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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| bff6401 | is significant that the first attempt to build a refrigerator in the United States was undertaken for keeping butter (as opposed to what happened in Australia, where in 1853 James Harrison, a Scot who had moved there, developed the first really fully functional refrigerator and used it for chilling beer). | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| e93595e | The most famous ice cream shop in Italy, and now the oldest continuously operated cafe in the world, was Florian in Piazza San Marco in Venice. It was opened in 1720. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| a60efb0 | In fact, the entire breastfeeding issue was an early version of the modern abortion issue, with men trying to make the decisions about what women should do with their bodies. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| b002885 | If I were ever to make an old-fashioned film noir--with a cynical plot full of intrigue, violence, and sudden twists, filmed on dark and menacing streets in misty black and white--I would shoot it in Havana. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 95cd117 | Scientists estimate that between 1945 and 1958, the power of the nuclear weapons exploded in the world was equal to eight hundred times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. With each explosion, tiny particles that could not be seen, not even with a high-powered microscope, entered the atmosphere and traveled the world. Some of this so-called radioactive fallout dissipated, but some didn't, including strontium-90, which accumulates in bones, esp.. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| ec9a6d7 | the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 0f387f8 | And so you have more opportunities and more responsibilities than any other generation in history. | our-generation responsibilities | Mark Kurlansky | |
| 4e669be | Scientists are sometimes wrong and fisherman are sometimes wrong. | scientists | Mark Kurlansky | |
| 4956e8e | Fishing has always been at the heart of the culture of nations with coastlines. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 8acf37a | A world without fishing would be sad. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| a768714 | Pegasus claims that making red-algae paper uses less energy than making paper from wood pulp because there is no need to remove lignin. They also say that ethanol is a by-product of the algae papermaking process. Their paper tastes like--paper. IN | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 7c29b0f | Modern nutritionists also warn against eating cheese in excess because of its high fat and cholesterol content. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| de430b8 | Literary teas are constantly in a state of flux. The uninitiate gravitates toward the author, the author toward the editor or publisher, the publisher toward the reviewer, and the reviewer, in desperation, toward another drink. Since the general rule of conduct is to seek out those who can do one the most good, magazine editors and big-name reviewers enjoy much popularity. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 4c1bb81 | But it is an orchestra," I say. "It's an imitation orchestra--an orchestrion, an orchestrina--whatever you call it, it does a terrible job! All you've done is turn a sublime group achievement, a human act, into an inferior egotistical solo--" | Kim Stanley Robinson | ||
| e1cb3ee | salt by definition is a compound created by the neutralization of an acid and a base. Both are extremely unstable--one because it lacks an electron and the other because it has an extra one. So they are, like a good marriage, attracted to each other because they solve each other's problem, complete each other, and result in an extremely stable compound. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 86f2682 | The leading articulator of this rich diet, the last preindustrial British cuisine, was Hannah Glasse, whose books were so popular that Dr. Johnson claimed there was no such person and Hannah Glasse must be the nom de plume of a man. But Hannah did exist, she was a woman, and she cooked with endless quantities of cream and butter. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 50ffee5 | epithet of the drunkard's biscuit. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 7df8b12 | French butter makes better pastry than American butter because it contains more fat and less water. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 4581d24 | Despite the fame of their bright clothing, Celts are described going naked into battle except for horned helmets. We are told that they had frightening war cries and that the terrifying songs of their ancestors were preludes to violent attacks. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 013702b | Kement a zo fall, a gar ar sall"--Everything that is not good asks to be salted. Everything from meat to butter to potatoes was salted. Salt was Brittany's cheapest product, the one everyone could afford. Another Breton proverb was "Aviz hag holen a roer d'an nep a c'houlenn"--Advice and salt are available to anyone who wants it." | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 91000cc | In Welsh tradition, a plate was put on the coffin with bread and salt, and a local professional sin eater arrived to eat the salt. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 8fdb2a7 | The Masai, nomadic cattle herders in East Africa, meet their salt needs by bleeding livestock and drinking the blood. But vegetable diets, rich in potassium, offer little sodium chloride. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| f95b28d | The Masai, nomadic cattle herders in East Africa, meet their salt needs by bleeding livestock and drinking the blood. But vegetable diets, rich in potassium, offer little sodium chloride. Wherever records exist of humans in different stages of development, as in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North America, it is generally found that hunter tribes neither made nor traded for salt but agricultural tribes did. On every continent, once hu.. