Just Call Me Prawn Jeremy

"Many of [M.F.K. Fisher's] successors see food as an end in itself-- and end up producing something like food porn-- but the most successful memoirists write about food and the self in order to write about the human condition."

--Molly O'Neill, Introduction to American Food Writing

"Thanks for the lovely food porn, dear."

--my friend Berkeley, in reference to the blog Armchair Foodie

After reading Molly O'Neill's luscious introduction to the best collection of writings since... well, maybe ever, I vowed to be the food writer who falls into the latter of the two types she above describes. What lofty ends these writers attain, all while scribbling about eating! Food as metaphor for freedom, as Frederick Douglass writes: "The odors [of cooking] I shared with the winds, but the meats were under a more stringent monopoly... ." Or food as a re-introduction to nature, as Thoreau points out: "Our diet, like that of the birds, must answer to the season." Or even food as an illustration of a culture, like George C. Foster's Old New York: "The chief merit of these establishments is that they are kept open all night, and that hungry Editors or belated idlers can get a plate of biscuits with a lump of butter in the belly for three cents, and a cup of coffee for as much more... ."

And what do I do? I manipulate, then flaunt and exploit my groceries so that they become like maidens, made up and thrown across a bed, stripped all too young of their innocence. My food-- I can't help it-- is an end in itself. When I returned from the sweltering August Farmer's Market today there was nothing I wanted to do more than to lay my bounty across the table in as decorative a way as I could muster, and drool over it, fondle it, photograph it. I eyed it and thought long, lascivious thoughts about just what exactly I was going to do to it as soon as I could get it inside. Sigh. What else can I say, but: Hello. My name is Megan, and I am a food pornographer.