"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."

Wrote Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, quoted by foodie Kelly Alexander in TNR. She's riffing on a cookbook -- published two years ago -- that collects various recipes from politicians, and she purports to be especially stunned that Dick Cheney served up a dopey chicken casserole recipe.

Someone's writing a cookbook collecting recipes from bloggers. I got a request to contribute that I'm told many prominent bloggers have already responded to. So I guess we'll be seeing a book that will give us the opportunity to blab about what these characters are.

But, presumably, Brillat-Savarin wanted to know what people actually ate, not what they'd want displayed next to their name in a cookbook. We need to reframe the quote: Tell me what you want me to think you eat and I will tell you what you want me to think you are. Or maybe: If you want to tell me what you supposedly eat and I will know that you care what I think you are.