Kids in Alaska don't know they're growing up on the Last Frontier. It's just what they see on the license plates, and it's something tourists like to say a lot because they've never been around so many mountains and moose before.

Most ceramic plates, bowls, and cups have an unglazed rim around the very bottom, where the piece was in contact with the floor of the kiln. This unglazed ceramic is harder than metal and can be used just like a sharpening stone.

The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving.

Lagos is a fascinatingly infuriating place that its residents love - and love to hate. Licence plates on cars here proudly display the state motto, 'Centre of Excellence,' in what often seems a sarcastic swipe at the place we live in.

I do shop on eBay. I love to buy china on eBay. I've bought quite a few sets of plates. I like to buy gifts as well. If I know somebody has a favorite writer, I look for a first edition. It's also a great place to buy vintage jewelry.

Cuisine Nouvelle was just a concept, and one which, crucially, the English managed to get wrong. I mean, if you run a restaurant, you've got to feed people, not make pretty little pictures on plates to make up for your lack of ability.

I thought divorce was for people that threw plates at each other, and I'd have to be an alcoholic or having affairs. But the truth is, sometimes a very sweet, well-meaning person just doesn't do it for you, and you need to get out of there.

I have a lot of Missoni tablecloths, but for breakfast, we use placemats - we call them 'American-style.' I have some in crazy patterns from the Swedish brand Svenskt Tenn. And I like plates from Grottaglie in Puglia, stained in wild colors.

If we get in an accident that's strong enough to break bones, it's going to break bones. What makes me a little bit higher risk is that if I break my right ankle again, I've got a bunch of screws and plates in there, and that would not be good.

I always envied them, the owners of the cars with the white plates who can be seen around Jerusalem. I always wanted to be one of them. We call them U.N., even though U.N. are generally foreign correspondents with leased cars and yellow plates.

The most I ever ate? In one sitting? Maybe four big plates of fried chicken, biscuits, chitlins, gravy. Then dessert. Apple pie, sweet potato pie. My mother cooked that stuff, good Southern food, and when I was 300 pounds, I never missed a meal.

I'm not crazy about oysters and offal and brains and stuff like that. It's vegetables that I really like. I worked in the River Cafe restaurant when it first opened, and I used to eat the leftover vegetables on the plates. They were so delicious.

Right whales - so named because they were 'the right whale to kill' - grazed the waters off Nantucket as if they were seagoing cattle, straining the nutrient-rich surface of the ocean through the bushy plates of baleen in their perpetually grinning mouths.

I need to be performing. I need to be acting. I need to be designing a condo and ripping down walls and buying new plates and looking at fashion magazines. There always has to be some movement in the artistic department for me to not get really, really low.

Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away (from the animal, our plate, our concern, ourselves) or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something

The police pull up in back of my car and run my plates - they don't see you as you are; they see you through a racialized negative gaze. I think the best thing is not to internalize it too much, or it'll make you crazy because you know it's going to happen again.

I have a memory of my mother kneeling in front of a cabinet in our home, tenderly cradling her wedding china. We never used the plates; she died in her 40s without ever letting herself enjoy these gorgeous pieces. I told myself that I would use my precious items.

For 'Around the World in 80 Plates' we got to travel all over, having what was like a cross between a culinary competition and races. And in each country we had a chef Ambassador. We went to London, Barcelona, Bologna, Hong Kong, Thailand, Morocco... It was amazing.

I loved the cooking; that was what I was passionate about, but getting to watch the guests eat - because you could see everything from the kitchen - just watching people eat and looking at the plates when they came back, just understanding, this is such an amazing job.

We also have a team that works really well together, that knows whose turn it is to pick up what someone else can't continue-the five of us work really well together and if someone says, "My plate is too full, I can't handle this," then someone else will always grab onto it.

These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me.

Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with illegal immigrants passing through their backyards at 3 A.M.