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 0896a7f | Our galaxy is called the Milky Way, and both it and the word "galaxy" have their origins in the Greek word for milk, gala." | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 592f659 | Boil 15 large potatoes in jackets. When done peel and rice them, letting them cool about 5 minutes, then add 2 eggs, 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon salt and roll into balls and roll balls in flour. Have a pot of boiling water on the fire, place the dumplings in the water that has been salted and boil for 10 minutes, remove and serve. Hasenpfeffer and Kartoffel Klosze are generally served together but either can be served separate or with o.. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| f79c369 | A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered that the bodies of people who took their own lives be salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Nor could the accused escape their day | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 6c6b62c | Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| 3bc9c5c | Infants who were suckled by the same wet nurse were regarded as milk siblings and were forbidden by the Assyrians from intermarrying. | Mark Kurlansky | ||
| cfe40fb | We are all alone in our own life-world, flying through the universe at great speed. Humans are lucky not to face that. If they don't. | Kim Stanley Robinson | ||
| c8591fb | Spontaneous storms, and changes in color that were not tied to changes in wind speeds, and fractal borders, bounded infinities scrolling inside each other. We were looking at a mind thinking. A mind feeling. The woodwind glissando of the whale's cry. | Kim Stanley Robinson | ||
| db72239 | She laughed that sharp, quick laugh that smart girls all had, until they found out that the sound of brilliance flashing made boys nervous. Most of these girls, Kelly included, then adopted that slow, bubbling giggle that put boys at ease. | Monique Truong | ||
| 314f2ed | We were forgiving each other for who we were, for how we came into this world, for how we changed or didn't change for each other. | Monique Truong | ||
| a1d6e3c | We all need a story of where we came from and how we got here. Otherwise, how could we ever put down our tender roots and stay. | Monique Truong | ||
| c45a6fb | I did not give you my permission, Madame, to treat me in this way. I am here to feed you, not to serve as your fodder. I demand more money for such services, Madame. You pay me only for my time. My story, Madame, is mine. I alone am qualified to tell it, to embelish, or to withhold. | Monique Truong | ||
| 6851f19 | Every day, Anh Hoang was shoved into the ground by the weight of the vanity cases of French wives. They, with their government clerk husbands, were touring their colony, forgetting who they were, forgetting that they had to cross oceans to move up a class. | Monique Truong | ||
| 8c35921 | Anh Minh believed that if he could save three minutes here, five minutes there, then one day he could tally them all up and have enough to start life all over again. | Monique Truong | ||
| 57c0403 | From the soft mouth of the woman who gave her life, my mother received the words that would keep her, still and unmoving, underneath the Old Man. The words swam with her in the dark and kept her from reaching up with a knife and cutting his neck like that of a chicken. Her mother told her to swallow her anger, and she gulped it down until her belly became distended with it. Worse, her mother knew that it would. | Monique Truong | ||
| ae00ca0 | As if in grief, the bamboos were pressed to the ground. But within a matter of minutes, they nodded and waved. They shook off the rain and reoriented themselves toward the sky. My mother was impressed, indeed. Now , she thought, is strength. Perseverance and flexibility are not opposites. Survival requires certain compromises. Endurance is defined by the last one standing. These were the lessons, I imagine, that she must have learned. My m.. | Monique Truong | ||
| c2f6964 | After years of the imposed invisibility of servitude, I am acutely aware when I am being watched, a sensitivity born from absence, a grain of salt on the tongue of a man who has tasted only bitter. As I checked the teapots to see whether they needed to be replenished, I felt a slight pressure. It was the weight of your eyes resting on my lips. I looked up, and I saw you standing next to a mirror reflecting the image of a wiry young man with.. | Monique Truong | ||
| 38ee955 | While you have been waking up to the aroma of coffee brewing, dressing to the hushed rhythm of other people's labor, I have been in the kitchen since I was six and in your kitchen since six this morning. In my life as a minor domestic, a bit character in your daily dramas, I have prepared thousands of omelets. You have attempted three, each effort wasted, a discarded half-moon with burnt-butter craters, a simple dish that in a stark and eco.. | Monique Truong | ||
| 79a06a0 | They have no true interest in where I have been or what I have seen. They crave the fruits of exile, the bitter juices, and the heavy hearts. They yearn for a taste of the pure, sea-salt sadness of the outcast whom they have brought into their homes. And I am but one within a long line of others. The Algerian orphaned by a famine, the Moroccan violated by his uncle, the Madagascan driven out of his village because his shriveled left hand wa.. | Monique Truong | ||
| 6f793b1 | In my dream, I am saying all of this in French, though I know that this is impossible. But in my dream, cruelty greases my tongue and I am undeniably fluent. | Monique Truong | ||
| f7d0809 | Obey,' like 'worship,' is a strong word. Her mother and father had told her so, and she believed them. They gave her life, they told her, so that she could give them grandsons. She had been prepared to perform that task from the very beginning. When her body took the first step, her mother found for her a husband. A scholar-prince, the girl had imagined. In the days that followed her mother's announcement, the girl was reminded again and ag.. | Monique Truong | ||
| 59062ac | I close my eyes, a useless flutter. I open them, and I see you half a world away. I hear fever parting your lips. I feel your shivering, colorless geckos running down your spine. I smell the night sweat that has bathed you clean. | Monique Truong |