Alice Peck is the editor of the book Bread Body Spirit reviewed here on Cooking with Ideas. I am excited that she agreed to do an interview and hope you will be too!
Bibliochef: So, I first learned of your work because a fellow upstate
New York food blogger, Cookin’ in the ‘Cuse has a piece in your newish edited
collection, Bread Body Spirit: Finding the Sacred in Food. Can you tell us a
bit about what inspired the book and how you came to do it?
Alice: I had such a great time working on my first book, Next to
Godliness: Finding the Sacred in Housekeeping that I wanted to do another one.
And this time I would compile an anthology that more people could relate to—who
doesn’t love food? There were so many ways to approach the idea of finding the
sacred in food that I think the hardest part was finding limits to what I could
put into the book.
Bibliochef: The range of selections that you include is incredibly
wide – how did you decide on what to include?
Alice: The goal was to approach writing that explored finding the
sacred in food through many different faith perspectives. After I decided on
the structure of my book, I went to my bookshelves first and revisited old
favorites, then I asked some of my friends who were writers or constant readers
for suggestions, and finally, I spent a lot of time in the library where I made
a few new discoveries.
I still feel that someone could write a whole anthology
about a single food, like finding the sacred in rice, grapes, or lasagna. Maybe
someday…
Bibliochef: You include material (including scripture and similarly
canonical works) from a variety of traditions. Some readers might like this –
and see common themes – while others see the various traditions as necessarily
very different. What’s your view on how the traditions relate to one another?
Alice: One of my favorite things to do is to find the places where
different faith traditions intersect—how people look into the same house
through different windows, so my book is about illuminating the common themes.
I imagine in that sense you could say I’m essentially a pluralist and that I
believe that each tradition is equally valid. There’s a sticker at one of the
Islamic bookstores in my neighborhood that I’ve always related to: “God is too
big for just one religion.” That pretty much sums it up for me.
Bibliochef: On a related note, the subtitle – and the book itself -- make clear that the term “the sacred” is important for you. What do you mean by
that? What is its opposite?
Alice: I love this question. The dictionary defines sacred as “connected
with God” and “dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.” I’d
go with that but add that if one takes a kind of “pray without ceasing”
approach, everything is sacred all the time. I’d also add gratitude to
veneration.
Bibliochef: There is a substantial literature on women’s notions of
the sacred as more immanent than transcendent that seems to be illustrated in
your edited collections; or more ordinary than extraordinary. (See, Mary
Bednarowski’s The Religious Imagination of American Women, for example.) You do
specifically point to the importance of the ordinary; would immanent be a
relevant term for you as well?
Alice: Absolutely. The sacred is always there, within the ordinary,
kind of like Dorothy’s ruby slippers (but perhaps not quite so fancy).
Bibliochef: Is there anything you were unable to include in this book
that you wish you had been able to include?
Alice: I just read an not-yet-published novel by Jeri Parker that
had a piece about pie that I wish I could have included. I also would have
liked to put a Christian mystic in the fasting section and the fruitcakes from
Truman Capote’s “Christmas Memory.”
Bibliochef: What’s your own relation to this? Do you cook? If so, are
you willing to share a recipe with us?
Alice: I think, for me, baking is the best opportunity to connect
to the sacred, just by the nature of the process—the pacing, the measuring, and
the sense of getting your hands right into it.
Right now I’m excited about all the greens—kale, collards,
and chard. I don’t do very many complicated things with them though—just steam
and sauté with garlic and olive oil, and sometimes a little red pepper or fake
(soy) salami.
My current favorite recipe is the one my friend Fiona’s
adapted from Horn of the Moon [by Ginny Callan]:
½ c butter
¼ c mild vegetable oil
¾ c sugar
½ c maple syrup
4 eggs
½ c white flour
½ c wheat bran
1 c whole wheat flour
2 t baking powder
2 1 baking soda
½ t salt
2 t cinnamon
2 t vanilla extract
3 c grated carrot (about a pound)
½ c walnuts (roasted and chopped)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and line pan (10” round, 18x12 sheet pan, or muffin
pan). Whip butter, oil, sugar, and maple syrup until smooth and
creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well. Add vanilla. Whisk all dry ingredients together, add, and mix until
blended. Fold in grated and walnuts. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 45-50 minutes
until cake begins to pull away from sides of pan. (Cupcakes take about 20-25
minutes.)
Bibliochef: You also use garden metaphors and focus a lot on
agriculture – do you garden?
