To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition. Variety is the spice of life, and we are various enough to enjoy one another's society; so let us be content.

It has been possible to trace historically back to a very early age the taxes which were imposed on medicines, spices and similar substances in German towns. Thus, for instance, one finds that in the year 1500, thirteen, in 1540, thirty-eight, and in 1708, already one hundred and twenty vegetable oils are mentioned.

I never watched those Spice Girls. I didn't enjoy that at all. So I didn't know Victoria Beckham well. But she came out with this pretty boy, got married, and the boy got more tattoos and more tattoos. And then I met her a few times, and we started work, and something happened. You know, she wanted it. She loves what she's doing.

Let's say you have some chicken stock and you're making soup, and out of everything you can taste, some of the things you put in and some of the things you don't. So you start out with an African spice then you hear some Brazilian music, so then it changes. Then you hear Jamaican and it changes again. And the result depends on how much of each spice you put into it. Now, I've been putting in spices since I started playing professionally in 1945.

The Arabs understandably did everything they could to protect their monopoly. Coffee beans were treated before being shipped to ensure they were sterile and could not be used to seed new coffee plants; foreigners were excluded from coffee-producing areas. First to break the Arab monopoly were the Dutch, who displaced the Portuguese as the dominant European nation in the East Indies during the seventeenth century, gaining control of the spice trade in the process and briefly becoming the world's leading commercial power.

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