287722 Thu Oct 11 17:29:33 -0700 2001 40 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1549443 I spent the better part of the morning unpacking my books and magazines, and couldn't resist leafing through a few. I found some favorite lines which I'll share here. A few snippets quoted with attribution, does not a copyright infringement make! Anybody else have others? "So if you're lucky enough to get a holt to an alligator tail, there's a section about a foot long just behind the back legs that's tender and juicy." (Ernie Micklers' "White Trash Cooking") "When we have crabmeat to spare, I make a crab Newburg so superlative that I myself taste it in wonder, thinking, 'Can it be I who has brought this noble thing into the world?'" ("Cross Creek" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings) And, in Paris where he's hungry a lot: "The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink..."I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly." (Hemingway's "Movable Feast", describing Brasserie Lipp) "...all anybody really wanted to know was how many crabs each person could eat, how many were still in the big blue enamel pot on the stove, and whether the beer would hold out long enough to wash down the last of the spicy, delectable, sweet white flesh of the hard-shells we all loved." (Martha Stewart! Remembering column: Crabbing at the Jersey Shore) Thu Oct 11 17:29:33 -0700 2001 0 Pat Hammond 1 1549444 This is not a line per se, but better than AJ Liebling, better than Trillon, better than Papa, my favorite literary/dining moments are the late night soiress partaken by the various players at the Pacific Dining Car in LA Confidential. When I first read the book, I thought this mysterious elegant resturant where they ate steaks at all hours was a figment of Ellroy's imagination. Then, I found out it's a real place -- that I have to get to one of these days... Thu Oct 11 17:41:52 -0700 2001 1549443 0 Vital Information 2 1549445 Yeah, I love in Black Dahlia when right before the big fight the boxer goes to Pacific Dining Car, orders a steak, and just chews on it, sucking down the juice and spitting out the meat! Thu Oct 11 18:09:32 -0700 2001 1549444 0 chris o 3 1549467 Not exactly a line, either, but does anyone else know the M.F.K. Fisher piece about what people eat when they're alone? She fesses up to the pleasure of leaving a peeled tangerine on the radiator in the hotel room for several hours until the skin acheives a leathery crackle and the pulp becomes molten, squirting into her mouth. Very brave confession, I thought. Laurie Colwin did a lovely essay about wierd things that people really eat when home alone, too. Fri Oct 12 09:35:13 -0700 2001 1549445 0 Meredith 4 1549562 Yup. That's from "Borderland" in "Serve It Forth". Thanks for reminding me of that. "Al comes home, you go to a long noon dinner in the brown dining-room, afterwards maybe you have a little nip of quetsch from the bottle on the armoire. Finally he goes. Of course you are sorry, but ... On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open, and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow of the sill. They are ready." Kat Sun Oct 14 18:07:05 -0700 2001 1549467 0 Kat Kinsman 2 1549454 James Ellroy and I went to junior high and high school together in L.A., which I didn't realize for many years, because when I knew him back then, his name was Lee Ellroy. He wrote about our junior high class a couple of years ago in an Esquire article, "Let's Twist Again." The article was inspired by the revisit to his past involved in the autobiographical _My Dark Places_. Both schools were big, and I didn't know him very well, but it was eerie to read about those years and those people I knew, as they were experienced by such a sad and twisted boy. And what a testament to Ellroy's strengths that he was able to pull himself out of the cesspool of his adolescence. A lot of our classmates didn't survive the 60's. He convened a group which organized a class reunion, and they met at his favorite L.A. restaurant. You guessed it, the Pacific Dining Car. Thu Oct 11 22:42:45 -0700 2001 1549444 0 zora 1 1549447 from Ulysses, read aloud to me by Mr. Kramer in high school, this passage started me on a lifelong obsession with Joyce: _______ Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of theBoyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it all however. -- Roast beef and cabbage. -- One stew. Smells of men. His gorge rose. