Fortunate … and not so
January 17, 2010Last week I received the best fortune cookie I have ever had. But my friend, the Emperor, was not so lucky …
How to shuck an oyster
On living, writing, reading…and eating
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Book
Love & Hunger: Thoughts on the Gift of Food is a book about the emotional & symbolic meaning of cooking for people you love. It's a distillation of everything writer Charlotte Wood has learned over 25 years of home cooking, about the pleasures of simple food well made.
aw, shucks
"Wood writes beautifully about food. Partly it's because she has something to say about life, not just about food ... Wood's nimble food writing shifts seamlessly from the hotly contested topic of table-setting on one page to grappling with hunger on another. No philosophy, snobbery, one-upmanship, no competing with restaurant cooks. Just a lot of honesty and admission of failings, mistakes, triumphs and pleasures.
- Helen Greenwood, Sydney Morning Herald"In this wonderful cookbook-cum-literary memoir, novelist Charlotte Wood evokes memory and emotion as she explains why she loves to cook and what it means to her. Slotted in among the reveries are recipes as diverse as an Elizabeth David-inspired milk-cooked pork and the hedgehog slice of a childhood in Cooma. It's a book that's satisfying to mind AND stomach."
- SBS FEAST magazine"Charlotte Wood writes so openly about her cooking habits and history and her thoughts about the ethics of good eating that it’s impossible not to be swept up in her enthusiasm. Novice and experienced cooks alike will find something to inspire them here, as Wood has included a range of wonderful, tempting recipes. Reading Love & Hunger is like being invited into Wood’s home, seated at a table crowded with delectable dishes and encouraged to eat until you burst."
- Kylie Mason, The Newtown Review of Books"This book has the power to reignite a passion for life, friendship, food and the everyday. Part memoir and part recipe book, Love & Hunger can be read cover to cover, as I did, just like a novel, or can be dipped into when the moment requires. Charlotte's unusual cook book is the wise friend many of us do not have ready at hand 24/7. Love & Hunger is a guide, an encouragement and an inspiration.
- John Purcell, Booktopia"Love & Hunger manages to be a cookbook for the kitchen, a gentle read for the bedside table and a positive affirmation of the pleasure of cooking for family & friends ... This collection of 27 essays gently and sensitively explores the rich complexity and spiritual sustenance that good food with family & friends imparts to our lives. Each chapter explores, a different aspect of ‘the gift of food’ with a number of recipes ‘attached’; all of them good, none of them complex and many wonderfully comforting. There were many moments when reading, we nodded in heated agreement with the almost commonsense views espoused. As one other reviewer noted, it’s rare for a cookbook to move you to tears; be warned you may succumb. ... If there is a criticism to be made, we would only want more…"
- Tim White, Books for Cooks"Author Charlotte Wood writes like a dream, wrestling with some of those common cooking conundrums, such as dealing with 'polenta paranoia', getting back your kitchen mojo and pondering just what the difference is between a chutney, a relish and a pickle. Her blog is also packed with scrumptious recipes - beetroot palak paneer, anyone?"
- MasterChef Magazine, June 2011pages
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How to shuck an oyster 
Oh dear! How funny! Sounds like you will be having all the fun this week 🙂
Though I do love ‘If your desires are extravagant they will be granted’, sometimes I wish for fortune cookies that were a little more down to earth. So things like ‘Monday will happen, and Friday will happen, and there will be days inbetween’. Or ‘There will be clothes-washing and floors to broom this weekend, but neither task will be as bad as you might think’. Or something simple like ‘Today will end, and tomorrow will begin’. Mmm, certainly not magical, but they’d reinforce the whole idea that nothing is as bad as we might believe, which might be the definition of ‘fortune’?
Yeah- what about fortune cookies that say things like “Look for last year’s tax return under the Spanish cookbook” or “Don’t forget you haven’t paid last month’s daycare bill”
I have been trying to have very extravagant desires (riches, thinness, grand success & fortune, etc) but none of it seems to be working so far…
But Nigel, Screamish, come on. You really want realistic fortune cookies? Surely we have room for a leeetle bit of fantasy? Otherwise mine would say, ‘You will anticipate doing a lot of exercise and eating less, but it probably won’t eventuate’.