Food of Love, Play On
From the column "Ravenous" from Ulster Publishing
“Every night should have its own menu.”
--Balzac
Like air and water, two of life’s necessities are food and sex, which also go together better than a horse and carriage, or rather Cool Whip and skin, as the case may be. On Valentine’s Day some foods set a mood when lovers or future lovers treat each other with thirty-pound boxes of chocolate or provocative meals promising naughty fun later.
Do oysters make you long for love? Although they just make me long for more oysters, they are one of many aphrodisiacs throughout history, one of the most classic, whose zinc content is purported to raise the level of human desire. I can’t say if this is true or not. As much as I love their slightly chewy texture, briny-sweet taste and bold character, I think that other factors surely must be more influential on desire than raw live mollusks.
A long trail preceded Viagra, as throughout history man has devised and discovered substances to increase desire and improve performance, many of them foods. However, it’s unlikely that any individual foodstuff can work that way on the body as well as a varied diet and a good state of health. If they work, it’s because mind and body are closely linked, and we expect them to do what they promise because of their form. Otherwise a banana is just a banana.
Many foods have been called aphrodisiac because of their suggestive shapes. Once thought to have medicinal effects on men’s libido and potency are carrots, asparagus, leeks, corn on the cob, eggplants, cucumber, zucchini and the giant curled cucuzza squash. Don’t forget hotdogs, sausages and fuzzy kiwi fruits, which although rarely called aphrodisiacs are surely just as suggestive.
Foods resembling female parts are classic foods of love too, like mussels, plush ripe figs or a perfumy papaya cut open to reveal its tender dark insides. Peaches, pears and bell peppers evoke the female form. A supine quail or game hen roasted golden brown and steaming with heat, its tiny ankles trussed together in the air, looks like an inviting, passive partner.
Expensive food is often aphrodisiacal, no matter its shape. Eating lobster, caviar or truffles, with their strong flavors of sea or earth, makes you feel elegant, rich and ready for anything. Champagne has it all; it’s pricey, celebratory and has alcohol to loosen you up, giving you a giggly devil-may-care feeling about what you might do with the one you’re sharing it with. And Champagne’s counterpart, fine wine, has an aura of intense romance while making you feel warmer and more daring.
Pungent garlic is a universal aphrodisiac (if both parties partake), as is its cohort in many world cuisines: feisty ginger. Hot peppers and zesty spices rev up your engine before love as they make you flush and sweat. In the Middle Ages and again in Victorian times, when both fine food and sex were considered too frivolous and pleasure inducing, spices were coveted and very expensive aphrodisiacs.
Game meats evoke the hunt, seduction and conquest. Rabbit meat is evocative of doing it like rabbits and has long been considered aphrodisiac, as is the meat of randy goats.
An instrument of love more classic and more popular even than oysters is chocolate. And unlike the other aphrodisiacs, it may actually work. As I mentioned in last week’s column, certain chemicals in chocolate may cause the same feeling as the chemicals in your brain when you feel love or lust. In a novel I’m writing the hero is charmed by his comely but non-cooking, non-eating new girlfriend when she serves him a chocolate fondue with out-of-season strawberries and canned mandarin oranges dipped in warm waxy chocolate goo. (In my last novel it was the hero’s demonstration of the making of game hen sausages that did the trick for the heroine.)
Even that other component of Valentine’s Day, the rose, has an edible aspect. Rose petals and rose flower water have long been used in confections and potions to entice objects of desire. Aromas of edibles in women’s lotions and body products satisfy a woman’s need to consume without taking in calories, making her feel sexy, soft and scented of peach or almond. My own favorite body lotion is based on cocoa butter, although I adore the scent of jasmine, whose flowers I once made into a sublime sorbet in Sicily.
According to Jeremy MacClancy in his fascinating Consuming Culture (Henry Holt, 1992), some of history’s more intriguing edible aphrodisiacs have included calves’ and doves’ brains, camel bone, chameleon milk, deer semen, jackal gall, goose tongues, swan or horse penis and hippopotamus snout. We will surely try anything to get lucky! The list of aphrodisiacs is endless; read MacClancy’s book, as well as Isabel Allende’s gorgeous work Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (HarperCollins, 1998) for more on the subject.
Food and sex are both elemental to our being and keys to our survival. Without reproduction and nourishment we could not exist. The young of all species are created cute so someone will care for them, insuring the species’ survival. And so food and sex seemed to have been invented to be sources of intense physical and mental pleasure, to make sure that we carry on with life and replace ourselves.
Food can be used for something other than food, like Jason Mecier’s pop icons made of pasta or beans, or as a “marital aid.” Although ice cubes in the boudoir are favored by some S & M sensualists, generally foods used there need to be brought from fridge temp to room temp before moving on up to body temp. For some of us, bedroom food brings to mind small sexy fruits like cherries, strawberries and grapes. Others swear by appropriately placed drizzlings of Kahlua, honey or squeezable cheese. Are edible undies a food?