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarette smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment. Couldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork, to eat all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate, man! Get out of this. He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of his nose. -- Two stouts here. -- One corned and cabbage. That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a silver knife in his mouth. That's witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost. An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up: it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift across his stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith? Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said. -- Not here. Don't see him. Out. I hate dirty eaters. He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne's. Stopgap. Keep me going. Had a good breakfast. -- Roast and mashed here. -- Pint of stout. Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff. ______________ Thu Oct 11 18:20:54 -0700 2001 1549443 0 keith k 2 1549448 Ulysses is public domain, so there's no copyright issue, but please, folks, don't do long paste-ins of copyrighted material. A couple of sentences is ok because it's legally considered "fair use", but anymore than that and we could have trouble (last thing we need!) so please keep 'em pithy! Thu Oct 11 18:45:22 -0700 2001 1549447 0 Jim Leff 3 1549453 I thought he was doing that from memory VI Thu Oct 11 21:55:47 -0700 2001 1549448 0 Vital Information 1 1549465 "Leave the gun. Take the cannolis." (The Godfather) Fri Oct 12 06:32:38 -0700 2001 1549443 0 christina z 2 1549556 "Leave the gun. Take the cannolis." that's a GREAT one! Anyone else have other terse quotes like that? Preferably chowhoundish in point of view, rather than merely food-related? Sun Oct 14 15:53:18 -0700 2001 1549465 0 Jim Leff 3 1549579 One of my favorites (from the essay "How Green Was My Gullet" in the book "Domesticity" by Bob Shacochis): "As for me, I admit my salivary glands become mildly stimulated whenever I visit children's petting zoos." Mon Oct 15 01:18:56 -0700 2001 1549556 0 Janet A. Zimmerman 1 1549466 May I cheat with a favorite line written not in a book, but uttered by my Mom, who was a chowhound before they coined the term? While working in London from '72 to '82, my visits home always began in the kitchen, which was crammed to the gills with all my favorite foods. They spilled over the table, onto the floor! The homecoming was always more fun than the leavetaking. One year, just before she drove me back to the airport, my mother called me into the bedroom and took out the most enormous eye-bulging jar of Macademia Nuts I'd ever seen. At that time, Macademia were rare in New York. They were also one of my favorite things. She handed me the jar, gve me a hug, and said "Save these for that special occasion." Then, she winked, and added, "when you're alone!" Fri Oct 12 08:42:10 -0700 2001 1549443 0 LynnKane 2 1549482 Cheating, too, not from a book, but I loved the sign I saw years ago on a hot dog cart that said, "What food these morsels be." Fri Oct 12 13:28:44 -0700 2001 1549466 0 Deb Van D 3 1549489 i'm more parcel to what is written on my favorite hot dog stand, "relished since 1946" Fri Oct 12 15:49:36 -0700 2001 1549482 0 Vital Information 1 1549471 Cafe Paradiso My chicken soup thickened with pounded young almonds, My blend of winter greens, Dearest tagliatelle with mushrooms, fennel, anchovies, Tomatoes and vermouth sauce, Beloved monkfish braised with onions, capers, and green olives, Give me your tongue tasting of white beans and garlic, Sexy little assortment of formaggi and frutta, I want to drown with you in red wine like a pear, Then sleep in a macedoine of wild berries with cream. -- Charles Simic (from "A Fly in the Soup" essays, U of Michigan Press) Hope I got all the line breaks right. Also see his essay, "Food and Happiness" from the same collection Fri Oct 12 10:36:32 -0700 2001 1549443 0 shoshana 1 1549472 I'm enjoying the food description quotes, but while it's comparatively easy to find quotes generally about food from books, the real challenge is to find quotes about chowhounding per se. I'm not home so I don't have my books handy to extract specific quotes, but I'm thinking, especially, Trillin on KC and Proust on madeleines, etc. And there have been chowhoundish passages in many non-food books. in fact, there are MORE of them in non-food books, because food books are so seldom chowhoundish! Anyone have any quotes which sum up not just love of food but, specifically, a chowhoundish perspective? ciao Fri Oct 12 10:56:30 -0700 2001 1549443 0 Jim Leff 2 1549476 There's a quote from Kerouac about ham and eggs that might fit the bill but