roll out the red carpet, get your knife and fork ready!

ladies and gents, it's awards season!

in honor of tonight's grammy awards ceremony, this week i'm going to spotlight a few of my favorite foodie songs. i'm going to start things off with a song near and dear to my heart, and one that you may not be familiar with: "strawberry" by paul baribeau.

to say that this is a love song would be like saying poetry is nice. but you don't have to be an oxford scholar to know that "nice" just doesn't cut it when talking about poetry, and you don't have to be a romantic to appreciate what baribeau is trying to say with "strawberry."

speaking of poetry, this song actually reminds me of one of shakespeare's sonnets (bear with me, this won't be as boring as your high school english class may have been.). in the sonnet "my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," shakespeare takes a number of classical romantic references and says no, my mistress is nothing like any of these things, but that doesn't make me love her any less*. in "strawberry", baribeau takes a (slightly) similar stance, turning the compliments "cute," "pretty," and "funny" and turning them inside out, trying to find a way to better express his affection and appreciation to his listener.

but what does the innate weakness of verbal expression have to do with food?

think of your favorite dish, and try to recreate the entire dining experience for someone who wasn't there. you can't! i mean, surely a number of things can be recounted and understood, but there are moments and flavors and discoveries in just one bite, let alone an entire meal, that completely escape the tongue in conversation.

to say that you are cute, would be like saying that a strawberry is sweet. 

because a strawberry has secret flavors that are sharp, and tart, and red, and deep.

-"strawberry"

how beautiful is that? the way that baribeau describes what a strawberry is says relatively nothing about the fruit, but it still captures an important something of what a strawberry tastes like. it's almost a verbal interpretation of one of my favorite scenes from ratatouille: remy's food visualization (also featuring, oddly enough, a strawberry!)

and so, without further ado (because this seems to be a post about how words just aren't quite enough), i present to you "strawberry":

*this is an incredibly reduced analysis of the sonnet, but then again, this is not a post about shakespeare, english poetry, or anything of the sort.