Exotic Food Quotes

All worries are less with wine.

Collect adventures and experiences to reminisce about…go to far places, meet new people, eat exotic foods, enjoy all varieties of women, look on unfamiliar landscapes, see new things.

If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts [...] That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on [...] That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused [...] That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer [...] That loneliness is not a function of solitude [...] That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt [...] That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness [...] That the effects of too many cups of coffee are in no way pleasant or intoxicating [...] That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...] That it is permissible to want [...] That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.

Hunger gives flavour to the food.

I want to be able to listen to recording of piano sonatas and know who's playing. I want to go to classical concerts and know when you're meant to clap. I want to be able to 'get' modern jazz without it all sounding like this terrible mistake, and I want to know who the Velvet Underground are exactly. I want to be fully engaged in the World of Ideas, I want to understand complex economics, and what people see in Bob Dylan. I want to possess radical but humane and well-informed political ideals, and I want to hold passionate but reasoned debates round wooden kitchen tables, saying things like 'define your terms!' and 'your premise is patently specious!' and then suddenly to discover that the sun's come up and we've been talking all night. I want to use words like 'eponymous' and 'solipsistic' and 'utilitarian' with confidence. I want to learn to appreciate fine wines, and exotic liquers, and fine single malts, and learn how to drink them without turning into a complete div, and to eat strange and exotic foods, plovers' eggs and lobster thermidor, things that sound barely edible, or that I can't pronounce...Most of all I want to read books; books thick as brick, leather-bound books with incredibly thin paper and those purple ribbons to mark where you left off; cheap, dusty, second-hand books of collected verse, incredibly expensive, imported books of incomprehensible essays from foregin universities. At some point I'd like to have an original idea...And all of these are the things that a university education's going to give me.

The Ache That Would Not Leave Behind the hum and routine of daily living, there lay a persistent and wild longing for something she could not easily put into words. It felt like impulsive adventures and watching the sun rise over unfamiliar mountains, or coffee in a street café, set to the background music of a foreign language. It was the smell of the ocean, with dizzying seagulls whirling in a cobalt sky; exotic foods and strange faces, in a city where no one knew her name. She wanted secrets whispered at midnight, and road trips without a map, but most of all, she ached for someone who desired to explore the mysteries that lay sleeping within her. The truly heartbreaking part was that she could feel the remaining days of her life falling away, like leaves from an autumn tree, but still this mysterious person who held the key to unlock her secrets did not arrive; they were missing, and she knew not where to find them.

Some people when they see cheese, chocolate or cake they don't think of calories.

...it was so rich and exotic I was seduced into taking one bite and then another as I tried to chase the flavors back to their source.

The tinkle of wind chimes announcing the return of our fairy guests made us both look up. Our chance to be alone was going to be shorter than either of us had hoped. I sighed and brushed an errant dragon scale from Eadric’s tunic. “Someday when we have lots of time, remind me to tell you what you mean to me.” Eadric tilted my head back so he could gaze into my eyes. “I can tell you what you mean to me with just one word.” Let me guess,” I said, smiling up at him. “Maybe I make you happy because you no longer have to enter kissing contests to find the best kisser? Do I bring excitement into your life because I can wisk you away to exotic lands on my magic carpet? Or do you find me delightful because I can conjure food whenever you’re hungry?” No, that’s not. . . Wait, what was that last one?” I laughed and shook my head. “Never mind. So tell me in one word, what do I mean to you?” That’s easy,” said Eadric. “Everything!

They don't go in for the fancy or exotic, but stick to conventional food like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats; or, as it is known in their patois, egg, sausage, bacon and a fried slice of toast.

Most people live their lives as if the end were always years away. They measure their days in love, laughter, accomplishment, and loss. There are moments of sunshine and storm. There are schedules, phone calls, careers, anxieties, joys, exotic trips, favorite foods, romance, shame, and hunger. A person can be defined by clothing, the smell of his breath, the way she combs her hair, the shape of his torso, or even the company she keeps. All over the world, children love their parents and yearn for love in return. They revel in the touch of parental hands on their faces. And even on the worst of days, each person has dreams about the future-dreams that sometimes come true. Such is life. Yet life can end in less time than it takes to draw one breath.

One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods.

Oh, but once my memories had pulsed with the blood-heat of life. In desperation, I forced myself to recall that once, I had walked with kings and conversed in languages never heard in this land. Once I had stood at the prow of a Sea Wolf ship and sailed oceans unknown to seamen here. I had ridden horses through desert lands, and dined on exotic foods in Arab tents. I had roamed Constantinople’s fabled streets, and bowed before the Holy Roman Emperor’s throne. I had been a slave, a spy, a sailor. Advisor and confidant of lords, I had served Arabs, Byzantines, and barbarians. I had worn captive’s rags, and the silken robes of a Sarazen prince. Once I had held a jeweled knife and taken a life with my own hand. Yes, and once I had held a loving woman in my arms and kissed her warm and willing lips...Death would have been far, far better than the gnawing, aching emptiness that was now my life.

Why do so many today want to wander off to South Africa or Kenya or India or Russia or Honduras or Costa Rica or Peru to help with justice issues but not spend the same effort in their own neighborhood or community or state? Why do young suburbanites, say in Chicago, want to go to Kentucky or Tennessee to help people but not want to spend that same time to go to the inner city in their own area to help with justice issues? I asked this question to a mature student in my office one day, and he thought he had a partial explanation: 'Because my generation is searching for experiences, and the more exotic and extreme the better. Going down the street to help at a food shelter is good and it is just and some of us are doing that, but it's not an experience. We want experiences.

Out of that kitchen came food not only that I had never tasted, but that I hadn’t even dreamed of tasting. Gumbo, corn jacks and blackened fish was just the start of many dishes. It was like finding all the exotic scents in the world and wrapping as many of them as you can into a dish. Cumin and coriander, paprika, red peppers, anise and fennel, burnt orange peel and chili. It felt like the sailors from every port in the world from Morocco and Madagascar to the coast of Malabar had each brought a spice with them to throw into the cooking pot.

But it’s tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it’s tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants. When I met Nick, I knew immediately that was what he wanted, and for him, I guess I was willing to try. I will accept my portion of blame. The thing is, I was crazy about him at first. I found him perversely exotic, a good ole Missouri boy. He was so damn nice to be around. He teased things out in me that I didn’t know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. It was as if he hollowed me out and filled me with feathers. He helped me be Cool Girl – I couldn’t have been Cool Girl with anyone else. I wouldn’t have wanted to. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy some of it: I ate a MoonPie, I walked barefoot, I stopped worrying. I watched dumb movies and ate chemically laced foods. I didn’t think past the first step of anything, that was the key. I drank a Coke and didn’t worry about how to recycle the can or about the acid puddling in my belly, acid so powerful it could strip clean a penny. We went to a dumb movie and I didn’t worry about the offensive sexism or the lack of minorities in meaningful roles. I didn’t even worry whether the movie made sense. I didn’t worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.