I can't access it. Meanwhile, a mailer from White Rock Vineyards offers the following from Horace, Epodes to Country Life, "Happy is he, who, like men in early days ... tills his father's fields. ...when Autumn has from the soil put forth its head with mellow fruit adorned, how he delights ... to cull the grape that rivals purple dye ..." And I think Yeats said something like "Wine comes in at the mouth, and love comes in at the eye, that is all you need to know before you grow old and die." Fri Oct 12 11:40:25 -0700 2001 1549472 0 michael (mea culpa) 2 1549478 The description of tripe stew in Dickens' *Old Curiosity Shop* I think would qualify. I'll look it up later on today. Fri Oct 12 12:03:28 -0700 2001 1549472 0 Jeremy Osner 3 1549511 Ah yes, here 'tis, from Chapter 18: 'All alone?' said Mr Codlin, putting down his burden and wiping his forehead. 'All alone as yet,' rejoined the landlord, glancing at the sky, 'but we shall have more company to-night I expect. Here one of you boys, carry that show into the barn. Make haste in out of the wet, Tom; when it came on to rain I told 'em to make the fire up, and there's a glorious blaze in the kitchen, I can tell you.' Mr Codlin followed with a willing mind, and soon found that the landlord had not commended his preparations without good reason. A mighty fire was blazing on the hearth and roaring up the wide chimney with a cheerful sound, which a large iron cauldron, bubbling and simmering in the heat, lent its pleasant aid to swell. There was a deep red ruddy blush upon the room, and when the landlord stirred the fire, sending the flames skipping and leaping up--when he took off the lid of the iron pot and there rushed out a savoury smell, while the bubbling sound grew deeper and more rich, and an unctuous steam came floating out, hanging in a delicious mist above their heads--when he did this, Mr Codlin's heart was touched. He sat down in the chimney-corner and smiled. Mr Codlin sat smiling in the chimney-corner, eyeing the landlord as with a roguish look he held the cover in his hand, and, feigning that his doing so was needful to the welfare of the cookery, suffered the delightful steam to tickle the nostrils of his guest. The glow of the fire was upon the landlord's bald head, and upon his twinkling eye, and upon his watering mouth, and upon his pimpled face, and upon his round fat figure. Mr Codlin drew his sleeve across his lips, and said in a murmuring voice, 'What is it?' 'It's a stew of tripe,' said the landlord smacking his lips, 'and cow-heel,' smacking them again, 'and bacon,' smacking them once more, 'and steak,' smacking them for the fourth time, 'and peas, cauliflowers, new potatoes, and sparrow-grass, all working up together in one delicious gravy.' Having come to the climax, he smacked his lips a great many times, and taking a long hearty sniff of the fragrance that was hovering about, put on the cover again with the air of one whose toils on earth were over. 'At what time will it be ready?' asked Mr Codlin faintly. 'It'll be done to a turn,' said the landlord looking up to the clock--and the very clock had a colour in its fat white face, and looked a clock for jolly Sandboys to consult--'it'll be done to a turn at twenty-two minutes before eleven.' 'Then,' said Mr Codlin, 'fetch me a pint of warm ale, and don't let nobody bring into the room even so much as a biscuit till the time arrives.' Nodding his approval of this decisive and manly course of procedure, the landlord retired to draw the beer, and presently returning with it, applied himself to warm the same in a small tin vessel shaped funnel-wise, for the convenience of sticking it far down in the fire and getting at the bright places. This was soon done, and he handed it over to Mr Codlin with that creamy froth upon the surface which is one of the happy circumstances attendant on mulled malt. Sat Oct 13 08:00:44 -0700 2001 1549478 0 Jeremy Osner 2 1549506 Jim, Check out a novel called "Secrets of the Tsil Cafe" for some great chowhound scenes/quotes (I posted a short review/rave about it on the "NOt About Food Board but it was only a day before the Sept. 11 horrors, so I'm not sure anyone noticed it much). It's the story of a boy growing up in between two kitchens -- his mother is a caterer and his father owns the title restaurant. Unfortunately, I've lent the book to a friend, so I can't quote exactly, but the great chowhound scenes include: When the narrator's father will not let him into the cafe kitchen until he can eat an anchovy without grimacing. When he starts to bring his lunch to school, and the other kids beat him up him for eating tamales (this is