Alice: I live on the second floor in a building in Brooklyn, so my
garden and bird-feeding setup is limited, but there’s a lot of green in
Brooklyn! My garden consists of mostly flowers and herbs now, but I’ve have gardens
in other living situations that I’ve loved and certain harvests—tomatoes,
especially—that I’ll never forget.
Bibliochef: I confess that finding the sacred in food seems a bit
easier for me than finding it in the topic of your first book that you mentioned earlier, housekeeping! I
love the title though: Next to Godliness: Finding the Sacred in Housekeeping.
How did you come to that book? Do you see the two as connected?
Alice: You’re not the first to connect more to food than
housekeeping! Housekeeping came first for me, out of the notion of sacred space
and cleaning up some big messes, and also time I spent in a Buddhist monastery
where I developed a deep appreciation of taking care of things.
Absolutely, I think the two are connected. I believe you can
find the sacred in most anything, but especially daily actions.
Bibliochef: I know that editing these books is not your “day job”
(as this blog is not mine!) – and wonder if you can tell us a bit about your
work as an editor – and your prior work in film and television. What’s a day
like in your work? How does it connect to your own books? And does everyone
always ask you for advice?
Alice: I’m a freelance editor and occasional ghostwriter. I’m
generally hired by writers and their agents to help get their books ready to
submit to publishers, or by writers to get their books ready for submission to
agents. Sometimes I work with writers who just want to practice their writing
for the sake of the writing—that’s finding the sacred!
A day in my work life begins pretty early. I try to start
working by five-thirty in the morning, then I take a break at seven for waking
up and feeding my family, packing lunch, finding homework, and getting everyone
out of the house! Then, I’m back to work that (because of a neighbor’s
seemingly endless construction project) is currently in a space I’m renting in
a Zen center in my neighborhood. It’s kind of a writer’s paradise! Quiet,
clean, great energy, and no telephone. I edit, read, and write straight through
from nine until two and then race home, check the mail, grab some leftovers for
lunch, and run to pick up my son from school. Wednesdays I break things up a
bit—it’s farmers’ market day.
Bibliochef: One of the themes of Cooking with Ideas has to do with
women’s lives and/or feminism. How does being a woman affect all this?
Alice: I feel that men and women have equal opportunities for
finding the sacred in food, but I think for women it can become more about
connection—the women that they’ve cooked with, that have taught them to cook,
that they’ve taught to cook, and the people they’ve fed.
Bibliochef: And now for some of the questions I ask all of the people I “speak”
with! What’s the absolutely best meal you have ever had? What
made it the best meal?
Alice: Gosh, it’s hard to chose.
Bibliochef: Ok, so try this instead! What music, films, books related to food would you
recommend? Why? (Feel free to include as many as you’d like, but we’d love to
know why you recommend them!)
Alice: I guess I could cheat by saying all the books I drew from
for Bread, Body, Spirit… I have some favorite old cookbooks I like to reread,
kind of like comfort food.
Vegetariana by Nava Atlas [for Atlas's website, click here], Laurel’s Kitchen, and Alice’s Kitchen by Linda Dalal
Sawaya, and Elizabeth David come to mind.
In terms of music, there’s a Cab Calloway song [not sure who Calloway is? Shame on you -- click here for Wikipedia's views] that John
Lithgow [no clue?shame on you again. Click here] sings on a children’s CD that my son used to have called, “Everybody
Eats When they Come to My House.” I hummed that a lot when I was working on Bread, and tried to fit into the “Communion Section” but couldn’t quite. [For the lyrics, click here. For a video, try here.]
Bibliochef: What do you eat for comfort food?
Alice: Chocolates chip cookies in any of their amazing manifestations
from elegant and homemade to the evil greasy kind that come in a box.
Bibliochef: Have you ever been to the Finger Lakes? (You do include
one of our favorite Finger Lake bloggers from Cookin’ in the ‘Cuse in the
anthology!) If so, do you have a favorite restaurant in the Finger Lakes?
Alice: I never have, but I hope to one day! The closest I’ve come
is Hamilton where my brother teaches.
Bibliochef: What am I not asking that I should? What question have
you never been asked that you have always wanted to be asked? What's your
answer?
Alice: I think you've covered it! Thanks for having me.
Bibliochef: And thanks to you! For those of you interested check out www.alicepeck.com and www.findingthesacred.com -- and keep us posted on what you read, what you think, what you have to say in response by commenting away right here at Cooking with Ideas.
