Good culture, bad culture - only drink champagne when you're thirsty

Come slowly—Eden!
Lips unused to Thee—
Bashful—sip thy Jessamines—
As the fainting Bee—

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums—
Counts his nectars—
Enters—and is lost in Balms.

You may or may not be familiar with one of my favourite poets, Emily Dickinson. Along with Sylvia Plath, Anaïs Nin, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë and Queen Elizabeth I she is one of my most treasured childhood heroes. I'm not sure I understood most of her poems as a child, but I'm now having to add another dimension to my current understanding of them now.
I don't think I'd ever considered what anyone who is an inspiration in my life eats or ate on a daily basis. And yet - three meals a day for any lifespan amounts to quite a lot of food. And how precisely do I judge people I meet? By what they eat. I find it a failsafe: if the food of choice has anything to do with "Findus" I'm outta there, and fast. Food is culture, and culture is not a fact but rather an argument or a standpoint. Madame de Pompadour famously stated that she only drank champagne when she was thirsty - now that's my kind of gal.
So what has this got to do with Emily Dickinson? Well, if your image of her is one of an austere, reclusive and mysterious presence, then think again. It turns out that apart from being a prolific writer, she was also a terrific baker. Want to try out one of her recipes for a pound cake? Check this out.
Re-reading Come slowly, Eden I now realise that this poem is probably the best description of what I felt like the first time I tried Chateau d'Yquem. How foolish to assume that she was writing about some bloke.