Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Lame blades can dull relatively quickly, so after slashing several loaves the blade won't slice through the dough with tremendous ease. (When this happens, don't throw it away - it's still sharp enough to score duck or pork skin, or shave paper-thin slices of garlic and chives, like a hot knife through butter).
Food is a way to explore culture and ground the story in a specific time and place. I still remember the meals and snacks from my first novel, 'Shug': pork chops and applesauce and Coca-Cola and peanuts, which are very Southern. When a character has roots elsewhere, food is a way to connect with home and another culture.
'Meat' is a vague term and can be used to refer to many parts of an animal, including internal organs and skin. For the most part, the meat we eat consists of muscle tissue taken from farm animals, whether it's a sirloin steak, which is cut from the rear of a cow, or a pork chop, taken from flesh near the spine of a pig.
As for meat, I'm not going to become vegetarian. I'm telling you that right now. I want me a steak. I want me a pork chop. I want me a lamb chop, even a piece of duck every once in awhile. We used to have ham and salami, all that crazy stuff. I can't eat processed food. I've got to find local farmers and get natural foods.
In my lame pescetarian defense, it's very hard to be a girl and say you won't eat something. Refuse one plate of bacon-wrapped pork rinds and you're anorexic. Accept them and you're on the Atkins. Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and you're bulimic. Best to keep perfectly still and bring an IV of fluids with you to dinner.
I don't know if this is the flat-out strangest, but I'll never forget handling a human brain. It had been sliced into sections for autopsy, each about an inch thick, and felt like pork tenderloin. I swear to god, my first thought was that if you were to dust it with chipotle and cinnamon and saute it in butter, it would probably be delicious.
This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour. (Autobiography, 1771)
