Lost and Found on my Computer

If you're a writer, you never know what might pop up in your old computer files. Here's a tidbit that turned up during my end-of-year attempt at "house cleaning" my Mac.

Here’s my desktop. As you can see, there’s a lot of cleanup to do! And once I got into my old Word files, I let myself get distracted by some forgotten files, including the following, which I thought might make you smile as you go through your own ‘stuff.’

I wrote this twenty years ago, during a food writing conference at The Greenbriar in Virginia. My husband Greg was on the faculty, and I was invited to attend as a guest. The meeting inspired me to write the following tidbit as I became enthralled by the topic of writing about food.

Food Writing

By Dorothy Hinshaw Patent

Food writing is a complicated subject, for every food has its own writing style.  Their subject matter varies tremendously—peppers go for spicy gossip, while onions tell tragic stories, and writing gives cattle a chance to air their beefs.  Rosemary goes on and on about her baby, while blood oranges love to write gory stories.

Their styles differ as well—sage writes wisely, of course, while peas just rattle on and on, and fowl have to watch their language.

The quality of food writing is all over the map—chocolate writing is smooth and rich with metaphor, but garlic’s prose stinks.  Peaches’ writing is really keen, but that of kiwi fruit is for the birds.

Then there are the dairy products.  Cottage cheese writes homey pieces; Swiss cheese struggles not to have holes in its logic.  The words butter writes, however, melt in your mouth.  Egg prose depends heavily on circumstances—cooked eggs write hard-boiled detective stories, while raw ones agonize over the pain of separation.

So, writers, make your choice—what kind of food writing do you want to emulate?

Happy New Year, Dorothy