the path to meditation

It is against sanctimony and base prudence that much of my argument is directed, not in order to encourage vice, but in order to show that wine is compatible with virtue. The right way to live is by enjoying one’s faculties, striving to like and if possible to love one’s fellows, and also to accept that death is both necessary in itself and a blessed relief to those whom you would otherwise burden. The health fanatics who have poisoned all our natural enjoyments ought, in my view, to be rounded up and locked together in a place where they can bore each other rigid with their futile nostrums for eternal life. The rest of us should live out our days in a chain of linked symposia, in which the catalyst is wine, the means conversation, the goal a serene acceptance of our lot and a determination not to outstay our welcome ... Wine, drunk at the right time, in the right place and the right company, is the path to meditation, and the harbinger of peace.

roger scruton, i drink, therefore i am.

a simple, reassuring balm

simon hopkinson's books are particularly nice to read because, like the best of the british (patience gray, elizabeth david, etc), he has no qualms about being idiosyncratic and is often right. this is from his latest article in more intelligent life, about emulsions:

It’s the exquisite blandness of mayonnaise that I adore almost more than anything. In these times—when cookery seems to demand so much punch and flavour, so much absurd invention—my little lidded pot of mayonnaise sits in the fridge, a simple, reassuring balm.