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My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

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Toba Beta

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“Street food, she saw. Silky pasta, doughy pizza, steaming pho, obnoxiously tall burgers. Benches had been nestled behind the Royal Festival Hall, and they were filled with people eating personal feasts from paper plates: vast thalis; racks of sticky, black ribs; half lobsters with melting garlic butter and bread. Rows of diners craning to read menus wound between food trucks; queues intermingled, new arrivals negotiating for space. Piglet looked around, the National behind her. She had left the office early, she reasoned; she had time before finding a place to work. She edged forward, walking among the tables. The benches were full, some having to stand, juggling their fried chicken with their phones. There were young men who talked too loudly, laughed with their mouths full, and wore round, tortoiseshell glasses; glamorous women in their fifties and sixties, lunching and drinking; and au pairs with charges no older than twelve who ate salt beef bagels, cacio e pepe, and laksa.”

CustomersStreet Food
Book:Piglet
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“A depachika is like nothing else. It is the endless bounty of a hawker's bazaar, but with Japanese civility. It is Japanese food and foreign food, sweet and savory. The best depachika have more than a hundred specialized stands and cannot be understood on a single visit. I felt as though I had a handle on Life Supermarket the first time I shopped there, but I never felt entirely comfortable in a depachika. They are the food equivalent of Borges's "The Library of Babel": if it's edible, someone is probably selling it, but how do you find it? How do you resist the cakes and spices and Chinese delis and bento boxes you'll pass on the way? At the Isetan depachika, in Shinjuku, French pastry god Pierre Hermé sells his signature cakes and macarons. Not to be outdone, Franco-Japanese pastry god Sadaharu Aoki sells his own nearby. Tokyo is the best place in the world to eat French pastry. The quality and selection are as good as or better than in Paris, and the snootiness factor is zero. I wandered by a collection of things on sticks: yakitori at one stand, kushiage at another. Kushiage are panko-breaded and fried foods on sticks. At any depachika, you can buy kushiage either golden and cooked, or pale and raw to fry at home. Neither option is terribly appetizing: the fried stuff is losing crispness by the second, and who wants to deep-fry in a poorly ventilated Tokyo apartment in the summer? But the overall effect of the display is mesmerizing: look at all the different foods they've put on sticks! Pork, peppers, mushrooms, squash, taro, and two dozen other little cubes.”

FrenchTokyoPastriesStreet FoodDepachika
Book:Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo
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“They were all there for the food, the drink, and the ambience, even as everyone devoured plates as disparate as Korean bibimbap and French vichyssoise. "I'm going over there." Ana pointed to a midnight-blue food truck that was known for having the best bao, steamed Vietnamese buns, in Denver. Which, given the popularity of the southeast Asian cuisine in the city lately, was more of an accomplishment than it might have seemed. "What about you?" Rachel asked Melody. "I'm having what you're having. You never steer me wrong." "Then A Parisian in Denver is the way to go. Come on. I want to say hello to Lilia." They found their way to the end of the line in front of a food truck painted in red, blue, and white, and Rachel craned her neck to feet a better look at the chalkboard that proclaimed the day's specials. There was French street food like crepes and merguez sausages alongside trendy favorites like duck confit pommes frites.”

French FoodStreet FoodCantinaFood TrendsFood Truck
Book:The Saturday Night Supper Club
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“The familiar cooking warmth coming from the booths soothed my anxious thoughts, like entering a labyrinth of barbecued, breaded, deep-fried treats. Acarajé bursting with shrimp. Grilled fish covered in lime juice and raw onion rings. Coxinhas loaded with shredded chicken and potato. Pastéis heavy with extra minced meat and olives. Coconut and cheese tapioca. Crepe sticks, too, prepared on demand right before the customers' eyes, the batter cooked like a waffle and filled with chocolate and doce de leite.”

CuisineStreet FoodBrazilian
Book:Salt and Sugar
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“Scarily, cadmium is not even the worst poison among the elements. It sits above mercury, a neurotoxin. And to the right of mercury sit the most horrific mug shots on the periodic table—thallium, lead, and polonium—the nucleus of poisoner’s corridor.”

