On Writing (about food, that is)

As I was researching a wine story this afternoon a thought crossed my mind--one that often resurfaces as I'm working on food-related stories. Sometimes I wonder if I should be devoting my time to writing about restaurants and food trends and chocolates and other nonessentials when there are so many other important and monumental things going on in the world. (For example, ahem, world hunger.) At times like this I often turn to the words of venerable food writer M.F.K. Fisher, who described her motivations for writing more eloquently than I can at this hour:

It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.

So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it...and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied...and it is all one.

There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. And that is my answer, when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love?

Jeez...I read that passage and I feel kinda lame for making frozen Trader Joe's ravioli for dinner. Ah, well, it sure beats the drive-thru and I've got homemade Bailey's Irish Cream brownies in the oven!