Posts From Ann Summers
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Ann Summers
Making Connections: Cutchall Management
The gestalt theory of history says that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, and stands in opposition to
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O Flavor, Where Art Thou?
Our flavor seeking odyssey begins with The Odyssey, as we find our freshly bathed hero, Odysseus, rubbing himself with olive oil before approaching a beautiful princess. But the ancient world had been using olive oil for lots of wonderful things
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The Fifth Element of Cookery
Water, Wood, Fire, and Earth have been described as the four classical elements of nature, the essential phases of matter. In the East they added Metal. In India or Classical Greece it was Ether. The elements vary, but throughout history
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Pickle or Die
Long ago, people ate what they grew, and grew what they ate. If they couldn’t gather or grow it, so it is said, they didn’t eat it. If they didn’t eat, they died, so they stayed busy. If they caught
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The Ethnically Enhanced Pantry
Define Ethnic: The categories of culinary ethnicity in this article are mine, and are a very general clumsy way to clump an entire globe and time-line of human eating into a very small space. The clumps and delineations are not
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The Pathos of Cooking
Romance, comfort, grief — food triggers emotions in all of us If we agree that cooking is a method of persuasion, of dialogue, then we can explore the formal Aristotelian components of persuasion — ethos, logos and pathos — to
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The Logos of Cooking
If there is an ethos in cooking, we project it through our own creativity, passion and respect for what we make. Most home cooks would probably just as soon leave it at that. But to really cook, as the immortal
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The Ethos of Cooking
Often when we cook, we think only of ingredients, number of diners, seasonality, or cost, but rarely do we consider the attitude we have to muster in order to pull certain kinds of dishes off. One may say, “I don’t
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It’s Getting Butter All the Time
“You’re not really from the South, are you?” was my sister-in-law’s accusation when I once again reminded her that I don’t do butter. Yes, I am from the South, from Arkansas and anyone who has heard Bill Clinton talk (most
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A Verbal Herbal
Whether you pronounce “herbs” with a silent H like normal people or make a point of pronouncing it like Martha Stewart, herbs are one of the good things cooks everywhere agree are indispensable. In a way, they are the ultimate
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