In one Seinfeld episode, dweeby George tries pastrami in the bedroom, calling it “the most sensuous of the salted meats." Not surprisingly, his girlfriend is less than enthused. “She didn't appreciate the erotic qualities of the salted cured meats?” teases Jerry.
“She tolerated the strawberries and the chocolate sauce,” says George, “But eh, it's not a meal, you know? Food and sex, those are my two passions. It's only natural to combine them.”
“Natural?” laughs Jerry. “Sex is about love between a man and a woman, not a man and a sandwich.”
When planning a Valentine’s Day feast, your options are many. The cuisine of seduction can simply be valentine hearts laid out on the kitchen counter that spell out “H. V. D., B A B E ! Y O U R O C K !” Or go to a little more trouble and offer dishes that will serve as preludes to love with the powers of suggestion and symbol, even if they’re not proven aphrodisiacs. When you are newly in the throes of love and/or lust or a reasonable facsimile thereof, even a McDonald’s cheeseburger can be the right food. But whether those days of L and L are yet only on the horizon, or whether they’re timeworn and nearly dead and buried, the right food might help the two of you along that amorous path. Like Dr. Hans Bazli said, “After a perfect meal we are more susceptible to the ecstasy of love than at any other time.”
What to cook your sweetie before the main course? He or she might succumb to the succulence of a plump little roasted chicken. Or his or her lusty appetites might be stimulated by gingery pink sweet sea-scented shrimp. For me, scallops and squid are just as seductive. Some find earthy, too-red beets sexy food; for others they’re a turn-off. Go off the low-carb diet for the day; potatoes, pasta and rice stimulate serotonin release and increase ardor. But go easy; too big a meal can make you too sleepy for love.
Flambéed desserts excite with their perceived danger and romantically flickering flames. Anything that runs and oozes--like dark chocolate sauce or red raspberry coulis--does the trick, too. Think molten, think decadent.
I haven’t yet planned my Valentine’s Day dinner for this year. A few years back I made oysters Florentine followed by Chilean sea bass (when it was still PC) with ginger and julienned vegetables baked in a heart-shaped parchment packet, but other years have been less memorable. Maybe we’ll boil and slice that whole smoked tongue that’s been languishing in the back of the fridge and see if sparks fly. Or less likely, finally crack open that ghastly little bottle of wine we got in Vietnam four years ago, with a whole snake stuffed inside. More likely it will be something savory and roasted, something redolent of garlic and spice, perhaps followed by a chocolate soufflé …
Of food and sex, which is better? Both are necessary as air, but is one pursuit more worthy, more fun or more hip than the other? Not to worry, there’s plenty of room in our short lives for plenty of both. Happy Valentine’s Day.
“Every night should have its own menu.”
--Balzac
Like air and water, two of life’s necessities are food and sex, which also go together better than a horse and carriage, or rather Cool Whip and skin, as the case may be. On Valentine’s Day some foods set a mood when lovers or future lovers treat each other with thirty-pound boxes of chocolate or provocative meals promising naughty fun later.
Do oysters make you long for love? Although they just make me long for more oysters, they are one of many aphrodisiacs throughout history, one of the most classic, whose zinc content is purported to raise the level of human desire. I can’t say if this is true or not. As much as I love their slightly chewy texture, briny-sweet taste and bold character, I think that other factors surely must be more influential on desire than raw live mollusks.
A long trail preceded Viagra, as throughout history man has devised and discovered substances to increase desire and improve performance, many of them foods. However, it’s unlikely that any individual foodstuff can work that way on the body as well as a varied diet and a good state of health. If they work, it’s because mind and body are closely linked, and we expect them to do what they promise because of their form. Otherwise a banana is just a banana.
Many foods have been called aphrodisiac because of their suggestive shapes. Once thought to have medicinal effects on men’s libido and potency are carrots, asparagus, leeks, corn on the cob, eggplants, cucumber, zucchini and the giant curled cucuzza squash. Don’t forget hotdogs, sausages and fuzzy kiwi fruits, which although rarely called aphrodisiacs are surely just as suggestive.
Foods resembling female parts are classic foods of love too, like mussels, plush ripe figs or a perfumy papaya cut open to reveal its tender dark insides. Peaches, pears and bell peppers evoke the female form. A supine quail or game hen roasted golden brown and steaming with heat, its tiny ankles trussed together in the air, looks like an inviting, passive partner.
Expensive food is often aphrodisiacal, no matter its shape. Eating lobster, caviar or truffles, with their strong flavors of sea or earth, makes you feel elegant, rich and ready for anything. Champagne has it all; it’s pricey, celebratory and has alcohol to loosen you up, giving you a giggly devil-may-care feeling about what you might do with the one you’re sharing it with. And Champagne’s counterpart, fine wine, has an aura of intense romance while making you feel warmer and more daring.
Pungent garlic is a universal aphrodisiac (if both parties partake), as is its cohort in many world cuisines: feisty ginger. Hot peppers and zesty spices rev up your engine before love as they make you flush and sweat. In the Middle Ages and again in Victorian times, when both fine food and sex were considered too frivolous and pleasure inducing, spices were coveted and very expensive aphrodisiacs.
