Consider the Fork

I didn't actually mean to be quite so depressing with that last post. It was the book, and a week of being mostly on my own, and a very terrible sleep schedule - they ganged up on me. Really, Lovely, Dark and Deep was fantastic. Poetry. Complex, with no easy resolutions (my biggest problem with Jepp was the too-tidy ending), but still deeply satisfying. And with such a distinct sense of place, something I'm always over-the-moon to find in books.

And now I've moved on. Bee Wilson's Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat. Non-fiction seemed like a good idea.

I'm still reading the introduction, but it is already the kind of book I want to share, the kind of book where you want someone around who is willing to listen to you read particularly interesting passages aloud because they simply must be shared. For instance:

Open hearths were a major cause of death in Europe, too, for centuries. Women were particularly at risk, on account of the terrible combination of billowing skirts, trailing sleeves, and open fires with bubbling cauldrons hung over them. Professional chefs in rich households until the seventeenth century were almost universally men, and they often worked naked or just in undergarments on account of the scorching heat. Women were confined to the dairy and scullery, where their skirts didn't pose such a problem.

Hilarious! From the mental image of the naked chefs to the absurdity of women continuing to wear billowing skirts, despite the obvious risk. This, I think, is precisely the book I needed. I'm glad to have found it.