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Bamboo Quotes

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Bamboo Quotes

“With each new course, he offers up little bites of the ethos that drives his cooking, the tastes and the words playing off each other like a kaiseki echo chamber. Ark shell, a bulging, bright orange clam peeking out of its dark shell, barely cooked, dusted with seaweed salt. "To add things is easy; to take them away is the challenge." Bamboo, cut into wedges, boiled in mountain water and served in a wide, shallow bowl with nothing but the cooking liquid. "How can we make the ingredient taste more like itself?With heat, with water, with knifework." Tempura: a single large clam, cloaked in a pale, soft batter with more chew than crunch. The clam snaps under gentle pressure, releasing a warm ocean of umami. "I want to make a message to the guest: this is the best possible way to cook this ingredient." A meaty fillet of eel wrapped around a thumb of burdock root, glazed with soy and mirin, grilled until crispy: a three-bite explosion that leaves you desperate for more. "The meal must go up and down, following strong flavors with subtle flavors, setting the right tone for the diner." And it does, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, until the last frothy drop of matcha is gone, signaling the end of the meal.”

CoursesSeafoodFlavorsEthosKyotoJapanese FoodBambooTempura
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“The key to great bamboo, Yamashita tells me, is space. Bamboo trees can reproduce for six years, but their roots need room to spread, and the sun needs room to bake the forest floor. More than a farmer, Yamashita is a constant gardener, pruning branches, keeping the trees to a height of six meters, using rice husk to sow nutrients into the soil. The best bamboo is found deep underground, safely away from sunlight, turning the harvest into something resembling a truffle hunt. We walk carefully and quietly through the forest, looking for little cracks in the earth that indicate a baby bamboo trying to make its way to the surface. When we spot cracks, Yamashita comes by with a small pick and gently works the soil until he reaches the bulb. Most bamboo you see is ruddy brown or purple, but Yamashita's takenoko comes out lily white, tender, and sweet enough to eat like an apple. "You have to cook it right away, otherwise you begin to lose the flavor," says Shunichi.”

GardeningKyotoBambooHarvesting
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“I can tell right away by looking at you what you want to eat," he says. "I can tell how many brothers and sisters you have." After divining my favorite color (blue) and my astrological sign (Aquarius), Nakamura pulls out an ivory stalk of takenoko, fresh young bamboo ubiquitous in Japan during the spring. "This came in this morning from Kagumi. It's so sweet that you can eat it raw." He peels off the outer layer, cuts a thin slice, and passes it across the counter. First, he scores an inch-thick bamboo steak with a ferocious santoku blade. Then he sears it in a dry sauté pan until the flesh softens and the natural sugars form a dark crust on the surface. While the bamboo cooks, he places two sacks of shirako, cod milt, under the broiler. ("Milt," by the way, is a euphemism for sperm. Cod sperm is everywhere in Japan in the winter and early spring, and despite the challenges its name might create for some, it's one of the most delicious things you can eat.) Nakamura brings it all together on a Meiji-era ceramic plate: caramelized bamboo brushed with soy, broiled cod milt topped with miso made from foraged mountain vegetables, and, for good measure, two lightly boiled fava beans. An edible postcard of spring. I take a bite, drop my chopsticks, and look up to find Nakamura staring right at me. "See, I told you I know what you want to eat." The rest of the dinner unfolds in a similar fashion: a little counter banter, a little product display, then back to transform my tastes and his ingredients into a cohesive unit. The hits keep coming: a staggering plate of sashimi filled with charbroiled tuna, surgically scored squid, thick circles of scallop, and tiny white shrimp blanketed in sea urchin: a lesson in the power of perfect product. A sparkling crab dashi topped with yuzu flowers: a meditation on the power of restraint. Warm mochi infused with cherry blossoms and topped with a crispy plank of broiled eel: a seasonal invention so delicious it defies explanation.”

SeafoodBambooJapanese CookingSashimiOsakaCohesive
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty was in constructing the carbon filament... Every quarter of the globe was ransacked by my agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials used, until finally the shred of bamboo, now utilized by us, was settled upon.”

TwoDifferentLightUsedSpeakCasesMaterialsTheoryProveConnectionsDifficultyExperimentsBeing TrueAgentsChiefsReasonableQuartersElectricGlobesCarbonExaggerationElectric LightBamboo
Author:Thomas A. Edison
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“Marriage isn't a contest to see who is most often right. Marriage requires being what the Japanese call 'the wise bamboo,' which means you bend so you don't break. Treat your spouse with the flexibility and respect you would give to a top client. Think how we treat clients; We smile, we are polite, we listen to their ideas. Never forget that your spouse is your most important client.”

ThinkingGivingMeanImportantIdeasForgetBreakWiseTreatsNever ForgetClientsPoliteSpouseContestsFlexibilityBamboo
Author:Joan Rivers
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“What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata, a physical expression of formae. Or at least have got close enough to explain all those legendary swordsmen and their inexplicable desire to roost on the tops of bamboo trees.”

YearsEnoughDesireThreeMagicTreeExpressionThousandMountainChinaFrustratedThousand YearsMonkHalfwayLegendaryInexplicableMonasteriesBambooRoostSwordsman
Book:Broken Homes
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“Once a century, all of a certain kind of bamboo flower on the same day. Whether they are in Malaysia or in a greenhouse in Minnesota makes no difference, nor does the age or size of the plant. They flower. Some current of an inner language passes between them, through space and separation, in ways we cannot explain in our language. They are all, somehow, one plant, each with a share of communal knowledge.”