Game meats evoke the hunt, seduction and conquest. Rabbit meat is evocative of doing it like rabbits and has long been considered aphrodisiac, as is the meat of randy goats.
An instrument of love more classic and more popular even than oysters is chocolate. And unlike the other aphrodisiacs, it may actually work. As I mentioned in last week’s column, certain chemicals in chocolate may cause the same feeling as the chemicals in your brain when you feel love or lust. In a novel I’m writing the hero is charmed by his comely but non-cooking, non-eating new girlfriend when she serves him a chocolate fondue with out-of-season strawberries and canned mandarin oranges dipped in warm waxy chocolate goo. (In my last novel it was the hero’s demonstration of the making of game hen sausages that did the trick for the heroine.)
Even that other component of Valentine’s Day, the rose, has an edible aspect. Rose petals and rose flower water have long been used in confections and potions to entice objects of desire. Aromas of edibles in women’s lotions and body products satisfy a woman’s need to consume without taking in calories, making her feel sexy, soft and scented of peach or almond. My own favorite body lotion is based on cocoa butter, although I adore the scent of jasmine, whose flowers I once made into a sublime sorbet in Sicily.
According to Jeremy MacClancy in his fascinating Consuming Culture (Henry Holt, 1992), some of history’s more intriguing edible aphrodisiacs have included calves’ and doves’ brains, camel bone, chameleon milk, deer semen, jackal gall, goose tongues, swan or horse penis and hippopotamus snout. We will surely try anything to get lucky! The list of aphrodisiacs is endless; read MacClancy’s book, as well as Isabel Allende’s gorgeous work Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (HarperCollins, 1998) for more on the subject.
Food and sex are both elemental to our being and keys to our survival. Without reproduction and nourishment we could not exist. The young of all species are created cute so someone will care for them, insuring the species’ survival. And so food and sex seemed to have been invented to be sources of intense physical and mental pleasure, to make sure that we carry on with life and replace ourselves.
Food can be used for something other than food, like Jason Mecier’s pop icons made of pasta or beans, or as a “marital aid.” Although ice cubes in the boudoir are favored by some S & M sensualists, generally foods used there need to be brought from fridge temp to room temp before moving on up to body temp. For some of us, bedroom food brings to mind small sexy fruits like cherries, strawberries and grapes. Others swear by appropriately placed drizzlings of Kahlua, honey or squeezable cheese. Are edible undies a food?
In one Seinfeld episode, dweeby George tries pastrami in the bedroom, calling it “the most sensuous of the salted meats." Not surprisingly, his girlfriend is less than enthused. “She didn't appreciate the erotic qualities of the salted cured meats?” teases Jerry.
“She tolerated the strawberries and the chocolate sauce,” says George, “But eh, it's not a meal, you know? Food and sex, those are my two passions. It's only natural to combine them.”
“Natural?” laughs Jerry. “Sex is about love between a man and a woman, not a man and a sandwich.”
When planning a Valentine’s Day feast, your options are many. The cuisine of seduction can simply be valentine hearts laid out on the kitchen counter that spell out “H. V. D., B A B E ! Y O U R O C K !” Or go to a little more trouble and offer dishes that will serve as preludes to love with the powers of suggestion and symbol, even if they’re not proven aphrodisiacs. When you are newly in the throes of love and/or lust or a reasonable facsimile thereof, even a McDonald’s cheeseburger can be the right food. But whether those days of L and L are yet only on the horizon, or whether they’re timeworn and nearly dead and buried, the right food might help the two of you along that amorous path. Like Dr. Hans Bazli said, “After a perfect meal we are more susceptible to the ecstasy of love than at any other time.”
What to cook your sweetie before the main course? He or she might succumb to the succulence of a plump little roasted chicken. Or his or her lusty appetites might be stimulated by gingery pink sweet sea-scented shrimp. For me, scallops and squid are just as seductive. Some find earthy, too-red beets sexy food; for others they’re a turn-off. Go off the low-carb diet for the day; potatoes, pasta and rice stimulate serotonin release and increase ardor. But go easy; too big a meal can make you too sleepy for love.
Flambéed desserts excite with their perceived danger and romantically flickering flames. Anything that runs and oozes--like dark chocolate sauce or red raspberry coulis--does the trick, too. Think molten, think decadent.
I haven’t yet planned my Valentine’s Day dinner for this year. A few years back I made oysters Florentine followed by Chilean sea bass (when it was still PC) with ginger and julienned vegetables baked in a heart-shaped parchment packet, but other years have been less memorable. Maybe we’ll boil and slice that whole smoked tongue that’s been languishing in the back of the fridge and see if sparks fly. Or less likely, finally crack open that ghastly little bottle of wine we got in Vietnam four years ago, with a whole snake stuffed inside. More likely it will be something savory and roasted, something redolent of garlic and spice, perhaps followed by a chocolate soufflé …
Of food and sex, which is better? Both are necessary as air, but is one pursuit more worthy, more fun or more hip than the other? Not to worry, there’s plenty of room in our short lives for plenty of both. Happy Valentine’s Day.