In praise of gluttony

Forget obscene slimming fads. Eat the finest local food, pay twice the price for half as much (or grow your own)—and use the whole hog

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THE case for the defence is unlikely to be better made than by that great idiosyncratic writer on food and drink, M.F.K. Fisher. “As often as possible,” she wrote in the 1940s, “when a really beautiful bottle of wine is before me, I drink all I can of it, even when I know I have had more than I want physically. That is gluttonous. But I think to myself, when again will I have this taste upon my tongue. Where else in the world is there just such wine as this, with just this bouquet, at just this heat, in just this crystal cup. And when again will I be alive to it as I am this very minute, sitting here on a green hillside above the sea, or here in this dim, murmuring, richly odorous restaurant.”

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