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Sohla El-Waylly Biography

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“So much seafood was once dismissed as the debris of the sea: eels, snared from the Thames River in sixteenth-century England and tucked into pies in lieu of meat; clams, eaten by New England colonists only in times of desperation; oysters, offered all-you-can-eat for 6 cents at bars in nineteenth-century New York City; whelks, pickled and trundled by wheelbarrow through London streets, which in the mid-nineteenth century the British social reformer Henry Mayhew tallied “among the delicacies of the poor” and which housemaids wouldn’t eat in public, lest they be judged unladylike. Even lowlier were lobsters, scorned as indiscriminate bottom feeders, fobbed off on servants and put on prison menus, or else consigned to fertilizer. Their flesh and shells are still used in this way, as their high concentration of nitrogen and calcium helps plants grow.”

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“Peaches and feminine beauty have been conflated across cultures since the Taoist legend of Xiwangmu, Queen Mother of the West, who tended the Peaches of Immortality in her palace garden and decided which gods would be permitted a taste of the fruit that granted life everlasting; she hosted the chosen at an elaborate banquet known as the Feast of Peaches.”

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“It ripens in perfection only in the glow of a midsummer’s sun; and the hotter the weather, the more delicious are its rich cooling juices. It is eminently suited to the season. When the weather is so hot that even eating is a labor, the peach is acceptable, for it melts in the mouth without exertion. It is the Queen of Delicacies.”

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Book:The Best American Food Writing 2022: A Curated Collection of Mouthwatering and Comforting Culinary Articles
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