If I'm doing an event, if it's a charity event, where it's a walk-around event, where I gotta put a thousand small plates out in the course of a four-hour event, I gotta make sure I can do something that I know I can produce, that's going to be consistent and good all night long.

My parents were out of town and sent me to stay at my grandma's house. That's where I learned how to make pancakes. I served them to all the old ladies who lived on her block. After the meal, they each left a $5 bill next to their plates. I thought, 'Hey, I'm onto something here.'

In my family, we let our boys have a say in what veggie side they want for dinner that night. We list off a handful of options and get them excited about helping to plan the dinner menu. They're much more inclined to finish their plates when they've helped decide what goes on them.

I drove through the stockyards of Texas on a motorcycle. It doesn't let you escape what surrounds you and what it smells like and feels like - and what hit me was the realization that something that was alive and had feelings will suffer before a piece of it is placed on our plates.

If you could drive straight down, into a tunnel bored through the crust of the planet, you'd hit this molten mess in about an hour. It's called the asthenosphere - a sluggish sea, several hundred miles thick, on which floats the Earth's cool epidermis - the so-called tectonic plates.

The English have a special sense of humour. This I immediately experienced in the dressing room. As I walked with two plates while eating, suddenly a team-mate asked me, 'Basti, what time is it?' hoping I would automatically turn my hand to look at my watch. That's quite entertaining.

Some of us are born rebellious. Like Jean Genet or Arthur Rimbaud, I roam these mean streets like a villain, a vagabond, an outcast, scavenging for the scraps that may perchance plummet off humanity's dirty plates, though often sometimes taking a cab to a restaurant is more convenient.

Don't underestimate the importance of having enough room to work. Grilling is much more relaxing when you are not trying to juggle a whole collection of plates and bowls as you do it. If your grill doesn't have enough workspace - and they almost never do - set up a table right next to your grill.

I have white friends who have the Confederate flag on their license plates, and I have no issue with that if they see that as a matter of heritage. But I do not think it should ever fly over a state, city, county building, or school, for the simple reason that it represents secession from the Union.

The classic French blanch-and-cool technique I learned at Chez Panisse yields the kind of brilliant, picturesque vegetables we all want to see on restaurant plates. Long-cooked foods, on the other hand, fall firmly into the 'ugly but good' camp of the Tuscan cucina povera, where flavor far outshines looks.

The soul of a woman is so important to maintain given all that is on our plates. Figuring out how to do it can be a little tricky. My prayer was, 'Lord, please help me. How can I do it all and not be overwhelmed? How can I do it all and still be happy?' His answer: Find the stolen moments of joy in all you do.

I am much less autistic now, compared to when I was young. I remember some behaviors like picking carpet fuzz and watching spinning plates for hours. I didn't want to be touched. I couldn't shut out background noise. I didn't talk until I was about 4 years old. I screamed. I hummed. But as I grew up, I improved.

My earliest memories of my mom were of her multi-tasking - preparing dinner while checking on homework and housework; clearing the dinner plates while setting out bowls for breakfast; making sure we ate our breakfast while lining up bread, lunch meats, apples, and snacks assembly-line style so we could make our lunches.

My mother's a genius. She just kept feeding me art on whatever we had; paper plates, silver platter, didn't matter. You know, she just kept feeding it to me. So we went to see all kinds of theater. We would go to the art museum pretty much every Sunday, and I would watch her. She let me know that art was supposed to touch.

Why did the earthquake and tsunami occur in Japan? Was it the act of an angry God? No, it was the result of the movement and collision of the earth's tectonic plates - a process driven by the earth's need to regulate its own internal temperature. Without the process that creates earthquake, our planet could not sustain life.

I went snorkeling between tectonic plates in Iceland's Silfra fissure in the winter. You have to wear thermal layers and a wet suit and what's called a 'teddy-bear suit' so you don't die of hypothermia. My lips still went blue. That was an experience that I will carry with me for the rest of my life - so beautiful and so quiet.

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