“I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed”
Source: "I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare
“...but my favorite already-discovered aspect of critical thinking in cooking is the demand for thought experimentation when trying to innovate with food. For instance, today, I made you that crab salad (although the crab was actually just imitation crab), but anyways, I observed that there was this sweetness to the imitation crab, so I conducted a thought experiment with myself. I thought that the sweetness of the crab made the crab delicate, so I deduced that it would be best to use iceberg lettuce in the salad to enhance the delicacy of the crab, because iceberg lettuce is light and crisp, as opposed to cabbage, which is thicker and has a stronger and most likely overpowering flavor that may be incompatible with the delicacy of the crab. In that same thought experiment, I also thought that bell peppers would go well with the salad, because they also have a sweetness similar to the imitation crab, and they have a fresh flavor to them, so I thought it would compliment the crab. I also added that lite ranch dressing, because I knew that the lightness of the dressing would still be cohesively connected to the overall delicacy of the salad, and plus, a lot of the components in the salad were sweet, so the ranch balanced the ratio of sweetness to savoriness. Then, in the thought experiment, I reasoned that if I sprinkle sunflower seeds on it, the dish would be more elevated because of the nuttiness of the seeds. Overall, because of my experiment, the dish had most of the flavors that you and I wanted, but you did say that you wanted more vegetables to balance out the crab, so while we were eating, I conducted another thought experiment, where I thought, of course, about adding more vegetables, and I also thought about the possibilities of adding lemon juice or some citrus fruit like tangerines into my revised version of the salad.”
Source: The Reformation
“Chinese restaurants seem to be able to stuff a square meter of noodles into a tiny to-go box. If you had that same packing power, what would you cram into your pockets, and why would it be 33 ducks?”
Source: Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.
“One time seven geese were walking towards me in a V, with the biggest Killer Duck marching point. They saw me as weak and moved to attack formation. But my Karate Hands were too knife-like to be an easy TV dinner.”
Source: BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight
“Invention idea: Broccoli-flavored bubblegum. You know, for kids who won't eat their vegetables. Plus, it will make a great leftover snack when you're by the lake feeding ducks and you find some stuck underneath the park bench you're sitting on.”
Source: BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight
“Ducks taste like lobster—if you're blind in your tongue. Ask me about my available Braille flavors.”
Source: BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight
“And Cyrus, they say, observed: 'How much trouble you have at your dinner, grandfather, if you have to reach out your hands to all these dishes and taste all these different kinds of food!'
'Why so?' said Astyages. 'Really now, don't you think this dinner much finer than your Persian dinners?'
'No, grandfather,' Cyrus replied to this; 'but the road to satiety is much more simple and direct in our country than with you; for bread and meat take us there; but you, though you make for the same goal as we, go wandering through many a maze, up and down, and only arrive at last at the point that we long since have reached.”
Source: Cyropaedia, Volume 1, books 1-4
“Torture Cuisine by Stewart Stafford
Kitchen death growls,
Whipping that cream,
Beating those eggs,
Burning all the toast.
Knifing diced cheese,
Drawn, quartered ham,
Straining tomato sauce,
Crushed-down walnuts.
Peeling potatoes naked,
Then smashing them up,
You say purée, I say mash,
Turkey and chicken skewers.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
“You smell lovely," I told the appelkooskonfyt.
When I call it apricot ‘jam’ it sounds like something in a tin from the Spar, but when it’s konfyt, you know it’s made in a kitchen.”
Source: Recipes for Love and Murder
“Food is supposed to sustain and nurture us. Eating well, any doctor will tell you, is the most important thing you can do to take care of yourself. Feeding well, any human will tell you, is the most important job a mother has, especially in the first months of her child’s life. But right now, in America, we no longer think of food as sustenance or nourishment. For many of us, food feels dangerous. We fear it. We regret it. And we categorize everything we eat as good or bad, with the “bad” list always growing longer. No meat, no dairy, no gluten—and, goodness, no sugar. Everything has too much sugar, salt, fat; too many calories, processed ingredients, toxins. As a result, we are all too much, our bodies taking up too much space in our clothes and in the world. Food has become a heavy issue, loaded with metaphorical meaning and the physical weight of our obesity crisis. And for parents, food is a double burden, because we must feed our children even while most of us are still struggling with how to feed ourselves. When the feeding tube first went in, I thought the hardest part of teaching Violet to eat again would be persuading her to open her mouth. Actually, the hardest part was letting go of my own expectations and judgments about what food should look like—so I could just let her eat.”
Source: The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America