Harrietts Tomato

F.A. Worsley on Food

--photo of Sir Ernest Shackleton

"The principal item of our diet was a mixture that looked like a dark brown brick, which consisted of beef-protein, lard, oatmeal, sugar and salt.  This was cooked over the Primus to a thick mixture resembling pea-soup.  Every four hours in the daytime we had a meal of this which we took scaldingly hot.  Sometimes after this "hoosh" as Shackleton called it, we would have a half-pound block of Streimer's Nut Food, a food of the nougat type, extremely sweet, which however never cloyed our appetites down there.  In between meals, if Shackleton thought that we needed gingering up in any way, he would suddently issue a block of this or a half a dozen lumps of sugar and a biscuit of an especially nourishing kind that he had had prepared for his sledging trips."

--from the book "Endurance" by F. A. Worsley, ship's captain, about Shackleton's doomed voyage to the Antarctic and subsequent rescue

Tommy Steele on Food

"Something sweet,
Something sort of grandish
Sweeps my soul
When thou are near.
My heart feels so sugar candish
My head feels so ginger beer."

--from "Something Sort of Grandish" by E.Y.Harburg and Burton Lane, as performed by Tommy Steele, singing as Og the Leprechaun in the 1968 film Finian's Rainbow

Shirley Conran on Food

"Life is too short to stuff a mushroom."
--Shirley Conran (b.1932), British designer and writer

Ursula K. Le Guin on Food

"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."
--Ursula K. Le Guin, (American author, born 1929) in The Lathe of Heaven

Clifton Fadiman on Food

"A cheese may disappoint.  It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated.  Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward immortality."

--Clifton Fadiman (1904-1999), Brooklyn-born essayist

Lord Byron on Food

All human history attests
That happiness for man, -- the hungry sinner!--
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.

--Lord Byron, née George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824);
from Don Juan (canto xiii, stanza 99)

George Bernard Shaw on Food

"A vegetarian is not a person who lives on vegetables, any more than a Catholic is a person who lives on cats."
--George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Anglo-Irish playwright and critic.  From a news article first published March 1, 1918 in the Daily Chronicle, titled "Life without Meat"

Gael Greene on Food

"Great food is like great sex.  The more you have the more you want."
~Gael Greene, American food critic and memoirist

Jane Austen on Food

"A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife.  His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine."

--Jane Austen (1775-1817), British novelist, in Mansfield Park

Rumi on Food

"Last year, I admired wines.  This,
I'm wandering inside the red world.

Last year, I gazed at the fire.
This year I'm burnt kabob.

Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon's reflection....

But listen to me: for one moment,
quit being sad.  Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.  God."

--Rumi, 13th Century Persian poet
from the poem "Burnt Kabob", The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Queen Elizabeth II on Food

"I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast."
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, after being pelted with eggs on a New Zealand visit in 1986.

Queen Elizabeth II in Coronation Robes
Painting by Sir Herbert James Gunn, 1953-4.

Andy Warhol on Food

"Everything is more glamorous when you do it in bed, anyway.  Even peeling potatoes."

--Andy Warhol, American Artist 1928-1987, in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, published 1975

Painting by Jamie Wyeth, from the Cheekwood Art Museum, Nashville, TN

James Joyce on Food

"Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man...He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas."

--James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author.  From  Ulysses, Chapter 15.

(painting by Barrie Maguire)

R.W. Apple, Jr. on Food

"No prawns at this altitude!"
--R. W. Apple Jr., advice to friends in an Indian restaurant in Uganda

R. W. Apple, Jr. (1934-2006) American news correspondent, journalist and author.

Mr. Apple passed away this morning...we thank him for his many wonderful writings about food and the people who make and serve it.  Happy Journey, sir.

Robert Louis Stevenson on Food

"The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple tart."

--"The Cow" by Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author (1850-1894)

August 15--Happy Birthday Julia

"I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate."

--Julia Child (August 1912-August 2004)

MFK Fisher on Food

"Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures...."

--Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (1908-1992), American culinary writer and autobiographer.  From an introduction to  the 1981 book Vin et Fromage by Scavarda and Sater.

Alice B. Toklas on Food

"What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen."

Alice Babette Toklas, American Writer (1877-1967), in "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook"

Painting by Pavel Tchelitchew (1898–1957)
Gouache on paper, circa 1926–1928
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Georgy Girl on Food

"God's always got a custard pie up his sleeve."

--Georgy Girl, in the film of the same name as spoken by Lynn Redgrave, 1966.  Written by Margaret Forster, Peter Nichols, and Silvio Narizzano.

Emily Dickinson on Food

"I had been hungry all the years;
My noon had come, to dine;
I, trembling, drew the table near,
And touched the curious wine."

--Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830-1886), excerpted from Poem 76, Part One: Life

Edward Lear on Food

"There was an Old Person whose habits,
Induced him to feed upon Rabbits;
When he'd eaten eighteen, he turned perfectly green,
Upon which he relinquished those habits."

--Edward Lear, English Poet (1812-1888)
(crayon and chalk portrait by Holman Hunt at the National Museums, Liverpool)

Download LearLimerick.jpg

Alfred Hitchcock on Food

"I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me.  That white round thing without any holes...have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid?  Blood is jolly, red.  But egg yolk is yellow, revolting.  I've never tasted it."

--Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), Anglo-American film director, in news summaries from 1963.

Lenin on Food

"I am a bad, wicked man, but I am practising moral self-purification; I don't eat meat any more, I now eat rice cutlets."

--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), revolutionary Russian leader.

Gertrude Stein on Food

"Eating too much meat gives you indigestion and evil thoughts make you eat too much meat."

--Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), U.S. Author, in "Wars I Have Seen", written shortly before her death.  Portrait by Picasso.

V on Food

"Vanquish this Vichyssoise of Verbage...."

--V, in film of his name, 2006.

Lewis Carroll on Food

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need"

--Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), British poet, in Through the Looking Glass

Rosetti on Food

"The city mouse eats bread and cheese;--
The garden mouse eats what he can;
We will not grudge him seeds and stock,
Poor little timid furry man."

--Christina Georgina Rossetti, British poet. (1830-1894)

Miss Edna Lewis on Food, 1916-2006

"...it has been my lifelong effort to try and recapture those good flavors of the past."
--Miss Edna Lewis, 1916-2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/national/14lewis.html

Shakespeare on Food

"God defend me from that Welsh fairy,
Lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!"

--Falstaff, about Sir Hugh Evans, in The Merry Wives of Windsor Act 5, Scene 5 by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Colette on Food

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.

--Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954)

Dorothy Parker on Food

"It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard."

--Dorothy Parker, American Author (1893-1967)

Voltaire on Food

"The best written book is a receipt for a potage."

--Francois Marie Arouet, pen-name Voltaire (1694-1778)

Molière on Food

"I feed on good soup, not beautiful language."

--Molière (1622-1673) via Chrysale, in "The Learned Ladies"

Nancy Drew on Food

"Hot sausage!"

--Nancy Drew, upon finding a new clue, in "Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase", film. 1939

Oscar Wilde on Food

"After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations."

-- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), via Lady Caroline in "A Woman of No Importance"

Anne Sexton on Food

"...you knead me and I rise like bread."

--Anne Sexton (1928-1974) in "Song for a Lady"

The Dalai Lama on Food

"Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon."

-- the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.