#jonah campbell

[stonegate-rp]

I would love to apply as Jonah, but I don't much like his FC. Could that be changed?

It's possible, yes! Just include your alternate ideas in the "Anything Else" section of your app, and we'll discuss it with you!

[movementsofmylife]

Food & Trembling by Jonah Campbell

So, this is the first in my summer one book per week review thing. I’m basically just using this as a way to keep track of the books I’m reading, and to force myself to stay on track. Thus commence 1/20ish:

Jonah Campbell has an interesting writing style, half insanely formal, and slightly pretentious, half like he’s writing a letter to a friend. This writing is probably one of my favourite aspects of the book. It’s a pretty decent collection of essays on food and life and food life. Some of them were genuinely hilarious, others were a bit too self involved and convoluted. It combines insights into food, and esoteric diction related to food. Which just might be the perfect combination for me. It wasn't mind blowing but it was amusing and light and gave me new perspectives on food and food culture. 

[bookquotesforthesoul]

However, to all the unilateral butter supremacists who refuse to see margarine as anything but a hopeless, irredeemable, and pathetically ersatz pretender to the throne, I counter that what margarine can do that butter never can is to make something taste like it is covered in margarine. Which, look down your nose all you please, amounts to making something taste like it is covered in salty oil, and if you can't appreciate that you'd best step back, because brother, life is an empty coffin, and you's being a touch too selective about how you fills it.

-Jonah Campbell, Food & Trembling

[bookquotesforthesoul]

The first time that I tried to make beer, admittedly more as an assistant than an equal partner, we pretty much fucked up each and every step in some way, all the way through the process. I shan't get into details, but there was much over-boiling, confusion of hops, mistaking of instruments for other kinds of instruments, frantic phone calls, and late night scurryings-about, becoming increasingly cavalier as the night went on, disregarding such trivialities as precise measurements or cleanliness. As it turned out, the product of all this haphazardness was a delicious espresso-chocolate stout (I have a problem with the word 'mocha,' okay? It just feels bad on the tongue, you know? Mocha? It makes me think about white people talking about jazz and sex in the same sentence. Ew, no.), all the more delicious after we gave it a good couple extra months of mellowing, aging, integration time. The downside was that whenever you opened a bottle it FUCKING EXPLODED EVERYWHERE...

-Jonah Campbell, Food & Trembling

[pbrfisher]

PBR Fisher is rolling back slowly toward the stove after spending the year after the death of PBR Fisher's mother failing to innovate in the kitchen and mostly drinking neat whiskey and ordering takeout. Dad taught PBR Fisher how to make a grilled cheese sandwich at the age of 4, but Mom was the reason PBR Fisher's childhood analog of mac 'n' cheese from a box was champignons à la crème, liverwurst or Gruyère on toast. Here. Have a book review instead of a real update.

PBR Fisher is reading Food and Trembling and officially book- and blog--crushing on Jonah Campbell, especially the post-vegan pantry staples, paralyzing self-criticism of one's mastery of sauces, high-flying philosophy, salt-hound palate, easy vernacular, gustatory sentimentality and unremitting cussing. Also Campbell digs Hauschka, which is pretty fucking dreamy. Have you heard Hauschka? So dreamy.

Plus, you can't hate on anything with a blurb from Joey Comeau on the back cover: "This book is the Fear and Loathing of food writing: thoughtful, vulgar, and hard to describe, but it is never boring." (You know Comeau's on Tumblr, right?)

Observe:

See, I used to be sick a lot, and this really fostered an antagonistic Cartesian split in my life. It basically goes like this: I get sick, and then am all like "WTF, BODY? I treat you well with whole grains and some other healthy nonsense and this is how you go and do me? Well how do you like this?" as I stuff a fistful of chips into my mouth, "and THIS!" the next fistful of chips, and so on, until I have eaten an entire bag of Ruffles or whatever it is. And for a moment I feel a perverse sort of victory that is part sheer delight at having tasted delicious chips for such an extended period of time, part the guilty pleasure that comes with eating an entire bag of chips (not unlike the shameful self satisfaction of spending a months' rent on booze), and part mad Flagellant monk triumph over the body that says "Hey body, what's up? Bet you feel like shit, eh? Well, how you like me now?! Remember, I made you (untrue, admittedly) and I can unmake you, never forget that." As if you're teaching your stupid body some sort of lesson for being self-preserving enough to get sick. It's really insane, but that's how it goes.

PBR Fisher is feeling hella weird about the use of the third person throughout but figures it's too late in the game to abandon it now, and notes that it is fucking gratifying reading a breakdown of comfort food from someone with a nearly Buddhist sense of the futility of comfort.

(Photo from this worthy interview at Swallow Daily.)

[maisonneuvemag-blog-blog]

For Christmas a friend gave me one of those obscene half-pound Reese Peanut Butter Cups, and I feel like it’s my duty to eat it alone, in one sitting, despite the fact that it’s going to totally wreck me. I think I just need to embrace that experience.

Food & Trembling author Jonah Campbell