I'd probably love the sound that's made when an air guitarist gets struck by lightning while performing. I'd use that sizzle to flavor my Duck Soup. Of course, I'm open to seasoning my Duck Soup with other sounds, like Track # 3 from U2's classic 1987 hit album "The Joshua Tree." Though I might have to charge an additional $19.95 for such an exotic flavor.

I dance like my legs are made of Jell-O. I know, exotic and romantic, right? But my dancing also now comes in Duck Soup Flavor, and is FOR SALE in small, medium, and buffet-style.

The first time it was my turn to do the shopping, I overindulged my growing taste for exotic food with a bagful of goodies like smoked elk’s liver and chocolate-covered ants and mackerel-and-prune soup and curried walrus testicles. I’d sort of forgotten about the milk and the bread and the eggs. I was never allowed to shop again.

Baron Vladimir Harkonnen had made a lifetime career of seeking new experiences. He dabbled in hedonistic pleasures - rich foods, exotic drugs, deviant sex - discovering things he had never done before. But a baby in Harkonnen Keep...how would he handle that?

North Americans had two distinct ways of looking at food trends brought from other cultures: foreign and ethnic. Foreign was refined, upmarket, and expensive. Ethnic was exotic, downmarket, and cheap. French and Japanese were foreign. Chinese, Mexican, and Indian were ethnic. With ethnic, “people start to complain if a meal costs more than $10,

I learned to cook by helping my mother in the kitchen. I assisted her with the canning, and she began assigning me some other tasks like making salad dressing or kneading dough for bread. My first attempt at preparing an entire dinner¾the menu included pork chops Hawaiian, which called for the pork to be marinated in papaya nectar, ginger, cumin, and other spices before being grilled with onions and pineapple cubes¾required an extensive array of exotic ingredients. When he saw my grocery list, my father commented, “I hope she marries a rich man.

Onion tartlets, pastry puffs stuffed with cheese, a terrine of mushroom and hazelnuts. There's an pharaoh-sized pyramid of exotic fruits. The pineapples alone must have cost a small fortune. And, of course, there's the sham.

What, everyone you know has been kidnapped by pirates and forced to chop octopus in a kitchen that smells like a whale's stomach?" "Quite a lot of them, yes," said Trudi, who appeared to be one of those people who'd heard of sarcasm but thought it was some sort of exotic fruit like a pineapple.

People allow India to exist only in two versions: In the first, everything is too beautiful to be encapsulated, women are swarthy and hippy, shoeless boys play soccer in dirt roads, elephants roam the streets, and temples are merely there for your enjoyment. In the second, India is a country lurching forward awkwardly, suffering a rape epidemic, incapable of a feminist movement or proper health care, a place where people shit and piss in the streets, where the caste system has ruined entire generations, where poverty is so rampant and depressing that you'll hardly make it out with your soul intact, where your IT centre is based, a place just close enough to Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan to be scary, but stable enough to be fun and exotic. Because, boy, isn't the food good, and aren't the landmarks something, and hasn't everyone there figured out a kind of profound meditative inner peace that we should all learn from? Like all things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. A place, any place, can be beautiful and perfect and damaged and dangerous at the same time.

Food stall owners reach out with menus, calling out their dinner selections like midway prizes

my parents are Mexican who are not to be confused with Mexican Americans or Chicanos. i am a Chicano from Chicago which means i am a Mexican American with a fancy college degree & a few tattoos. my parents are Mexican who are not to be confused with Mexicans still living in México. those Mexicans call themselves mexicanos. white folks at parties call them pobrecitos. American colleges call them international students & diverse. my mom was white in México & my dad was mestizo & after they crossed the border they became diverse. & minorities. & ethnic. & exotic. but my parents call themselves mexicanos, who, again, should not be confused for mexicanos living in México. those mexicanos might call my family gringos, which is the word my family calls white folks & white folks call my parents interracial. colleges say put them on a brochure. my parents say que significa esa palabra. i point out that all the men in my family marry lighter-skinned women. that’s the Chicano in me. which means it’s the fancy college degrees in me, which is also diverse of me. everything in me is diverse even when i eat American foods like hamburgers, which, to clarify, are American when a white person eats them & diverse when my family eats them. so much of America can be understood like this.

They must also inflate “buildings”—domed, pressurized tents made of exotic materials that will increase their living area and act as greenhouses in which to grow food. Some environmental similarities

The curse of comfort--defaulting to the familiar and accessible--wouldn't matter so much if the only place it led you was down the supermarket aisle, past the unfamiliar and difficult-to-pronounce exotic foods, and straight to your favorite brand of peanut butter. Its impact, though, is much more insidious and far-reaching. It can lead to mistakes that waste our time and keep us from getting where we want to go--sometimes literally.

Another New Year's dawned, new opportunities and difficulties are sneaking around you. To take hold of good and let go bad, face the new challenges and open the new chances to anew your life again. Everyday train your brain to solve all difficulties and transform them into opportunities, get rich mentally, physically and financially. Love your family, friends, colleagues and all folks surrounded by you. Take care of your health, children, wealth and travel new exotic places, people and enjoy good food. Life is very short, fully enjoy it. Embrace new ideas, knowledge and every opportunity. And always surround yourself with good people and avoid toxic and negative people to secure your peace of mind and dignity. I wholeheartedly and boldly set my plan as is the best year of my life for financial freedom, good health, richness, love, care and abundance. I do solemnly yearn for the folks around the world a thoroughly Peaceful, Happy and Beautiful New Year free from hunger, poverty, disease, inequality, war and conflict.

A Wrong Planet Chef always take an interest in the origins of the food he cooks. A particular dish of vegetables, herbs and spices could, for instance, have begun life 5000 years ago on the Indian subcontinent, perhaps in Central India where vegetarian Hindi food is considered as God (Brahman) as it sustains the entire physical, mental, emotional and sensual aspects of the human being. The dish may then have migrated to the Punjab region of the Indian-Pakistan border - The Land of Five Waters - around 250 BC, and from here could have moved on to Western Asia or North Africa as soldiers and merchants moved west with their families into the Eastern parts of the Roman empire, where the cooks would have experimented with new combinations of food, adding fruits, shellfish or poultry to the exotic dish. The dish could then have travelled in any direction heading North through Germany or Sweden to Britain or maybe migrating through Persia or North Africa to Spain and Portugal, creating two very distinct and separate menus but meeting once again in France

I’d met him on OkCupid. He had straw-blond hair, skin perpetually at the end phase of a sunburn. He looked like a SoCal surfer. The entire time we’d messaged back and forth I’d wondered if I was the first black girl he’d ever asked out, if he was checking some kind of box off his list of new and exotic things he’d like to try, like the Korean food in front of us, which he had already given up on.