in Kansas City, BTW). A first date at about age 14 -- he takes his date to his dad's restaurant (which uses "New World foods cooked New Mexico style"). She tries, but she can't handle the liver in the soup or much of anything else. Afterwards, they go to her house, where he watches her make a peanut butter sandwich, with peanut butter, margarine, sugar and jam on white bread. He's horrified and leaves. His mother's comment: "there are worse things than being betrayed by a peanut butter sandwich." And others to countless to mention. You have to read this book. Fri Oct 12 23:42:42 -0700 2001 1549472 0 Janet A. Zimmerman 3 1549520 that's great stuff. What is writer's name of "Secretes of Tsil Cafe?" v Sat Oct 13 12:02:16 -0700 2001 1549506 0 victor lieberman 4 1549521 see link below Link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0399147551/chowhoundcomA/ Sat Oct 13 12:17:06 -0700 2001 1549520 0 Jim Leff 5 1549559 Thanks, Jim, I found a copy at the Strand in the review copy section for 1/2 price. Also, since I was down there, I found your book at the B and N on 8th off Bway. Enjoyed reading it last night. Trying to hit as many spots as I can on this trip. Got a little derailed yesterday. Started out at Katz's with intentions of hitting Pings or other Chinatown spot and after two beers watching the Indian game I caved in and spent some good eating hours perusing the Strand instead and wound up at the Crab House on 19th. The gumbo was ordinary but at that point I needed to fill some empty ventricles. v Sun Oct 14 17:24:54 -0700 2001 1549521 0 victor lieberman 2 1549515 Here's two: Among them all, who can descry A vice more mean than Gluttony? Of any groveling slave of sense, Not one can claim so small pretense To the indulgence which the wise Allow to human frailties As the inglorious, beastly sinner, Whose only object is -- a dinner. William Combe (1742-1823), "The Glutton" 1815 from "The English Dance of Death," London, R. Ackerman, 1815. and We may live without poetry, music and art We may live without conscience, live without heart We may live without friends; we may live without books But civilized man cannot live without cooks. He may live without books - what is knowledge but grieving? He may live wihtout hope - what is hope but deceiving? He may live without love - what is passion but pining? But where is the man who can live without dining? Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) Sat Oct 13 10:42:46 -0700 2001 1549472 0 Carolyn Tillie 2 1549530 One more came to mind. Tolstoy was certainly a 'hound. See Anna Karenina: Levin suggests to Oblonsky that to be attracted to a woman other than his wife would be like visiting a bakery after he has eaten his fill. Oblonsky replies with his eyes glittering more than usual, "Why not? Rolls sometimes smell so that one can't resist them." He then misquotes a few lines from Heine: "It is heavenly when I have mastered my earthly desires; but when I have not succeeded, I have also had right good pleasure!" Then there's the terrific banquet scene. Sat Oct 13 18:41:42 -0700 2001 1549472 0 shoshana 2 1549557 Okay, this topic sent me diving to my too-large pile of "current" books and magazines, looking for a perennial favorite book of mine, Evelyn Waugh's _Brideshead Revisited_. The first thing I thought of was one character's declaration that Italian pastry chefs were just dreadful, and so he makes certain to always have a French one. While I was looking for the book -- aha! found it -- I thought of an even better chowhoundish passage. The main character and narrator (played by Jeremy Irons in the wonderful PBS miniseries), Charles Ryder, is an art student in Paris. He's offered dinner by a wealthy acquaintance -- a rather snobbish sort who wants to go to a trendy restaurant, and is dissuaded by Charles, who picks a little-known but quality place and carefully chooses the menu. Charles says, "I could imagine him telling his commercial friends later: '. . .interesting fellow I know; an art student living in Paris. Took me to a funny little restaurant -- sort of place you'd pass without looking at -- where there was some of the best food I ever ate. There were half a dozen senators there, too, which shows you it was the right place. Wasn't at all cheap either.'" There's tons more in this scene, and it's absolutely hilarious -- not to mention mouth-watering -- but I'm trying not to violate copyright and all that. Pithily, Allie Sun Oct 14 16:29:05 -0700 2001 1549472 0 Allie D'Augustine 2 1549598 I don't think anyone's mentioned the great section in Kitchen Confidential about wandering through Tokyo eating. "I took subways to