Hey, Kermit!

The frog asks why so many songs about rainbows, but never asks why so few songs about food. An issue that has been on my mind this week, as I endeavored to expound on Joel Barlow's "Hasty Pudding," an ode to boiled cornmeal written by a homesick Connecticut Wit while on a diplomatic mission in France in the 1790s. Thanks to some hasty pudding/Indian pudding recipes retrieved from a now-forgotten source, I decided to make up a batch when I taught the poem, in hopes that eating mush would help the kids understand an ode to mush. Not so much. Did get me to thinking, when I tried to think about analogous moments from more recent culture, as I do when I am at an impasse, and I could think of very few songs about food.  There are the recipe songs, a genre dominated by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, but few about actual foodstuffs--even the recently posted "Bacon Fat" is not about the invaluable foodstuff, but a dance, an unspeakable dance, inspired by it. As I am trying to keep both the music and the food oars in the water, I welcome food-themed song suggestions from readers in the comments. I'll send the contributors the chili recipe that is 3-0 in AFC championship play, 1-0 in the ALCS, and too manly even for its name to appear in print on the Internet.  Meantime,  enjoy Bar-B-Q, by Ms. Wendy Rene, and ask Santa to bring you the Complete Stax /Volt Singles box, for all your R&B pedant needs.
Wendy Rene, "Bar-B-Q" The Complete Stax Singles, 1959-1968, Vol 4

Comments

[furious]

You NEED "Banana Pudding" by Southern Culture on the Skids. Also "Eat Beef" (may not be exact title) by Reverend Horton Heat. Something to the effect of "eat beef eat beef eat a big old cow eat beef eat beef you can have some now." Really, it is hard to beat.