Our Founding Fathers–Eating

I have occasionally imagined a piece of historical fiction, a Rip van Winkle story where John Adams (a grumpy, wise, philosopher) or Ben Franklin (a gourmand, party animal, and scientist) or maybe Tom Jefferson (a million contradictions who liked liberty and revolution and food and wine and books and women of all colors) is dropped into the present day to make sense of it, with the help of someone to be a clumsy guide and to keep our time traveler out of jail. (Me! Me! Picke me!) We learn about ourselves and our history as our lab rat tries to make sense of our era.

Fascinating to think about. It makes me ashamed I know so little history (and cultural history) to have a decent guess at what the poor lab rat would see.

Then I became completely distracted by eating. Our food bears so little resemblance to what these men knew that I think any one of them would be both impressed by the Taste Sensations of McDonalds, and ornery and out-of-sorts after a day here because our “food” is not food.

The result? Every time I eat something really good (Tonight: local lamb from Walden Local Meat, here in Boston) I feel like I am eating like a Founding Father.

-kb

©2016 Kent Borg

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