The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

Tag: eating

  • Turning Tables

    Turning Tables

    An in-depth essay on the work of artist-activist Kathryn Eddy, from Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s new book, Listen, we all bleed, published by New Rivers Press, November 2021.

  • Behind the Orange Curtain

    Behind the Orange Curtain

    Besides getting the usual “Go West, Young Man”-type pandering that we all seem to get from American propaganda, a couple things I came across as a Midwest wanderlust adolescent that really resonated with me on multiple levels were teeny-bopper shows like Fox’s The O.C., and MTV’s Laguna Beach, which ultimately planted a Manifest Destiny spiritual…

  • Beggars, Sinners, and Barbeque

    Beggars, Sinners, and Barbeque

    Honeysuckles line the drive as you ramble down our old gravel road and pull into the front yard. Past the rose bushes and satsuma trees, the first thing you see is an oak stretching its great arms over the addition daddy built with his own two hands and a series of pickup trucks and beater…

  • The Cooked and the Half-Baked

    The Cooked and the Half-Baked

      “The great press baron, Lord Northcliffe, used to tell his journalists that four subjects could be relied upon for abiding public interest: crime, love, money, and food. Only the last of these is fundamental and universal. Crime is a minority interest, even in the worst-regulated societies. It is possible to imagine an economy without…

  • Lunch

    Lunch

    The man used to think that cars grew on trees. He imagined them growing like apples or lemons, weighing down the boughs of trees until they snapped and the cars settled slowly on the uneven dirt. He liked thinking this way. It was nice that the blue blush of the late afternoon sky in summer…

  • The Undomesticated Chanterelle

    The Undomesticated Chanterelle

    The Cantharellus cibarius, most commonly known as chanterelle, is one of the most celebrated wild edible mushroom in the world. You would think by now that this prized fungus, which can be collected in the hundreds in certain wooded areas, would be commercially cultivated. But it is not. In fact, only twenty edible fungal species…

  • Washing Hands

    Washing Hands

    About twenty years ago I met an Irish girl. She had grown up in the countryside on a farm and, when she told me about her childhood, it sounded like something out of Ryan’s Daughter. Quite the contrast to my own city childhood, growing up in London. These photographs are inspired by a story she…

  • Eating Meat

    Eating Meat

    In nearly every case, something died for you to go on living. Even a vegan or raw food diet requires suppressing some forms of life. With no exception, the lives of microbes, insects, plants, and indeed, a great many animals, are at stake each time we take a bite. Whether we like it or not,…

  • The Art of Fermentation

    The Art of Fermentation

    Sandor Ellix Katz is the author of The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes From Around The World, “the most comprehensive guide to do-it-yourself home fermentation ever published”. Released in 2012 with a foreword by Michael Pollan, it has received rapturous praise in both the food world and in environmentalist…