stops where I had no idea where I was and walked more. I ate sushi. I slurped soba noodles. I ate food off conveyor-belt buffets where every imaginable dish rolled by and one simply grabbed what one wanted. I entered bars populated by only Japanese, bars for expatriates and the women who love them... I was the Quiet American, the Ugly American, the Hungry Ghost... searching and searching for whatever came next." And later... "I was beginning to think that some of the cooks were calling their homes by now, telling their families {italics} get in here and get a load of these gaijins!! They're eating everything in the store! {end italics}" from _Kitchen Confidential_ by Anthony Bourdain Mon Oct 15 18:53:11 -0700 2001 1549472 0 Beth P. 1 1549474 Down And Out in Paris and London, by Goerge Orwell, is, quite possibly, the greatest book about the food business ever. It is hard to believe how little has changed in the business in the past century. I hope with the craze of "Kitchen Confidential," people discover the original version. These two quotes are simply two that caught my eye in a cursory look. In reality, the whole book could be quoted. "We will give you a permanent job if you like," he said. "The head waiter says he would enjoy calling an Englishman names. Will you sign for a month?" "You are, for example, making toast, when bang! down comes a service lift with an order for tea, rolls and three different kinds of jam, and simultaneously bang! down comes another demanding scrambled eggs, coffee and grapefruit; you run to the kitchen for the eggs and to the dining-room for the fruit, going like lightning so as to be back before your toast burns, and having to remember about the tea and coffee, besides half a dozen other orders that are still pending; and at the same time some waiter is following you and making trouble about a lost bottle of soda water, and you are arguing wth him. It needs more brains than one might think. Fri Oct 12 11:17:32 -0700 2001 1549443 0 J. Pine 1 1549475 Poetry seems to capture "chowhoundishness" best for me perhaps because the full spectrum of the sensual aspects of food/eating is captured in a good poem. Here are lines from Ben Jonson's "Inviting a Friend to Supper" Although public domain (17th century),it's too long to reprint in its entirety. Any other food/poetry lovers out there? From Ben Jonson "Inviting a Friend to Supper" Yet shall you have, to rectifie your palate, An olive, capers, or some better sallad Ushring the mutton ; with a short-leg'd hen, If we can get her, full of eggs, and then, Limons, and wine for sauce : to these, a coney Is not to be despair'd of, for our money ; And, though fowle, now, be scarce, there are clerkes, The skie not falling, thinke we may have larkes. I'll tell you of more, and lye, so you will come : Of partrich, pheasant, wood-cock, of which some May yet be there ; and godwit, if we can : Knat, raile, and ruffe too. Fri Oct 12 11:29:29 -0700 2001 1549443 0 shoshana 1 1549488 Two particular scenes come to mind: Christmas dinner at Mr. Fezziwigg's and the final dinner (post ghosts visits) in "A Christmas Carol". Though I read these long ago, the warmth and vividness and conviviality still stay in my mind. And to contrast, the horrible, meager, humiliating pig head Christmas dinner of Frank McCourt and family in "Angela's Ashes"--carrying the head home in damp newspaper and scrounging for coal along the street in the miserable dismal winter. Fri Oct 12 15:39:45 -0700 2001 1549443 0 berkleybabe 1 1549526 "Sooop of the evening, beautiful, beautiful sooooop..." My first exposure to M.F.K. Fisher was in 1974 or 75, when I heard the late, great Robert J. Lurtsema read "With Bold Knife and Fork" aloud, in installments, on the NPR station out of Amherst. I especially recall his reading of the line above, and how hilarious the story about "railroad sandwiches" was-- the book completely beguiled me. I spent many months tracking a copy of the book down, as the local library didn't have it. Besides, I absolutely had to own it. It was out of print at that point, and book searches were much more difficult and complicated in those days, especially living in Vermont. Railroad sandwiches, for those who haven't read the book, are made by taking a fresh baguette, slicing it in half lengthwise, scooping out some of the excess bread and generously buttering the cut pieces with sweet butter. Good ham, thinly sliced, is laid on and the sandwich is closed, then wrapped in wax paper and newspaper, as I recall. The sandwich is carried onto the train and sat on. The two halves of baguette are squashed together, and by the time it's ready to