Thanks for dropping by!
Shucking oysters, shelling peas is a food and wine blog
written by me, Alexa, a food and wine enthusiast. (Yes, I know it would be refreshing
to read a food blog written by somebody wholly unenthusiastic about food, but
you’ll have to go elsewhere for that). I currently live in San
Diego, California, but return
yearly to family in Rome and Genoa, Italy.
My approach to the subjects of food and wine reflects this life-long straddling
of North American and Northern and Central Italian traditions, but it also
encompasses culinary experiences from many other cultures (though I can’t lay
claim to being the Woman Who Ate Everything).
I started this blog in the dying days of 2005 as a platform
for exploring food as both sensual and intellectual, as well as mundane and
extraordinary experience. The lens through which this exploration takes place
is, therefore, wide-angle, but the perception is inevitably personal.
The title – Shucking oysters, shelling peas – comes from and
is linked to a long chain of memories of my family gathering in small or large
numbers to complete the prep work that precedes daily meals. But it also
represents, at least to me, a concrete image for what food bloggers around the
world do in their postings: prepping their readers’ imaginations to encounter
food. For, as Jean-Francois Revel argues in Culture and Cuisine, “Gastronomical
imagination…precedes experience itself…” We read so that we might digest.
Because the focus of this blog is mainly textual rather than
visual and, more importantly, because I am a hopeless case when it comes to
computers, this blog will probably never look as gorgeous as most other food
blogs. I hope that won’t dissuade you from coming around. If, however, you do
decide that the visuals here are so repugnant that you can’t possibly return, I
hope you’ll let me know and I’ll make every effort to add some visual zing to
the place.
A note about my affiliations: I do not work in the food or
diet industries and all opinions expressed in this blog are based solely on
personal research and personal bias, unless otherwise indicated.
Finally, I very much appreciate hearing from my readers –
about their reactions to what they read here or about their own personal food
experiences.
Thanks, again, for your interest!
Quick stats:
Name: Alexa Murray-Risso
Residences: San
Diego/Rome
Occupation: Depending on the occasion, I wear a number
of hats, including sometime translator and sometime private cooking instructor to the culinarily-challenged. Most of my time, however, is spent dispensing
tons of advice, absolutely gratis, on everything from appropriate dishes to
serve at an al fresco buffet to the
aesthetics of plastic baggies in rococo décor
Interests: If you have to ask, you haven’t read
my blog, so let me just have a tantrum for a moment and then I’ll answer your damned
question.
8:57:39 AM 
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