Harrietts Tomato

William Thackeray on Food

There were three sailors of Bristol city
Who took a boat and went to sea.
But first with beef and captain’s biscuits
And pickled pork they loaded she.
There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy,
And the youngest he was little Billee.
Now when they got as far as the Equator
They’d nothing left but one split pea.
--Little Billee by W. M. Thackeray (1811-1863), Anglo-Indian author

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on Food

"And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last."

    --Lady Mary Wortley Montague, English Poet (1689-1762)
        from The Lover

Book of Job on Food

"Can that which hath no savor be eaten without salt?
Or is there any taste in the 1 white of an egg?"

        --Book of Job, the Old Testament, Chapter 7, Verse 6

MFK Fisher on Food

"The things men come to eat when they are alone are, I suppose, not much stranger than the men themselves.... A writer years ago told me of living for five months on hen mash."

--M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992), U.S. author and food expert. An Alphabet for Gourmets, “M is for Monastic” chapter (1949)

Anne Sexton on Eating

Come, my pretender, my fritter,
my bubbler, my chicken biddy!
Oh succulent one,
it is but one turn in the road
and I would be a cannibal!

--Anne Sexton (1928–1974), U.S. poet. “Hansel and Gretel.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne on Food

"A woman’s chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats."

--Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author (1804-1864)

Painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816-1868)
Oil on canvas, 1862
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Morris the Cat on Food

"The cat who doesn’t act finicky soon loses control of his owner."
--Morris the Cat, in 9-Lives Cat Food commercial, 1988

Terence McKenna on Food

"We each must become like fishermen, and go out onto the dark ocean of mind, and let your nets down into that sea. And what you're after is not some behemoth that will tear through your nets, foul them, and drag you and your little boat into the abyss. Nor are what we looking for a bunch of sardines, that can slip through your net and disappear, ideas like 'have you ever noticed that your little finger exactly fits your nostril' and stuff like that.

"What we are looking for are middle-sized ideas that are not so small that they are trivial, and not so large that they are incomprehensible, but middle-sized ideas that we can wrestle into our boat and take back to the folks on shore, and have fish dinner."

--Terence McKenna, American psychonaut, writer, philosopher, botanist, 1946-2000

Anne Sexton on Food

"You are a roast beef I have purchased
and I stuff you with my very own onion."

--Anne Sexton, 1928-1974, U.S. Poet, from "Buying the Whore"

Colley Cibber on Drink

"Tea! Thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid, thou innocent pretence for bringing the wicked of both sexes together in a morning; thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wink-tipping cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate thus, and...adore thee."

--the character Lord George, in The Lady's Last Stake, written by British playwright Colley Cibber (1671-1757)