Aural Fixation: Angela Garbes

You don't need to be a fan of the wilder shores of eating to enjoy Gimme Head, Angela Garbes's paean to the kind of food Anthony Bourdain calls "the nasty bits." Garbes read her lively essay at "Talking with Your Mouth Full," the Leite's Culinaria fundraiser held in Seattle last fall, and now the recording is available for listening here.

Raised in an immigrant Filipino family, Garbes learned early on about the politics of waste and, more important, the nondiscriminatory pleasures of taste. Even so, she was a little intimidated by the prospect of devouring a menu featuring "heads and pots," prepared by chef Matt Dillon of Seattle's cutting-edge regional restaurant Sitka & Spruce.

I'm not about to tell you what went down (fair warning, gray matter is involved) but I would encourage you to hear it for yourself, because just like inspired cooking, there's an alchemy in great writing. In Garbes's skillful hands, a grisly subject becomes a surprisingly appetizing advertisement for nose-to-tail eating.