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Margaret Visser

Margaret Visser Books

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“Salt represents the civilized: it requires know-how to get it, and a sophisticated combination of cooking and spoilt, jaded appetites to need it.”

KnowsNeedsKnow HowCookingCombinationCivilizedAppetiteSaltSophisticatedJadedSpoilt
Book:Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea
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“Animals are murdered to produce meat; vegetables are torn up, peeled, and chopped; most of what we eat is treated with fire; and chewing is designed remorselessly to finish what killing and cooking began. People naturally prefer that none of this should happen to them. Behind every rule of table etiquette lurks the determination of each person present to be a diner, not a dish.”

PeopleShouldPersonsHappensAnimalBehindsFireProduceEatingDeterminationTablesCookingKillingTreatedMannersMeatVegetablesDishesTornEtiquetteChewingDiners
Book:The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners
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“Eating is aggressive by nature, and the implements required for it could quickly become weapons; table manners are, most basically, a system of taboos designed to ensure that violence remains out of the question.”

ViolenceEatingWeaponsTablesRemainsMannersAggressiveTabooTable Manners
Book:The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners
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“One can never be too rich or too thin' is an aphorism attributed to the Duchess of Windsor. Being both rich and thin is a difficult enterprise, indeed almost unprecedented as an ideal. Into the paradoxical gap between the capacity to spend money and the need to eat less steps a brilliant solution: 'light' food. In buying 'light' food we can pay more for what costs less to produce in the first place.”

NeedsFirstsLightDifficultWealthPayStepsRichProduceCostEatingSolutionsCapacityIdealsBrilliantIronyBuyingEnterpriseGapsAphorismUnprecedentedParadoxicalDuchessWindsor
Book:Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea
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“Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves, desiccates but is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for thousands of years not only as a substance he prized and was willing to labour to obtain, but also as a generator of poetic and of mythic meaning. The contradictions it embodies only intensify its power and its links with experience of the sacred.”

MenYearsWaterRocksWillingSacredSubstancePreservesContradictionLabourPoeticLinksFascinatedSaltConsumedGenerator
Book:Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea
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“A meal can be thought of as a ritual and a work of art, with limits laid down, desires aroused and fulfilled, enticements, variety, patterning and plot. As in a work of art, not only the overall form, but also the details matter intensely.”

ArtMatterFormDesireLimitsDetailsVarietyMealsPlotWorks Of ArtRitualFulfilledEnticement
Book:The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners
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“This is what is meant by "sacrifice", literally, the "making sacred" of an animal consumed for dinner. Yet sacrfice, because it dwells on the death, is a concept often shocking to the secular modern Western mind - to people who calmly organize daily hecatombs of beasts, and who are among the most death-dealing carnivores the world has ever seen.”

PeopleWorldMindAnimalSacrificeModernFoodConceptsSacredWesternDinnerBeastSecularOrganizeShockingConsumedCarnivores
Author:Margaret Visser
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“Food-what is chosen from the possibilities available, how it is presented, how it is eaten, with whom and when, and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating it-is one of the means by which a society creates itself and acts out its aims and fantasies.”

MeanFantasyPossibilityFoodEatingAimCookingAvailableChosenCooking And Eating
Book:Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea
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“Food is "everyday"-it has to be, or we would not survive for long. But food is never just something to eat. It is something to find or hunt or cultivate first of all; for most of human history we have spent a much longer portion of our lives worrying about food, and plotting, working, and fighting to obtain it, than we have in any other pursuit. As soon as we can count on a food supply (and so take food for granted), and not a moment sooner, we start to civilize ourselves.”

FirstsHumansLongMomentsFightingWorryOur LivesFoodEverydayPursuitGrantedPortionsHuntsHuman HistoryFood Supply
Author:Margaret Visser
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