People come to New Orleans to forget themselves and party like a pagan. They gorge themselves on exotic spicy foods and five to seven course meals, taking hours to consume. They behave badly in bars and routinely encourage their willing female counterparts to flash their tits for cheap plastic beads. Beads women would never wear anywhere else but in New Orleans become triumphant symbols of one’s insatiable allure.

The story was simple: a child named Amanda Pine, who enjoyed food in a way some therapists consider significant, was eating Madeline’s lunch. This was because Madeline’s lunch was not average. While all the other children gummed their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Madeline opened her lunch box to find a thick slice of leftover lasagna, a side helping of buttery zucchini, an exotic kiwi cut into quarters, five pearly round cherry tomatoes, a tiny Morton salt shaker, two still-warm chocolate chip cookies, and a red plaid thermos full of ice-cold milk. These contents were why everyone wanted Madeline’s lunch, Madeline included. But Madeline offered it to Amanda because friendship requires sacrifice, but also because Amanda was the only one in the entire school who didn’t make fun of the odd child Madeline already knew she was.

Dana daydreamed of one day being able to set her agenda at B.Altman with the same courage and tenacity as the woman who was now driving the VW while speaking animatedly about her travel plans for the near future. She would be journeying to India in search of exotic merchandise for the store’s Indian extravaganza, a lavish event planned by Ira Neimark and Dawn Mello to compete with Bloomingdale’s Retailing as Theater movement. The movement was the brainchild of Bloomingdale’s Marvin Traub, who staged elaborate presentations such as China: Heralding the Dawn of a New Era. Typical extravaganzas featured fashion, clothing, food, and art from various regions of the world. “I’ll bring back enough items to make Bloomingdale’s blush!” Nina said confidently. “And I’m not just talking sweaters, hats, and walking sticks. I’ll stop first in the Himalayas and prowl the Landour Bazaar.” Lynn Steward ~ A Very Good Life

So, what's your poison, Jay?" Zara joined the buffet line a few minutes later. "Let me guess. Something dark and spicy that packs a lot of heat. Maybe a rista? Or a naga curry?" She studied him, shaking her head. "Hmmm. Not so exotic. I think you're more of a vindaloo. Rich and complicated with hidden depths. Every bite satiates your taste buds and leaves you craving more." Unsettled by her seemingly casual yet unnervingly accurate assessment, he turned his attention to filling his plate from the lavish spread.

Eating a meal in Japan is said to be a communion with nature. This particularly holds true for both tea and restaurant kaiseki, where foods at their peak of freshness reflect the seasonal spirit of that month. The seasonal spirit for November, for example, is "Beginning Anew," because according to the old Japanese lunar calendar, November marks the start of the new tea year. The spring tea leaves that had been placed in sealed jars to mature are ready to grind into tea. The foods used for a tea kaiseki should carry out this seasonal theme and be available locally, not flown in from some exotic locale. For December, the spirit is "Freshness and Cold." Thus, the colors of the guests' kimonos should be dark and subdued for winter, while the incense that permeates the tearoom after the meal should be rich and spicy. The scroll David chose to hang in the alcove during the tea kaiseki no doubt depicted winter, through either words or an ink drawing. As for the flowers that would replace the scroll for the tea ceremony, David likely would incorporate a branch of pine to create a subtle link with the pine needle-shaped piece of yuzu zest we had placed in the climactic dish. Both hinted at the winter season and coming of New Year's, one of David's underlying themes for the tea kaiseki. Some of the guests might never make the pine needle connection, but it was there to delight those who did.

Decorated in exotic tones of saffron, gold, ruby, and cinnamon with accent walls representing the natural movement of wind and fire, and a cascading waterfall layered with beautiful landscaped artificial rocks and tiny plastic animals, the restaurant was the embodiment of her late brother's dream to re-create "India" in the heart of San Francisco. The familiar scents- cinnamon, pungent turmeric, and smoky cumin- brought back memories of evenings spent stirring dal, chopping onions, and rolling roti in the bustling kitchen of her parents' first restaurant in Sunnyvale under the watchful army of chefs who followed the recipes developed by her parents. What had seemed fun as a child, and an imposition as a teenager, now filled her with a warm sense of nostalgia, although she would have liked just one moment of her mother's time.

Then just when I thought I was going to really break down for a good cry, I remembered a large bag of pistachio nuts in the back of the pantry. I don't know what made me think of them. I had hidden them beneath several packages of dried pasta. Sam liked pistachio nuts. I bought them for a cake recipe I had seen in Gourmet. I stood up like a sleepwalker, my hands empty of sheets or shoes. I would take care of all this once the cake was in the oven. The recipe was from several months ago. I didn't remember which issue. I would find it. I would bake a cake. My father liked exotic things. On the rare occasions we went out to dinner together over the years, he always wanted us to go to some little Ethiopian restaurant down a back alley or he would say he had to have Mongolian food. He would like this cake. It was Iranian. There was a full tablespoon of cardamom sifted in with the flour, and I could imagine that it would make the cake taste nearly peppered, which would serve to balance out all the salt. I stood in the kitchen, reading the magazine while the sharp husks of the nuts bit into the pads of my fingers. I rolled the nut meat between my palms until the bright spring green of the pistachios shone in my hands, a fist full of emeralds. I would grind the nuts into powder without letting them turn to paste. I would butter the parchment paper and line the bottom of the pan. It was the steps, the clear and simple rules baking, that soothed me. My father would love this cake, and my mother would find this cake interesting, and Sam wouldn't be crazy about it but he'd be hungry and have a slice anyway. Maybe I could convince Camille it wasn't a cake at all. Maybe I could bring them all together, or at least that's what I dreamed about while I measured out the oil.

... the exotic spices arriving daily from the East Indies and the Americas, the crates of sweet oranges and bitter lemons from Sicily, the apricots from Mesopotamia, the olive oil from Naples, the almonds from the Jordan valley... I have seen and smelled these delicacies at market. But does any English person know how to cook with such foods? I think back to my time in France and Italy, of all the delicacies that passed across my tongue. And then to the gardens I've seen in Tonbridge with their raised beds of sorrel, lettuce, cucumbers, marrows, pumpkins. Already the banks are starred bright with blackberries and rose hips, with damsons and sour sloes, the bloom still upon them. Trees are weighted down with green apples and yellow mottled pears and crab apples flushed pink and gold. Soon there will be fresh cobnuts in their husks, and ripe walnuts, and field mushrooms, and giant puffballs.

