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Bagels Quotes

Browse 49 quotes about Bagels.

Bagels Quotes

“Every New Year's Day, my parents had a big party, and their friends came over and bet on the Rose Bowl and argued about which of the players on either team were Jewish, and my mother served her famous lox and onions and eggs, which took her the entire first half to make. It took her so long, in fact, that I really don't have time to give you the recipe, because it takes up a lot of space to explain how slowly and painstakingly she did everything, sautéing the onions over a tiny flame so none of them would burn, throwing more and more butter into the pan, cooking the eggs so slowly that my father was always sure they wouldn't be ready until the game was completely over and everyone had gone home. We should have known my mother was crazy years before we did just because of the maniacal passion she brought to her lox and onions and eggs, but we didn't. Another thing my mother was famous for serving was a big ham along with her casserole of lima beans and pears. A couple of years ago, I was in Los Angeles promoting Uncle Seymour's Beef Borscht and a woman said to me at a party, "Wasn't your mother Bebe Samstat?" and when I said yes, she said, "I have her recipe for lima beans and pears. " I like to think it would have amused my mother to know that there is someone in Hollywood who remembers her only for her lima beans and pears, but it probably wouldn't have. Anyway, here's how you make it: Take 6 cups defrosted lima beans, 6 pears peeled and cut into slices, 1/2 cup molasses, 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1/2 onion chopped, put into a heavy casserole, cover and bake 12 hours at 200*. That's the sort of food she loved to serve, something that looked like plain old baked beans and then turned out to have pears up its sleeve. She also made a bouillabaisse with Swiss chard in it. Later on, she got too serious about food- started making egg rolls from scratch, things like that- and one night she resigned from the kitchen permanently over a lobster Cantonese that didn't work out, and that was the beginning of the end.”

“Lenore's galettes, one savory with a filling of fresh summer tomatoes and basil and one sweet with caramelized peaches, were tender and flaky and buttery and perfect. Maz's nargesi, an egg and spinach dish similar to shakshuka, burst with flavor on the tongue, especially when eaten beside the fresh watermelon and soft cheese salad he'd brought. They'd catered in bagels from the local bagel place, and whatever empty boasts New York City made about its food, they were right in that they had the best bagels anywhere. Especially when heaped with lox and cream cheese and capers and red onions sliced so paper-thin light shone pink through them.”

“Have you thought about what you want to write about?" I shrug. "Working in Pop's Deli, I thought," I tell her. I could describe the ladies who come in on their lunch break. The old men with their oniony smells. I can talk about how I make their lives better with smoked salmon and capers, and how, even though there are fewer customers than there used to be, we've formed a community there. I can use just enough detail that it might be clear how an everything bagel is a metaphor for the whole world.”

“When I go downstairs, Pop has just lifted the metal door that covers the storefront. It rattles on its way up and sends light all through everything, the deli case and the floor I mopped till it shone last night before closing. I go to get the chopped liver and the whitefish from the walk-in fridge, shielding my hands with a second skin of latex, then scoop them into the containers. I slice up onions and lettuce and tomatoes. I set out orange-pink lox on a platter and lay down a sheet of saran wrap over it.”

“In the center of the table is a classic deli platter of lox and tuna salad with all the fixings, bagels, and cream cheeses. And on a trivet, a noodle kugel, a casserole of egg noodles suspended in a light sweet custard, with a crunchy topping of crushed cornflakes mixed with cinnamon and brown sugar. It was always my favorite thing my mom ever made. "All my favorites." My mom beams at me. "And mine too. Let's eat!" my dad says, swatting my mom on her ample tush. We make our plates, I grab a plain bagel and top one up with tuna salad and dill pickle, and the other with chive cream cheese and cucumber. I also help myself to a large corner chunk of kugel, for maximum crispy edges, and some coleslaw. Clearly someone went all the way out to Kaufman's on Dempster in Skokie; I can tell by the bagels. A slight crunch on the outside gives way to perfect dense chewiness.”

“On a table in front of her was an enormous spread from Russ & Daughters: a dozen assorted bagels, smoked mackerel, smoked salmon, three tubs of cream cheese (plain, scallion, horseradish-dill), sliced tomatoes and onions, capers, and an entire chocolate babka, plus black-and-white cookies and hamantaschen. "Can you believe all this?" asked Molly, as she chewed a giant bite of pumpernickel bagel schmeared so heavily with cream cheese it was almost an even ratio of dairy to carb. "Netflix sent this! They're worried about the campaign to get me reinstated and that I'll call them on discrimination online, which I might still do. You have to try some of this!" Their roles must've genuinely reversed, because Isabella, for the first time in her life, had forgotten to eat lunch, and she never forgot to eat lunch. This Russ & Daughters arrived at the perfect moment. "The only thing Netflix sends me is a bill," said Isabella, expertly loading up her bagel with horseradish-dill cream cheese, a few slices of smoked salmon and raw red onion, sprinkling on some capers at the end. Her father had taught her how to eat a proper bagel at Barney Greengrass, and she firmly believed that the worse it made your breath the better.”

“Mom used to walk with me for something like two or three miles to get to the day-old bakery. They had those machines where you buy doughnuts, those vending machines with the long johns and doughnuts. We would buy those bagels and pastries because that was our treat. And come back with shopping bags of these sweets, and who knows what was in it? That was what we could afford that could feed that many people.”

“That was close,"he said, helping himself to coffee. Yeah, you almost opened the door to Morelli." I wasn't talking about Morelli. I was talking about us." That too," I said. Ranger sliced a bagel and looked for the toaster. It's broken,"I told him. He truned the boiler on and slid the bagel into the oven. That's surprisingly domestic for a man of mystery," I said to him. He looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug. "I like things hot.”

“Once I was coming down a street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Cadillac about a block long, and out of the side window was a wonderfully slinky mink, and an arm, and at the end of the arm a hand in a white suede glove wrinkled around the wrist, and in the hand was a bagel with a bite out of it.”

“The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice, there are two political parties, there are a handful insurance companies, there are six or seven information centers.. but if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors. Because you have the illusion of choice!”

“I used to wonder why God used a prop like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to inflict guilt on Adam&Eve, until I realized it could have been a steak or a plate of fries or a bagel. Anything. Making people feel guilty is a staple of religion and society in general. It works. And if you can transfer guilt from a real criminal to an innocent bystander, you've really got something going. It's a magic stage trick that can make a career.”

“Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued; Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians, the restaurants made special dishes for them?”

“A gluten-free diet still allows you access to almost every fruit and vegetable, a variety of grains and legumes, your pick of dairy products, fresh meats and fish and a whole slew of special gluten-free delights to satisfy your pretzel-bagel-muffin-doughnut craving.”