Recommended Reading

Recommended Reading

A very sleepy Tommy wants to direct you to the newest issue of the once-again resurrected Oxford American. This is the food issue. Good writing, as usual, but this issue wanders through the kitchens, cafeterias, diners and bbq pits all across the south, bringing you some awesome reflections on southern cuisine.

I particularly enjoyed Paul Reyes' essay on the southern fast food culture, Though the Past (Sort Of) Darkly.

Dennis Covington has a nice piece on Chicken Fried Steak. I like Covington's work a lot, and was happy to see something I hadn't read from him here. I like his work for reasons more instinctual than cogent. I can also say that his essay on Chicken Fried Steak, which can't be more than 500 words, made me laugh out loud and want to cry in the space of a couple of minutes.

My favorite piece, though, and the one I write all this for when I am literally about to fall out, is the wonderfully odd and strangely nostalgic piece brought on by a can of dog food, written by Lewis Nordan, simplyed titled "Good Times: the Cupboard was Not Utterly Bare."

He paints a picture.

I am there with the boys in a Airstream trailer, finding no food to eat but this can of dog food.

I share in the curiosity.

I feel the tension.

I laughed with the result.

Anyway. This has been my commercial for this issue of Oxford American. Give it a look.