I shared my love of books with Benny, but Aunt Yolanda opened my eyes to the world of food as art, cooking without cans. She introduced me to the magic of spices, the exotic perfume of fresh herbs crushed between fingers. Younger than my mother, she was rounded in just the right spots, from her love of good food, and when we talked she looked right at me and listened, nodding and laughing loudly when I'd tell jokes, holding my hand when we'd walk, as if we were best friends or sisters. She liked Anne and Christine, too, but I could tell I was her favorite. She took me with her on shopping trips, to the fish market near the waterfront and the farm stands out west. Sometimes she'd journey to the Asian grocers in Northeast Portland or the hippie vegetarian markets on Hawthorne to find something special. We'd come home laden with ingredients that I knew my mother had never heard of, and the resulting feasts would fill me with a yearning to go to different places, to try new things.

The night before, Um-Nadia came over with her small wooden box stuffed with handwritten recipes, dishes Um-Nadia hadn't prepared or eaten in the thirty-five years since she and Mireille had left Lebanon. Some were recipes for simple, elegant dishes of rice pilafs and roasted meats, others were more exotic dishes of steamed whole pigeons and couscous or braised lambs' brains in broth. And they discussed ingredients and techniques until late in the night. Um-Nadia eventually fell asleep on the hard couch in the living room, while Sirine's uncle dozed across from her in his armchair. But Sirine stayed up all night, checking recipes, chopping, and preparing. She looked up Iraqi dishes, trying to find the childhood foods that she'd heard Han speak of, the sfeehas- savory pies stuffed with meat and spinach- and round mensaf trays piled with lamb and rice and yogurt sauce with onions, and for dessert, tender ma'mul cookies that dissolve in the mouth. She stuffed the turkey with rice, onions, cinnamon, and ground lamb. Now there are pans of sautéed greens with bittersweet vinegar, and lentils with tomato, onion, and garlic on the stove, as well as maple-glazed sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin soufflé.

In the half darkness, piles of fish rose on either side of him, and the pungent stink of fish guts assaulted his nostrils. On his left hung a whole tuna, its side notched to the spine to show the quality of the flesh. On his right a pile of huge pesce spada, swordfish, lay tumbled together in a crate, their swords protruding lethally to catch the legs of unwary passersby. And on a long marble slab in front of him, on a heap of crushed ice dotted here and there with bright yellow lemons, where the shellfish and smaller fry. There were ricco di mare---sea urchins---in abundance, and oysters, too, but there were also more exotic delicacies---polpi, octopus; aragosti, clawless crayfish; datteri di mare, sea dates; and grancevole, soft-shelled spider crabs, still alive and kept in a bucket to prevent them from making their escape. Bruno also recognized tartufo di mare, the so-called sea truffle, and, right at the back, an even greater prize: a heap of gleaming cicale. Cicale are a cross between a large prawn and a small lobster, with long, slender front claws. Traditionally, they are eaten on the harbor front, fresh from the boat. First their backs are split open. Then they are marinated for an hour or so in olive oil, bread crumbs, salt, and plenty of black pepper, before being grilled over very hot embers. When you have pulled them from the embers with your fingers, you spread the charred, butterfly-shaped shell open and guzzle the meat col bacio----"with a kiss," leaving you with a glistening mustache of smoky olive oil, greasy fingers, and a tingling tongue from licking the last peppery crevices of the shell. Bruno asked politely if he could handle some of the produce. The old man in charge of the display waved him on. He would have expected nothing less. Bruno raised a cicala to his nose and sniffed. It smelled of ozone, seaweed, saltwater, and that indefinable reek of ocean coldness that flavors all the freshest seafood. He nodded. It was perfect.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.

Their Graces bought me, you know. They’d acquired my brother Devlin the year before, and my mother, inspired by this development, threatened to publish all manner of lurid memoirs regarding His Grace.” Acquired her brother? As if he were a promising yearling colt or an attractive patch of ground? “You are going to burden me with the details of your family past, I take it?” “You are the man who glories in details.” Without the least rude inflection, she made it sound like a failing. “My point is that my mother sold me. She could just as easily have sold me to a brothel. It’s done all the time. Unlike your sisters, Mr. Hazlit, I do not take for granted the propriety with which I was raised. You may ignore it if you please; I will not.” She had such a lovely voice. Light, soft, lilting with a hint of something Gaelic or Celtic… exotic. The sound of her voice was so pretty, it almost disguised the ugliness of her words. “How old were you?” “Five, possibly six. It depends on whether I am truly Moreland’s by-blow or just a result of my mother’s schemes in his direction.” Six years old and sold to a brothel? The food he’d eaten threatened to rebel. “I’m… sorry.” For calling her a dollymop, for making her repeat this miserable tale, for what he was about to suggest. She turned her head to regard him, the slight sheen in her eyes making him sorrier still. Sorrier than he could recall being about anything in a long, long time. Not just guilty and ashamed, but full of regret—for her. The way he’d been full of regret for his sisters and powerless to do anything but support them in their solitary struggles. He shoved that thought aside, along with the odd notion that he should take Magdalene Windham’s hand in some laughable gesture of comfort. He passed her his handkerchief instead. “This makes the stated purpose of my call somewhat awkward.” “It makes just about everything somewhat awkward,” she said quietly. “Try a few years at finishing school when you’re the daughter of not just a courtesan—there are some of those, after all—but a courtesan who sells her offspring. I realized fairly early that my mother’s great failing was not a lack of virtue, but rather that she was greedy in her fall from grace.” “She exploited a child,” Hazlit said. “That is an order of magnitude different from parlaying with an adult male in a transaction of mutual benefit.” “Do you think so?” She laid his handkerchief out in her lap, her fingers running over his monogrammed initials. “Some might say she was protecting me, providing for me and holding the duke accountable for his youthful indiscretions.” Despite her mild tone, Hazlit didn’t think Miss Windham would reach those conclusions. She might long to, but she wouldn’t. By the age of six a child usually had the measure of her caretakers. And to think of Maggie Windham at six… big innocent green eyes, masses of red hair, perfect skin… in a brothel. “I

Eat dairy products. Enjoy cheese, another wonderfully diverse food. Recall that fat is not the issue, so enjoy familiar full-fat cheeses such as Swiss or Cheddar, or exotic cheeses such as Stilton, Crotin du Chavignol, Edam, or Comté. Cheese serves as a wonderful snack or the centerpiece of a meal. Other dairy products such as cottage cheese, yogurt, milk, and butter should be consumed in limited quantities of no more than one or two servings per day.

Remember, the IMAGE of yourself and the lifestyle you're living on a daily basis appreciates with time, it doesn't depreciate. So imagine looking at your Instagram photos in the next 30 years. I can almost guarantee you with 100% certainty that it's those photos that you took when you were in your most heightened sensual frequency (maybe because you just had a new hairdo, or new pair of Louboutins, or your romantic relationship was lit, or you were about to eat some exotic food at some fancy restaurant, or you had a spa day, or you flew to Dubai or Paris for a baecation), that you're going to CHERISH the most.