WayKindDoeAgeCertainLanguageDifferencesSpaceShareCenturyFlowerPlantSizeCurrentsSeparationGreenhousesMinnesotaMalaysiaBamboo
Author:Linda Hogan
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“You can learn from an ordinary bamboo leaf what ought to happen. It bends lower and lower under the weight of snow. Suddenly the snow slips to the ground without the leaf having stirred. Stay like that at the point of highest tension until the shot falls from you. So, indeed, it is: when the tension is fulfilled, the shot must fall, it must fall from the archer like snow from a bamboo leaf, before he even thinks it.”

ThinkingHappensFallOughtHighestOrdinaryShotsWeightSnowTensionSlipsFulfilledLeafsArcherBamboo
Author:Eugen Herrigel
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“We have so many alternatives, like kenaf. It produces more crop, it's hardier, and creates incredible paper products. Why are we deforesting for pulp and paper when we have a logical and efficient solution in plants like kenaf or bamboo? It doesn't make sense to me at all. I'm inviting anyone else who thinks the same to reach out and get involved with our think tanks around creating tree free alternatives ASAP.”

ThinkingTreeProduceProductsInvolvedPaperCreatingSolutionsPlantIncrediblesAlternativesMake SenseLogicalReach OutEfficientGet InvolvedTanksCropsInvitingPulpBamboo
Author:Ian Somerhalder
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“[My muse] likes to inhabit tea leaves, sunlight filtered through bamboo, melancholy clouds over the Devon coastline, a weedy railroad crossing in the Southern States, bubblegum pop from the sixties, torch songs from the forties, undersea caves where B-movie octopi grapple with men in loincloths, sacred groves of pink anime dryads, Victorian fairy paintings executed by gentlemen in lunatic asylums and so on.”

MenStatesSongPaintingSacredCloudsPopsLikesTeaGentlemanFairyFortyMelancholySouthernSunlightSixtyMuseCavesCrossingsLunaticTorchesRailroadsAsylumsVictorianGroveAnimeBambooCoastlineDevonLunatic AsylumsTea LeavesUndersea
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
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“The Japanese are virtuosos. They make just the little accent that makes all the difference. So much there is so beautiful - just a shop window display is a work of art. Just the way they make all kinds of things out of bamboo that are so ingenious. Just the way this little bamboo drain or latch is so beautiful. The masonry around the streams to hold the bank are beautiful - and not all one kind and not just cement.”

WayKindLittlesArtBeautifulDifferencesWindowAll KindsStreamsShopsWorks Of ArtDisplayAccentsDrainsIngeniousCementMasonryBambooLatchesShop Windows
Author:Jane Jacobs
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“The legs, for example, of that chair--how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes--or was it several centuries?--not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them---or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair.”

StillsSelfCertainCasesMinutesCenturyExampleInvolvedLegsChairsAccurateMiraculousPolishedGazingBeing MyselfBamboo
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts.”

StillsStatesLightTogetherPartyFireSeaMinutesStormShipsBeastHatsShoreThanksgivingWhiskeyGet TogetherMake OutThanksgiving DayShipwreckCoconutsBamboo
Author:Michael Chabon
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“I know Mark,' I reply. 'And I don't like him.' 'But I do. And part of being social means being civil to someone you don't like.' 'That's stupid. It's a huge world. why not just get up and walk away?' 'Because that's rude,' Jess explains. 'I think it's rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you'd rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.”

ThinkingKnowsWorldMeanRealityFacesSocialWalksTalkingStupidHugeMarkSticksGet UpWhy NotYour FaceRudeFingernailsSmile On Your FaceBambooTalking To Someone
Author:Jodi Picoult
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“Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back even from the most difficult times. . . . Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. Take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly.”

EndsEnergyDifficultAbilityAttitudeGraceWindDependsNeededCircumstancesCapableCalmResilienceThriveStayingFlexibleDifficult TimesBounceStrideAdaptingBendingBamboo
Author:Ping Fu
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“Heat lingers As days are still long; Early mornings are cool While autumn is still young. Dew on the lotus Scatters pure perfume; Wind on the bamboos Gives off a gentle tinkling. I am idle and lonely, Lying down all day, Sick and decayed; No one asks for me; Thin dusk before my gates, Cassia blossoms inch deep.”

GivingLongStillsYoungLyingAsksMorningWindPureLonelySickGentleHeatAutumnGatesInchesIdlePerfumeDewOctoberDuskEarly MorningLotusesLying DownBamboo
Author:Bai Juyi
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“Sweep the garden, any size, said the roshi. Sweeping, sweeping alone as the garden grows large or small. Any song sung working the garden brings up from sand gravel soil through straw bamboo wood and less tangible elements Power song for the hands Healing song for the senses what can and cannot be perceived of the soul.”

SaidSoulHandsSongGrowsHealingElementsGardenSizeWoodsSensesSoilSandTangibleStrawsSweepingGravelBamboo
Book:Rave: poems, 1975-1999
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“The seed of a bamboo tree is planted, fertilized and watered. Nothing happens for the first year. There´s no sign of growth. Not even a hint. The same thing happens - or doesn´t happen - the second year. And then the third year. The tree is carefully watered and fertilized each year, but nothing shows. No growth. No anything. For eight years it can continue. Eight years! Then - after the eight years of fertilizing and watering have passed, with nothing to show for it - the bamboo tree suddenly sprouts and grows thirty feet in three months!”

YearsFirstsShowsHappensThreeGrowsGrowthTreeFeetMonthsThirdsEightSeedsThings HappenThirtyHintsThree MonthsSproutsBamboo
Author:Zig Ziglar
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