Strings Attached

To Be Fed

89 To Be Fed To prepare a feast, Uke Mochi, Shinto goddess of food, faced the sea and spit out a fish. At the forest’s edge game flew from her orifices. Eyeing a rice paddy she coughed up bowls of rice. When Tsukiyomi, moon god she wanted to please, killed her in disgust, her corpse turned to millet and beans. In Babette’s Feast, Babette was no goddess but a woman worshipped. When her family is murdered she retreats, becomes a servant to strict Lutheran sisters, preparing simple food but better than the bread-ale soup they’d been eating every day. Later she wins the lottery using the entire sum to prepare a meal uniting spirit and flesh: caviar, terrapin soup, quail with truffled foie gras, fine wines, and sumptuous pastries. I think of heartbroken Tita from Like Water for Chocolate, forced to cook the wedding dinner for her sister’s marriage to Pedro, the man she herself loves. She pricks her finger on a thorn while preparing quail with sauce made of rose petals Pedro had given her. The dish, fragrant and sensual, embodies her lust and sadness, leaving the guests to weep as they dine. I watched my grandmother transform flour into savory pies and sweet pastries, followed the curled finger of aroma inviting me in. Later, I’d summon my inner Aphrodite to make heart-shaped cakes on Valentine’s Day. Send warm banana nut bread to seduce the boy across the street, his father assuring me he’d deliver it, later asking for more, saying he thinks it’s working. Before the Shinto goddess slept, she poured herself into the river where the moon god kept his reflection. I wonder if he tasted her sweetness when that river turned to honey? ...