Home Cooking: The Comforts of Old Family Favorites." Easy. Baked macaroni and cheese with crunchy bread crumbs on top; simple mashed potatoes with no garlic and lots of cream and butter; meatloaf with sage and a sweet tomato sauce topping. Not that I experienced these things in my house growing up, but these are the foods everyone thinks of as old family favorites, only improved. If nothing else, my job is to create a dreamlike state for readers in which they feel that everything will be all right if only they find just the right recipe to bring their kids back to the table, seduce their husbands into loving them again, making their friends and neighbors envious. I'm tapping my keyboard, thinking, what else?, when it hits me like a soft thud in the chest. I want to write about my family's favorites, the strange foods that comforted us in tense moments around the dinner table. Mom's Midwestern "hot dish": layers of browned hamburger, canned vegetable soup, canned sliced potatoes, topped with canned cream of mushroom soup. I haven't tasted it in years. Her lime Jell-O salad with cottage cheese, walnuts, and canned pineapple, her potato salad with French dressing instead of mayo. I have a craving, too, for Dad's grilling marinade. "Shecret Shauce" he called it in those rare moments of levity when he'd perform the one culinary task he was willing to do. I'd lean shyly against the counter and watch as he poured ingredients into a rectangular cake pan. Vegetable oil, soy sauce, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and then he'd finish it off with the secret ingredient: a can of fruit cocktail. Somehow the sweetness of the syrup was perfect against the salty soy and the biting garlic. Everything he cooked on the grill, save hamburgers and hot dogs, first bathed in this marinade overnight in the refrigerator. Rump roasts, pork chops, chicken legs all seemed more exotic this way, and dinner guests raved at Dad's genius on the grill. They were never the wiser to the secret of his sauce because the fruit bits had been safely washed into the garbage disposal.

Dear Friends & Folks, "Another New Year's dawned, new opportunities and difficulties are sneaking around. To take hold of good and let go bad, face the new challenges and open the new chances to anew your life again. Everyday train your brain to solve all difficulties and transform them into opportunities, get rich mentally, physically and financially. Love your family, friends, colleagues and all folks surrounded by you. Take care of your health, children, wealth and travel new exotic places, people and take good food. And enjoy life fullest as it is very short... Embrace new ideas, knowledge, and every opportunity. And always surround yourself with good people and avoid toxic and negative people to secure your peace of mind and dignity. I wholeheartedly and boldly set my plan as is the best year of my life for financial freedom, good health, richness, love, care, and abundance. May all your Dreams, Hopes and Wishes Come True This New Year. Very 'Happy New Year 2019' to All Of You." From, Lord Robin

With six thousand miles separating me from sleep, I stumbled down into the subway at dawn and emerged on the outskirts of the Tsukiji market just as the sun broke across Tokyo Bay. Inside the market, I saw the entire ocean on display: swollen-bellied salmon, dark disks of abalone, vast armies of exotic crustaceans, conger eels so shiny and new they looked to be napping in their Styrofoam boxes. I stumbled onward to a tuna auction, where a man in a trader's cap worked his way through a hundred silver carcasses scattered across the cement floor, using a system of rapid hand motions and guttural noises unintelligible to all but a select group of tuna savants. When the auction ended, I followed one of the bodies back to its buyer's stall, where a man and his son used band saw, katana blade, cleaver, and fillet knife to work the massive fish down into sellable components: sinewy tail meat for the cheap izakaya, ruby loins for hotel restaurants, blocks of marbled belly for the high-end sushi temples. By 8:00 a.m. I was starving. First, a sushi feast, a twelve-piece procession of Tsukiji's finest- fat-frizzled bluefin, chewy surf clam, a custardy slab of Hokkaido uni- washed down with frosty glasses of Kirin. Then a bowl of warm soba from the outer market, crowned at the last second with a golden nest of vegetable tempura.

The restaurant owner brought them wine, pale and golden and cool. There were just four oysters each, and when they were all gone they turned their attention to the cecinella. After the soft shapeless texture of the oysters these were almost the opposite: hard, crunchy skeletons whose flavor was all on the outside, a crisp bite of garlic and peperone that dissolved to nothing in your mouth. The ricci, or sea urchins, were another taste again, salty and exotic and rich. It was hard to believe that he had once thought they could be an austerity measure. After that they were brought without being asked a dish of baby octopus, cooked with tomatoes and wine mixed with the rich, gamey ink of a squid. For dessert the owner brought them two peaches. Their skins were wrinkled and almost bruised, but the flesh, when James cut into it with his knife, was unspoiled and perfectly ripe, so dark it was almost black. He was about to put a slice into his mouth when Livia stopped him. "Not like that. This is how we eat peaches here." She cut a chunk from the peach into her wine, then held the glass to his lips. He took it, tipping the wine and fruit together into his mouth. It was a delicious, sensual cascade of sensations, the sweet wine and the sweet peach rolling around his mouth before finally, he had to bite it, releasing the fruit's sugary juices. It was like the oyster all over again, a completely undreamt-of experience, and one that he found stirringly sexual, in some strange way that he couldn't have defined.

Then, a pea shoot and foie gras wheel with a small butter knife. Michael Saltz and I stared at it, confounded by how it worked. It stood on its side like an ancient monument, with various crinkly and crackly things at its base. "Just cut it," the waiter said kindly. He looked like Pascal Lite, not as exotic or statuesque, but with a bit of Pascal's twinkle and good-boy-with-a-lot-of-tattoos edge. I slid the knife down. At first nothing happened. The foie gras clung to itself, until it peeled apart sleepily and a green, milky liquid bled out. "Wow," I said. "Wow," Michael Saltz said. I took a soft forkful of foie gras and dragged it through the pea shoot sauce and the brown crumbles and white flakes. I rubbed the foie gras against the roof of my mouth, and it stuck there with a sticky stubbornness, then melted away. The taste coursed through my body, a slippery, moody, gutsy smoothness that slithered and pushed and screamed down my throat. Oh, Pascal, I thought. If I couldn't be with him, this came close. I flashed back to three nights ago and the pleasure cascaded through me once more.

Most people live their lives as if the end were always years away. They measure their days in love, laughter, accomplishment, and loss. There are moments of sunshine and storm. There are schedules, phone calls, careers, anxieties, joys, exotic trips, favorite foods, romance, shame, and hunger. A person can be defined by clothing, the smell of his breath, the way she combs her hair, the shape of his torso, or even the company she keeps.

The meal she served was unlike any I had encountered in Vienna, or anywhere else: red seaweed garnished with pickled radishes; black rice noodles and spotted mushrooms boiled in wine, grilled squid stuffed with flying fish roe; and yellow cherries sauteed in butter. The hot bread was laced with cinnamon and paprika. The goat cheese was coated with thyme honey.

Whether she was writing to tell her followers about a local cheesemaker, a new farm-to-table restaurant, or what to do with an exotic heirloom fruit that was organically produced and newly marketed, she spent hours each day scouring Philadelphia and the outlying towns for material.

To begin with, she would focus on tried-and-true dishes that she loved to make and which she knew would turn a profit. She had a petite filet mignon planned, which she would rotate with different sauces, but she would keep lobster and lump crabmeat confined to supporting roles with fresh pasta, in ravioli and in sauces, rather than serving up whole Maine lobsters at "market price." Her Chicken Cacciatore de Provence was an upscale twist on a farmhouse classic that paired her love of exotic mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and fresh herbs with imminently affordable cuts of chicken. She wanted to serve a Spiral Stuffed Pork Loin in a savory reduction with yam patties and fresh garden peas, in season, which lent itself to a marvelous visual presentation and tasted like Thanksgiving dinner all on one plate.

They don’t go in for the fancy or exotic, but stick to conventional food like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats; or, as it is known in their patois, egg, soss and bacon and a fried slice.

Gerald and I saw the Azore Islands, Talcahuano, Tumbez, San Francisco, and Nome from afar while the captain and officers rowed to shore for fresh food and fresh whalers. Even at Nome, not two days ago, Gerald and I watched the Alaskan town from the ship. We saw Talcahuano at night, the town alive with lights and torches. We heard music across the water. People celebrated an event on shore. We thought it might be a wedding. We imagined walking the clay, brick roads, ordering crabs and clams near the sea, sampling the local exotic fruits and plants growing in their vibrant colors and prickly skins, and of course, seducing the dark- skinned indigenous women emanating macadamia oil, musk, and leafy air. Merihim laughed at our children’s eyes and said to act like men, not like guttersnipes at a bakery window.

We went there for an anniversary. It was Trevor’s idea. Trevor’s the traveller,’ Noonan continued. Trevor was her husband. ‘Enjoying the place you get to is one thing. But Trevor has this thing for the travel itself; the luggage and the security lines, the time zones, the little trays of food with the foil lids you peel back they give you onboard, and these days having to drag a pair of mewling teenage boys everywhere with us. Trevor gets giddy at all of it, somehow. Me, I could live a long happy life never going through a metal detector again. You ever been anywhere exotic, Pronsius?’ ‘I been the far side of Belmullet.’ ‘Good man.’ ‘Ah,’ Swift sighed, ‘I’ve no interest, really. Wherever I am, that’s where I like.’ ‘A man after my own heart.

In his translator’s introduction to Rosa’s book Social Acceleration, Jonathan Trejo-Mathys writes: "The more we can accelerate our ability to go to different places, see new things, try new foods, embrace various forms of spirituality, learn new activities, share sensual pleasures with others whether it be in dancing or sex, experience different forms of art, and so on, the less incongruence there is between the possibilities of experience we can realize in our own lifetimes and the total array of possibilities available to human beings now and in the future—that is, the closer we come to having a truly "fulfilled" life, in the literal sense of one that is as filled full of experiences as it can possibly be." So the retiree ticking exotic destinations off a bucket list and the hedonist stuffing her weekends full of fun are arguably just as overwhelmed as the exhausted social worker or corporate lawyer.

I am your instrument, I am the exotic fruit of your teeth, I am the food for your insane appetites, I am the drug that makes you die and rise again, the gravestone that crushes and makes you eternal, I am the chisel that sculpts you from within, in a star-filled cavern, I am your fated instrument, I am made for you.

I was drunk. I was happy. If not THE perfect meal, this was, in many ways, a perfect one. Good food, good company, exotic ambiance, and an element of adventure.

Sometimes she felt much like a natural philosopher watching exotic animals in their native habitat. What she had always suspected was confirmed by life aboard the Fancy--men were simple creatures with uncomplicated brains. They wanted food, and drink, and fighting, and sexual congress. They were impressed with their own body's ability to make noise and odor. Their idea of humor was at best crude, at worst painful, yet even after some of the bizarre practical jokes that brought men to her sick bay they were still laughing and bragging about whatever insane thing they'd done that got them in that condition.

You really can't go wrong with the food at any Jewish holiday. Well, with the exception of Passover, because matzah is terrible and eight days of no carbs but matzah and potatoes can have you crying for pizza by the end. But think bagels and lox to break the Yom Kippur fast. All sorts of exotic fruits on Tu B'Shevat. Brisket and tzimmes and noodle kugel for pretty much any occasion. And that's only the Ashkenazi food; I'd been treated to Sephardic and Mizrahi food occasionally at friends' houses growing up, and I remembered fish cooked in spicy tomato sauce, tangines with chickpeas and saffron, Yemenite braided bread with whole eggs hidden in the twists. But Hanukkah food? Because Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the oil, it's basically a mitzvah to eat fried foods for the holiday. And doing a good deed by eating French fries or doughnuts is the absolute best way to do a good deed.

Viewed from the aisles of a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, plummeting nutritional diversity might seem like an overblown threat. We live in a time, after all, when you can find calzone in Tokyo, fajitas in Rome, and sushi in the Mall of America, and when high-end supermarkets stock organic beef, micro brews, heirloom tomatoes, kale, matcha smoothies, and once-exotic cereals like quinoa, amaranth, and spelt. But this apparent embarrassment of riches obscures a poverty of nutritional content and genetic diversity.

As for restaurants, one of our favorites is the Silk Road next door to the Tibetan Choijin Lama Museum. It's a very exotic setting. The western food there is pretty good. We also liked the Hazara Restaurant for its Indian food, and the Mongolian Barbecue restaurant. All are downtown.

I don’t have an insatiable desire to discover what makes something taste good or to find exotic combinations. I guess I’m not that bored.

Virgin Food Orgy A rich friend of mine, Richard Branson, sent me an invitation to his book launch party. The invite read, 'Come to our Virgin Food Orgy. Treat yourself to our $100,000 buffet of exotic and erotic treats.' I came to the party, stuffed $1000 of caviar into a dozen condoms and swallowed them like a Colombian drug mule. Great fucking party!

Goji Berries Really Cure Cancer? The problem with these exotic berries and the juices made from them (Goji, noni, acai) isn’t that they’re not incredibly healthy foods—they are. Foods that have been used in medical and healing traditions

My first bite of waffle is perfect, buttery and warm, and I wonder if the food really tastes as good as it does, or if we’re all so happy that our joy is sprinkling onto our plates like some sort of exotic spice, making everything that much tastier.