eat, the heat of the body has softened the butter and melded the flavors together to make it especially delectable. M.F.K. Fisher IMHO, is the patron saint of all chowhounds. Sat Oct 13 16:44:59 -0700 2001 1549443 0 zora 2 1549544 When did we lose Robt J Lurtsema? I thought we last caught him a couple years ago, at least, when we were going through Boston on a trip. Sun Oct 14 00:06:03 -0700 2001 1549526 0 jen kalb 3 1549550 I recall he just died this year. I listened to him in the morning for many years on Maine Public Radio, although they hadn't played it up here for a while. Sun Oct 14 11:51:18 -0700 2001 1549544 0 ironmom 4 1549573 Might've been Bill Cavness doing the reading. He began the Morning Pro Musica show back in the 70s and for about 30 years did a show called "Reading Aloud". He died in October 1999, Lurtsema in June 2000. Sun Oct 14 22:49:54 -0700 2001 1549550 0 C. Fox 5 1549611 You're right, I think. Lurtsema and Cavness both did daily morning shows that I listened to religiously-- and I may have made a melange of memory there. Mon Oct 15 22:19:22 -0700 2001 1549573 0 zora 2 1549546 I believe you forgot one essential ingredient from Fisher's recipe for a Railroad Sandwich. Since I'm in the process of reading it currently, I'll quote. The first part goes as you suggest, but then Fisher adds: "Then, and this is the Secret Ingredient, call upon a serene onlooker (a broad or at least positive beam adds to the quick results, and here I do not refer to facial grimace but to what in other dialects is called a behind-derriere-bum-ass-seat, etc.) to sit gently but firmly upon this loaf for at least twenty minutes. One of the best of our sitters over twenty years of assistance was Bonnie Prince Charlie Newton, built like a blade of grass during those youthful and far-gone years, but with a curiously potent electricity between his little beam and the loaf, almost like infared cookery. He could make the noble sandwich flat without squirming on it, and melt the butter and marry it to the mustard and the crisp shattered crusts, better than anybody ..." Fisher was a marevelous writer. W.H. Auden said she wrote the best English prose on anyone living. Sun Oct 14 00:50:13 -0700 2001 1549526 0 hobokenhenry 3 1549555 Thanks for looking it up and providing the quote and the ingredient missing from my memory. Someone else in this thread was talking about MFK and her story about eating clementines. As I recall, she peeled the clementine and put the segments on the radiator to crisp the outer membrane, which would shatter and explode on her tongue. Can you find that quote, too? I'd love to read it, and I wish I had the time to track it down, but don't. Sun Oct 14 15:45:56 -0700 2001 1549546 0 zora 1 1549689 This is from one of the books in John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. THE EMPTY COPPER SEA, p.178. "I saw a deli... I can get one of those big wicker hamper things, and a big cooler. I'll set up a picnic like she never saw before, from shrimp to champagne." Then Meyer said: "...When you start hauling great quantities of food to a female person, it means you really care. It always has. I think it is some primal instinct. The hunter bringing spoils to the cave." There are more chowcentric cullings from that series at my Travis McGee fansite: http://home.earthlink.net/~rufener Link: http://home.earthlink.net/~rufener Thu Oct 18 06:04:46 -0700 2001 1549443 0 Sharon 1 1549717 moby-dick has a great chapter on chowderhounding, linked below. here's a taste: "Clam or Cod?" she repeated. "A clam for supper? a cold clam; is that what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?" says I; "but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter time, ain't it, Mrs Hussey?" But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing but the word "clam," Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, and bawling out "clam for two," disappeared. "Queequeg," said I, "do you think that we can make out a supper for us both on one clam?" also, bohumil hrabal's "i served the king of england" has a mind-boggling passage on the ultimate turducken: i think it invoves eggs, fish, chicken, sheep, cattle, and camels, but i may be forgetting something. it's not really about the joy of eating but it is one of the most vivid depictions of a feast i've ever come across. O Link: http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/moby/moby_015.html Thu Oct 18 18:17:58 -0700 2001 1549443 0 daddy-o 2 1549730 That's one of our favorite passages from Moby Dick. We've been making "both chowder" for years on the strength of it. Fri Oct 19 00:12:06 -0700 2001 1549717 0 C. Fox