{"id":6566,"date":"2006-08-09T01:22:40","date_gmt":"2006-08-09T01:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html"},"modified":"2006-08-09T01:22:40","modified_gmt":"2006-08-09T01:22:40","slug":"if-youre-a-vegetarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html","title":{"rendered":"If you’re a vegetarian…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Heat\"<\/a> …don’t read this book.<\/p>\n

Well, go ahead, but be ready, in the last third, for lots of sinews, blood and guts, as former New Yorker <\/em>fiction editor Bill Buford heads to Tuscany to apprentice with the Dante-quoting, raw-meat loving butcher of the subtitle, Dario Cecchini.<\/p>\n

And before that, whether you’re carnivore, herbivore or omnivore, be prepared for the slightly disturbing image of Mario Batali rifling through the garbage in the kitchen of Babbo<\/a>, digging out bits that the kitchen staff had deign unworthy for cooking, but Batali deemed….worthy.<\/p>\n

But then, that is the point of Heat<\/em>..where does food come from? What is the relationship between where the food comes from, who prepares it and what it is…<\/em>what it signifies?<\/p>\n

Not a new question, but certainly addictively explored by Buford in this account of his odyssey from Manhattan kitchen drudge to apprentice butcher in Tuscany, with over a year in Batali’s kitchen in between. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even as I had to wonder at a couple of points, primarily…did Buford really <\/em>carry  a 200+ pig carcass on his scooter through Manhattan, cart it up to his apartment and work for 6 days (and on the 7th…he rested) practicing what he’d learned at Dario’s from the Maestro? I’ll trust that he did, but I’d still pay money to see a picture. For more reasons than one, I’ll admit. <\/p>\n

Sara Dickerman at Slate gives a good review, which presents the high points so I don’t have to – <\/a>she doesn’t address a question that kept popping up in my mind as I read this, though…despite the first-person nature of the tale and not-infrequent revelations of his inner life, I never quite grasped where this sudden passion to immerse himself in the kitchen came from, at this point, for this reason, at this level. It’s a small point, but it nagged. Perhaps it’s a simple as "I like to cook" + "This will make a good book." Which is a perfectly good thing.<\/p>\n

What Buford finally comes to is this: that the essential revolution in food that’s occurred is not about slow and fast food. It’s about Small and Big food – or a shift in power from the producer to the consumer. Essentially, food has been ripped from its local roots and as such, its cultural significance – as an expression of a locality, as a bearer of both family and social history – is disappearing. <\/p>\n

So what we have here is a good read – some philosophical\/cultural musings, plus some celebrity dishing plus the tracing of what and how a vocation is discovered and nurtured plus the heady, frantic world of the restaurant kitchen.<\/p>\n

I’m hungry. But for some reason…not for steak. <\/p>\n

(Not that I ever am anyway. But those summer tomatoes are even more appealing than they usually are at this moment…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…don’t read this book. Well, go ahead, but be ready, in the last third, for lots of sinews, blood and guts, as former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford heads to Tuscany to apprentice with the Dante-quoting, raw-meat loving butcher of the subtitle, Dario Cecchini. And before that, whether you’re carnivore, herbivore or omnivore, be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIf you're a vegetarian... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If you're a vegetarian... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"…don’t read this book. Well, go ahead, but be ready, in the last third, for lots of sinews, blood and guts, as former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford heads to Tuscany to apprentice with the Dante-quoting, raw-meat loving butcher of the subtitle, Dario Cecchini. And before that, whether you’re carnivore, herbivore or omnivore, be…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-08-09T01:22:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/heat.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"If you're a vegetarian... - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"If you're a vegetarian... - Via Media","og_description":"…don’t read this book. Well, go ahead, but be ready, in the last third, for lots of sinews, blood and guts, as former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford heads to Tuscany to apprentice with the Dante-quoting, raw-meat loving butcher of the subtitle, Dario Cecchini. And before that, whether you’re carnivore, herbivore or omnivore, be…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-08-09T01:22:40+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/heat.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html","name":"If you're a vegetarian... - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/heat.jpg","datePublished":"2006-08-09T01:22:40+00:00","dateModified":"2006-08-09T01:22:40+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/heat.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/heat.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-youre-a-vegetarian.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"If you’re a vegetarian…"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}