When you live in Jersey a beach isn’t enough. People have energy in Jersey. They need things to do. They need a beach with a boardwalk. And the boardwalk has to be filled with rides and games and crappy food. Add some miniature golf. Throw in a bunch of stores selling T-shirts with offensive pictures. Life doesn’t get much better than this. And the best part is the smell. I’ve been told there are places where the ocean smells wild and briny. In Jersey the ocean smells of coconut-scented suntan lotion and Italian sausage smothered in fried onions and peppers. It smells like deep-fried zeppoles and chili hot dogs. The scent is intoxicating and exotic as it expands in the heat rising from crowds of sun-baked bodies strolling the boardwalk. Surf surges onto the beach and the sound is mingled with the rhythmic tick, tick, tick of the spinning game wheels and the highpitched Eeeeeeee of thrill seekers being hurtled down the log flume. Rock stars, pickpockets, homies, pimps, pushers, pregnant women in bikinis, future astronauts, politicians, geeks, ghouls, and droves of families who buy American and eat Italian all come to the Jersey shore.

What we once found thrilling, we now take for granted—exotic foods, illicit drugs, attractive sex partners. The more you get, the more you want. So things that make us feel good in the moment are doomed to lose some of their luster. Although there’s nothing inherently wrong with feeling good in the moment, continually seeking more is obviously not the best path to happiness.

Dear sweet Grace," Meg began, "men are like a buffet. There are all sorts of different 'flavors,' if you will, for you to sample. Exotic, spicy, foreign, sweet. However, you tend to keep going to the comfort food section of the buffet. How many times can you eat fried chicken before it make you sick?

Since little merchandise was available in the stores, because of the war, Romanians bought whatever they could buy cheaply from desperate Jews. I remember, I had a Japanese long house dress, with a zipper. That was a very exotic-looking dress in Europe. I had worn it at the masked ball on New Year's eve in 1940-41. Yet during the war years that was sold too, we needed food daily, we needed fire wood for cooking and heating.

After making my way through a bowl full of lawn (Sure, Dana had said it was exotic sautéed greens, but it smelled like the grass in Griffith Park to me.), a cold purée of squash soup (Cold. Squash. Two words that should never be thrown together in the same recipe.), and a platter of seared kelp (I'm sorry, anything that washes up onto the beach is not considered food in my world.), I

Soon after Tyson bought Washington Creamery in 1966, the company began catering to the perception that game hens were some kind of luxury item, calling them “Cornish game hens.” There was an exotic appeal to the product, the air of nobility to it, as if it were the kind of dish that was served by butlers after a fox hunt. Haskell Jackson marveled at the gimmickry of it. All of Tyson’s chickens were Cornish birds, as Jackson and others in the industry knew. The Cornish breed had been selected as the industry standard because it grew fast. The only difference between a Cornish game hen and an ice-packed chicken was that you killed the game hen when it was younger. It was just a smaller chicken, wrapped in plastic and frozen, given a better name and sold at a fixed price. But the strategy worked.

He was a firm believer that the best meals were made by holding dead things over a fire until they smelled good. As far as he was concerned, the tiny pile of twisted fruits and exotic extracts set before him was blasphemy.

The desert madness." He'd never been to Africa, but he'd seen plenty of remote places and what they did to men. "Lots of them get it. They've nothing to do but brood. Time treats them badly. It stretches worse here because the liquor stinks and there aren't any women. The place just uses them up. Even their assholes get raw from the sand." "I'll never let the desert affect me as it does them," Paul said. "I'll go home first." Remy couldn't help mocking Paul gently for his naïve enthusiasm. "I think you take it a bit far the other way. Let me see if I understand your point of view. In the market there are clouds of flies competing with swarms of beggars for the pleasure of eating camel shit mixed with rotting vegetables. What they can't stomach the cook picks up. He spices it up nicely with some old spit and smears it on top of a mixture of couscous, peb- bles, and sand. Then he dishes it back to you, at six times the price he'd charge anyone else. You know what you're eating-you watch him prepare it-but all the same you enjoy it, because it's exotic." "That's about it." Paul smiled. "L'haute cuisine d'Afrique." Remy roared.

Finally, each night, the crowd gather at the king's antechamber to attend the dinner of the Royal Table. Another grand ritual: four soups--- his favorite being crayfish in a silver bowl--- sole in a small dish, fried eggs, a whole pheasant with redcurrant jelly, a whole partridge or duck (depending on the season) stuffed with truffles, salads, mutton, ham, pastry, fruit, compote, preserves, cakes. All stone-cold, for the kitchen is so far away that the king has never experienced a hot meal, and eaten largely with hands, for nor has he ever touched that new-fangled device the fork. For special occasions entire tiered gardens of desserts form pyramids on the table: precariously balanced exotic fruits, jellies, and sweet pastes; sorbets scented with amber and musk; the wonders of the ancient world recreated in spun-sugar and pâte morte; gingerbread palaces.

She took a sip of wine and held it in her mouth, straining to identify the flavors. Cherry, she thought. Licorice. Thorns. She imagined a forest in late autumn, damp leaves on the ground, a blaze of color. She took another sip. The man--- he must be Robert--- set a dish in front of her and she looked down, dismayed. What could it be? She'd never seen anything like it. It glistened up at her, a red-black sausage bursting from a shiny case. She inhaled the aroma: It was exotic, mysterious, almost intoxicating. "Taste it," he urged. It was pillow-soft, very rich, laced with spices. She identified the prickle of black pepper, the sweetness of onions. Parsley, she thought, nutmeg, and... was that chocolate? Bite by bite she chased the flavors, but they kept skipping away. "Did you like it?" Robert was back. She gestured at the empty plate. "It was wonderful. What kind of meat was in it?" "Not meat, exactly." He watched her face as he said, "That was blood sausage.

Let me tell you what is insane and irrational. Corporate-based agribusiness that relies on mono-crop specialization for export and huge inputs of petroleum-based fertilizer... that harms local ecosystems and drives peasants from the countryside into the cities, into shantytowns and slums... that’s insane. Turning lands previously geared to food cultivation into land to grow fuel crops like ethanol, and the development of an export-oriented agriculture where you have exotic flowers being raised for export while poor people go hungry... that’s insane. Making countries become increasingly dependent on the world market for food staples that are subject to the vagaries of world prices... that is the height of irrationality and insanity.

Occasionally, the only unpalatable difference between adventure and misadventure is eating exotic foods as opposed to being exotic food.

I'm not sure why, but my instinct today is to go with the taste of home. Some chicken thighs, some poblano peppers, a bag of rice, Mexican crema (I'm surprised to find the real stuff, not that whipped-cream-looking shit they serve in Tex-Mex restaurants). Tortillas and Oaxaca cheese. I lose myself in the aisles, fingers trailing over heirloom tomatoes, herbs and produce and packets of exotic spices I can never find at home.

