Saturday, September 06, 2008

A closer look at... The Best Celebrity Recipe


Every now and then, a comment is so great that I just have to post it as it's own entry, and the comment left recently on "The Best Celebrity Recipe" is just that.

Here's the comment -- left by Anonymous. Why do this anonymously? A comment this good deserves credit...

Nigella Lawson included this recipe in her nigella bites book, and sums up just why it's so good: You’d think, wouldn’t you, that a smearing of a couple of slabs of white bred with peanut butter and mashed banana, sandwiching the lot bulgingly together and then frying it in butter would be at best, revolting. But that’s where you’d be wrong. I have no particular fondness for peanut butter, or bananas for that matter, and a downright shuddering aversion to eating them cooked, but what a genius that man was. This sandwich is a wondrous thing, gloriously exemplifying what cooking is all about: the whole is so much intriguingly, confoundingly more than the sum of its parts. It really works. I wouldn’t turn one down at any time, although, true to form, there is a certain kamikaze calorie intake involved not always to be calmy countenanced-but for a handover, to combat seediness and restore the fragmenting self, its particular perfection: it doesn’t merely sustain, it resuscitates.

That is not just a great comment -- but it proves The "My Aunt's Dog Theorem." You remember the "My Aunt's Dog Theorem," right? It's my theory that no matter what art you create, no matter how much of yourself you put into it, no matter how certain you are that your theme came through, the viewer/recipient of your art will invariably put their own spin on it because we all see everything exclusively through our own perspective -- so your point, as an artist, is invariably mixed with their point as an art-ee.

Put more simply: The "My Aunt's Dog Theorem" says that no matter how clever and conceptual and thematicyour abstract painting, someone somewhere will look at it and say "That looks like My Aunt's Dog."

Anonymous' beautiful comment proves that "My Aunt's Dog Theorem" applies even to food.


Related: Read the original post about the Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwich here. Here's where I first propounded the My Aunt's Dog Theorem. I then applied it to books when discussing Cory Doctorow.

No comments: