Magazine Review: Alimentum - The Literature of Food

Alimentum is a semi annual literary magazine that focuses on food.  The issue that I picked up was Issue Twelve. The magazine was a mixture of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, interview, and art.  The theme of this issue was supposed to be on first foods but this was very loosely adhered to and provided distracting.  Some of my reading time of these mainly short pieces were spent waiting or looking for the connection to first foods.  On my trip back and forth to work, the pieces were generally short enough to finish during the commute.

Some pieces that I found interesting...
Stollen by Phillip Sterling is a series of small remembrances around the ingredients of stollen. This is a device that allows for little bits and nibbles of interesting tidbits and crumbs. Like the stollen, the little pieces are what makes the whole. An enjoyable read with coffee.

Interview with Amanda Hesser -- She's the writer of Cooking for Mr Latte and co-creator of Food52.  It provided some insight and was a lot of fun.

Having our cake but not eating it by Lois Rosen is a great carvesque story of the human condition. It has all the sorrow and goodness with a little something that isn't always found in these type of stories.  At its heart is a mother trying to cook - love and being rejected by daughter. However, the piece that is often missing is the reason for all of the brokenness.

There is a second story about a mother being a failure by loving her daughter too much and feeling a failure as her child gets fatter (Goldie's Gold by Faye Snider).

I was going to write off this magazine but after reflecting, it is a we'll see. There is some good writing in here but ten dollars can seem like a lot when you have so many choices of magazines on the market. But if you find yourself picking up food themed novels, then this is definitely a refreshing change from the celebrity chef food porn out there. It is more like a Victorian romance to a hustler mag.