Food & drink takeaways - 19 August
A curated taster menu of every day’s food & drink associations
Drinking coffee straight from the pot during a conversation about caffeine, an overlooked Impressionist artist’s still life focus on food and a feast that really was fit for a king.
Some of the ingredients that give 19 August its distinctive flavour. Click on the links for more information.
Food on screen
2004
Director Jim Jarmusch’s ensemble movie Coffee and Cigarettes receives its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
Actor Bill Murray’s gulps straight from the coffee pot {header photo} are rated by Time Out magazine as one of its best 52 food moments on film
“The standout vignette. . . finds Wu-Tang Clan rappers RZA and GZA hanging out at a diner where they’re waited on by none other than ‘Ghostbustin’-ass’ Bill Murray. The unlikely trio discuss alternative medicine, smoker’s cough and the negative health impacts of caffeine. . . while Murray chugs coffee straight from the pot”
Food in art
Despite his pivotal role in the Impressionist movement, French painter Gustave Caillebotte – born on this day in 1848 – is the least known of the French Impressionists.
"Caillebotte's still life paintings focus primarily on food, some at table ready to be eaten and some ready to be purchased, as in a series of paintings he made of meat at a butcher shop."
Hors d’Oeuvre by Gustave Caillebotte – other examples of his food artistry can be discovered here
Dishes of the day
1274
You hear talk about feasts fit for a king. . . King Edward I lived up to it and how when he was crowned on this day.
According to
The Food History Almanac
by Janet Clarkson (published by Rowman and Littlefield), the bill of fare for his coronation feast included 440 oxen and cows, 430 sheep, 450 pigs, 16 fat boars, 278 flitches of bacon and 19,600 capons and other fowl. In addition, a fountain was set up in Cheapside, London, which "ran with white wine and red for all to drink of"
