BITS OF FOOD LIT

ODD FOOD BITS

"It is not uncommon for a bottle of Lafite ’96 to fetch a couple of thousand dollars more at auction in China that it would in Europe. Many (?) Chinese enjoy the showmanship of presenting important guests with this kind of celebrity wine, and my favourite aspect of it all is that many prefer to take it with a splash of coke.” From Around the World in 80 Trades by Conor Woodman.

“Wang Long’s mother works in a foreigners’ hotel..... She told me that foreigners are really wasteful. They throw away the tea bags after just one cup. And the tea isn’t good enough for them – they have to add milk before they can drink it.”

 From Beijing Coma by Ma Jian.

"Gregory the Great always used to recommend making the sign of the cross over a lettuce in case you swallowed a demon that happened to be perched on it leaves.”

From The Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple.

“Ham and Eggs: A day’s work for a chicken. A lifetime commitment for a pig.”

From Ronnie Moore’s 2009 Calendar.

In Michael Eaude’s Catalonia he refers to a mediaeval recipe for Roast Cat which involved roasting the animal in oil, garlic and herbs. The brains, by the way, were removed before cooking.

In the 1840s, a Florida physician named John Gorrie, trying to cool the rooms where patients were suffering from yellow fever, figured out how to make ice using mechanical refrigeration, paving the way for household refrigerators that appeared in American homes en masse in the 1920s and 1930s
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1862562,00.html#ixzz0YKancgNq

 “......a woman held up a duck whose throat she had cut and stroked her gently while a little girl held up a cup to catch the blood for making gravy. The duck seemed very contented and, when they put her down, she waddled twice and found that she was dead. We ate her later, stuffed and roasted.”

Hemingway, describing a visit to Miro’s summer home near Barcelona.