Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Bad, Bad Food Writing

"One of my treasured memories of eating fried eggs is on the beautiful Caribbean island of Barbados, where I have been lucky enough to get to spend several holidays. For me it's the best place on earth for an early morning dip in the sea, and as you swim and look back at all that beauty, the evocative smell of bacon and eggs cooking is sheer heaven. At breakfast, there's always a happy, smiling Bajan wielding an old, blackened frying pan, enquiring how you like your eggs fried."
How to Cook by Delia Smith (2001)

It was while raising her children in a remote valley in Andelusia in southern Spain and living for a year in the Languedoc in rural France that she acquired an appetite for the feasts and festivals of the peasantry whose lives she shared.
Blurb for European Peasant Cookery by Elizabeth Luard (2007 ed.)

The second one sounds straight out of the 1950's & does, I have to admit, make me laugh. And it's not actually Luard herself doing the writing. But Delia, a mediocre writer at the best of times, outdoes herself here. Awful beyond belief.