Samhain Publishing

This week I’ve been writing a scene involving food, the cooking and consuming of, which soon turned into a scene involving sex, whilst the cooking and consuming of the food was occurring (my latest hero is a chef—who doesn’t love a man who cooks?). It brought to mind the link between food and sex, which has always intrigued me. I believe a passion for food is linked inextricably to passion for… other things.

If you don’t believe me, think back to the last time you went on a diet. Don’t know about you, but if I start restricting my intake to cabbage soup and peaches, five hours in I’m just about ready to attack my husband with a meat axe. Possibility of wild passionate sex, zero. All I can think about is food. Not to mention that loud stomach rumbling is a hell of a mood killer.

It has to be the cruelest cosmic joke that so many of the things we love to eat, i.e. that might help put us in the mood for luurrvee, make us put on weight and consequently feel less sexy (but this is a comment on society’s obsession with all that is young and thin, a topic for another day). Chocolate I find sexy—apples not so much. Whipped cream brings all sorts of erotic possibilities to mind, yet steamed broccoli doesn’t seem to have the same appeal. Some fruits prop up the healthy-food-can-be-sexy-too argument. Strawberries (dipped in chocolate of course!), mangoes and, ahem, bananas. But over all, bad seems oh so much sexier.

I once met a woman who told me if she could replace all her meals with a daily pill so she wouldn’t have to bother eating, she’d do it. I could only stare at her, wondering which planet she was from. Give up food altogether… by choice? Never again know the anticipation the aroma of sizzling garlic ignites, the mouth-watering craving engendered by simply walking into a bakery at morning tea time? To me, that would be tantamount to swearing off sex for the rest of my life. But maybe this woman would have been happy to do that too. I didn’t know her well enough to ask.

There’s a lot of debate out there about whether or not chocolate is better than sex. That just seems pointless to me. Sometimes you feel like one, sometimes the other. On a good day you get to have both, but that’s probably the hedonist in me talking. Do we really have to choose?

So what’s your favorite sexy food? Is that thing about oysters true or merely the power of suggestion? Does a man in an apron turn you on? Maybe it depends on what else he’s wearing…

Have a great day
Sami
Sugar and spice and all things nice…