ElementsPoisonLeadMercuryPeriodic TableCadmiumThalliumPolonium
Book:The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
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“Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple. Eyes shut to let his nose wander, he snuffed deeply. He moved in the hell-fire steams and sudden baking-powder flurries of snow in this miraculous climate where Grandma, with the look of the Indies in her eyes and the flesh of two warm hens in her bodice, Grandma of the thousand arms, shook, basted, whipped, beat, minced, diced, peeled, wrapped, salted, stirred. Blind, he touched his way to the pantry door. A squeal of laughter rang from the parlor, teacups tinkled. But he moved on into the cool underwater green and wild-persimmon country where the slung and hanging odor of creamy bananas ripened silently and bumped his head. Gnats fizzed angrily about vinegar cruets and his ears. He opened his eyes. He saw bread waiting to be cut into slices of warm summer cloud, doughnuts strewn like clown hoops from some edible game. The faucets turned on and off in his cheeks. Here on the plum-shadowed side of the house with maple leaves making a creek-water running in the hot wind at the window he read spice-cabinet names.”

KitchenBakingGrandmaPantry
Book:Dandelion Wine
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“Cayenne, marjoram, cinnamon." The names of lost and fabulous cities through which storms of spice bloomed up and dusted away. He tossed the cloves that had traveled from some dark continent where once they had spilled on milk marble, jack-stones for children with licorice hands. And looking at one single label on a jar, he felt himself gone round the calendar to that private day this summer when he had looked at the circling world and found himself at its center. The word on the jar was RELISH. And he was glad he had decided to live. RELISH! What a special name for the minced pickle sweetly crushed in its white-capped jar. The man who had named it, what a man he must have been. Roaring, stamping around, he must have tromped the joys of the world and jammed the in this jar and writ in a big hand, shouting, RELISH! For its very sound meant rolling in sweet fields with roistering chestnut mares, mouths bearded with grass, plunging your head fathoms deep in trough water so the sea poured cavernously through your head. RELISH!”

SpicesRelishPantry
Book:Dandelion Wine
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“Dina hummed to herself as she pulled out an empty jam jar from a busy cupboard. It was still labeled "Apricot Jam" from the batch her mum had made for her last year--- jam that tasted like bottled sunshine. There wasn't an exact science to the magic, but Dina often found that the best tea blends were ones she put into secondhand jars, ones that had been full of delicious, wonderful things. She clipped her curls out of her face and headed into the pantry. The walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with all manner of jars and boxes, all individually labeled in Dina's messy handwriting. She kept her spices together, along with other baking essentials like fish vanilla, cake flour, and a tin that was labeled "Eye of Newt" but actually contained nutmeg. Her tea selection had several shelves dedicated to it. Aside from the specialty blends she made for the shop, Dina kept a collection of tea and tisane ingredients, which she could mix into more personal blends at a moment's notice. Dina never felt more in her element as a kitchen witch than when she was looking through her pantry. Scott's tea blend needed to be something that encapsulated his energies yet also helped him in some way. A tea to drink in the middle of a long work day, Dina decided. She twirled a curl around her finger as she focused. She hadn't met any of his fellow curators yet, but from what Scott had told her they could be a bit of a handful. So the kind of tea that would help him get through a long meeting. Something to sharpen a tired mind. Dina knew just the thing for it. She scooped up several jars and laid them out on the counter before her. Black tea--- a full-bodied assam, cacao nibs, dried ginger and... it was missing something. Dina stepped back into the pantry and surveyed her shelves with her hands on her hips. She knew that this would need one more ingredient to be perfect for Scott. Lion's mane mushroom? Perhaps a little too earthy. Clove? Too heavy. It would overpower the other flavors. As her eyes skirted over the rows of jars, she spotted it. A small glass jar with a dark red powder in it. Dried beetroot! Perfect! Energizing yet slightly sweet and smooth, and it would make Scott look like he was drinking some kind of red-velvet-themed drink. Which was also his favorite cake flavor.”

Magical RealismInventoryPantryCafeHerbal TeaKey IngredientBlack TeaCottage Witch
Book:Best Hex Ever
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