Information
6+ Works 471 Members
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Awards and Honors
Awards
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Has as a commentary on the text
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades, and Apulia
- Original publication date
- 1987
- People/Characters
- Patience Gray
- Important places
- Tuscany, Italy; Apulia, Italy; Catalonia, Spain; Cyclades, Greece
- Epigraph
- Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. -- Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude
It is through celebration that we become part of what we perceive: the great arc of birdsong -- that runs around the world in the receding darkness and through which we are swept into the light of day -- is as much part of th... (show all)e dawn as the sun's first flash. - Norman Mommens
The acanthus listens / to echoes from afar. / Timeless, / other leaves tremble / to muffled sounds -- Salvador Espriu, Formes i Paraules - Dedication
- For Wolfe
- First words
- In the last twenty years I have shared the fortunes of a stone carver and during that time, working in silver and gold, have become a craftsman myself.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Picking them up we began to realise that the deserted hill overlooking the Ionian had for millennia been inhabited, if sporadically, by craftsmen and that at our door lay 40,000 years of prehistory, unwritten and unread.
- Blurbers
- Thorne, John; Innes, Jocasta
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Food & Cooking, Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir, Travel
- DDC/MDS
- 641.591822 — Applied science & technology Home economics & family management Food, Cooking & Recipes / Meals, Picnics Cooking; cookbooks Ethnic Cookbooks Cooking characteristic of areas, regions, places in general Other kinds of terrestrial regions Oceans and sea basins Mediterranean region
- LCC
- TX725 .M35 .G73 — Technology Home economics Home economics Cooking
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 318
- Popularity
- 100,316
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.98)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 2