I gave Kangaroo Joe his nickname because all I could find when I looked him up was that he'd won a kangaroo cooking challenge at one of those bars that specializes in cooking exotic meats," Nia chirped. "Kangaroos are the deer of Australia," said Kangaroo Joe. "Okay." I glanced over at Potbelly and Loafers. "And Vanilla Joe? "His signature recipe on his food truck involves a vanilla sauce on a hot dog," Nia said. "It's an artisan sausage, not a hot dog," said Vanilla Joe. "And the sauce is technically an aioli." "Okay, Vanilla Joe," Kel said. Their lips twitched, and I suspected the reasoning behind his nickname had nothing to do with the vanilla sauce on his food truck. "It's the season of the Joes," Nia said. "Oh! I think I just heard the door open." Over the next couple of hours, I ate my weight in cheese and met four of the other five contestants. There was Ernesto, a serious-looking guy in his thirties who cooked Tex-Mex, heavy on the Mex. Oliver, who cooked California cuisine. Mercedes, who cooked modern Filipino food. Megan, a solidly built woman with a buzz cut who cooked what she called "eclectic food" with a Chinese twist.

Don't waste your wish on cars, Space trip to Mars Exotic pets, private jets Pleasures, treasures Wish to be well A worthy story to tell Wellness prioritised... get #Mickeymized!

To draw out the conversation, and dredge everyone’s memory for the smallest scrap, they would categorize. Each boy would have to describe a dish that was cooked at home, then something he could cook himself. After that came the novia’s speciality, then the most exotic food he had eaten, then his favourite pudding, then a foreign dish, then something that was cooked in the countryside, then the oddest thing he had ever eaten.

Cassian had been eating an early breakfast with them this morning when Rhys had gotten the bill for Nesta’s night out. When Rhys had read each item aloud. Bottles of rare wine, exotic foods, gambling debts … Feyre had stared at her plate until silent tears dripped into her scrambled eggs.

Yogurt is good for you. And it’s just one spoon,” Sharpcot had replied, but this stack summoned a billion voices, all of them saying in a chorus, “Just one spoon.” From kids’ lunches and store shelves and desk drawers and airline meal packs, in every country of the world: Canada and the United States and Nicaragua and Uruguay and Argentina and Ireland and Burkina Faso and Russia and Papua New Guinea and New Zealand and very probably the Antarctic. Where wasn’t there disposable cutlery? Plastic spoons in endless demand, in endless supply, from factory floors where they are manufactured and packaged in boxes of 10 or 20 or 100 or 1000 or individually in clear wrap, boxed on skids and trucked to trains freighting them to port cities and onto giant container ships plying the seas to international ports to intercity transport trucks to retail delivery docks for grocery stores and retail chains, supplying restaurants and homes, consumers moving them from shelf to cart to bag to car to house, where they are stuck in the lunches of the children of polluting parents, or used once each at a birthday party to serve ice cream to four-year-olds where only some are used but who knows which? So used and unused go together in the trash, or every day one crammed into a hipster’s backpack to eat instant pudding at his software job in an open-concept walkup in a gentrified neighbourhood, or handed out from food trucks by the harbour, or set in a paper cup at a Costco table for customers to sample just one bite of this exotic new flavour, and so they go into trash bins and dumpsters and garbage trucks and finally vast landfill sites or maybe just tossed from the window of a moving car or thrown over the rail of a cruise ship to sink in the ocean deep.

I thought Hayama's talent lay in the mixing of varied exotic spices to create the perfect fragrance." "No, his skill is in manipulating fragrance itself. He can do more than just add more spices into his recipes. In fact, this time he subtracted spices instead. In so doing, he accentuated the freshness and flavor of the in-season pike." "Uh, I get that much, but, like, how did he manage to get that rich of a fragrance with only one spice? His dish's impact was on par with Ryo's!" "Yes! Just searing not give that punch. It is inconceivable!" "I used kaeshi sauce. Right before serving, I brushed a thin layer of kaeshi onto the fish slices." "Kaeshi? Does he mean the ramen soup base?!" "Kaeshi was mentioned during the Ramen Bout in the Quarterfinals, yes. It seems this time it is being used in a purely Japanese fashion." "Kaeshi? Like Tsubame-Gaeshi Sword Cut, yes? Kojiro Sasaki Swallow Cut!" "I'm surprised you're familiar with that sword technique. But no, this is different. Kaeshi is a mixture of soy sauce, mirin and sake. It is most often diluted with dashi stock to go with noodles. It is considered an all-purpose seasoning that can be used in almost any Japanese dish." "No wonder! Fish meat generally does not brown easily, even when using the high, focused heat of a blowtorch. But the sugars present in kaeshi make that easier! It also prevents the heating time from dragging out too long and ruining the freshness of the fish. " "The fatty acids of the fish mix with the sugars in the kaeshi. Add heat and they will sizzle and boil.

But let’s be clear: the madness of everyday life was its own issue. It didn’t have any relationship to whether or not Christianity was bullshit. Obviously, Christianity was total bullshit. It was the most insane bullshit! But it was impossible to make an argument against superstition and magical nonsense, and have it stick, when that argument was delivered from a society where every citizen was a magician. And yes, reader, that includes you. You too are a magician. Your life is dominated by one of the oldest and most perverse forms of magic, one with less interior cohesion than the Christian faith, and you invest its empty symbolism with a level of belief that far outpaces that of any Christian. Here are some strips of paper and bits of metal! Watch as I transform these strips of paper and bits of metal into: (a) sex (b) food (c) clothing (d) shelter (e) transportation that allows me to acquire strips of paper and bits of money (f) intoxicants that distract me from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (g) leisure items that distract me from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (h) pointless vacations to exotic locales where I will replicate the brutish behavior that I display in my point of origin as a brief respite from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (i) unfair social advantages that allow my rotten children to undertake their own moronic pursuits of strips of paper and bits of metal. Humiliate yourself for strips of paper. Murder for the strips of paper. Humiliate others for the strips of paper. Worship the people who’ve accumulated such vast quantities of strips of paper that their strips of paper no longer have any physical existence and are now represented by binary notation. Treat the vast accumulators like gods. Free blowies for the moldering corpse of Steve Jobs! Fawning profile pieces for Jay-Z! The Presidency for billionaire socialite and real-estate developer Donald J. Trump! Kill! Kill! Kill! Work! Work! Work! Die! Die! Die! Go on. Pretend this is not the most magical thing that has ever happened. Historical arguments against Christianity tended to be delivered in tones of pearl-clutching horror, usually by subpar British intellectuals pimping their accent in America, a country where sounding like an Oxbridge twat conferred an unearned credibility. Yes, the Crusades were horrible. Yes, the Inquisition was awful. Yes, they shouldn’t have burned witches in Salem. Yes, there is an unfathomable amount of sexually abused walking wounded. Yes, every Christian country has oriented itself around the rich and done nothing but abuse the fuck out of its poor. But it’s not like the secular conversion of the industrialized world has alleviated any of the horror. Read the news. Murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape...Despair. All secularism has done, really, is remove a yoke from the rich. They’d always been horrible, but at least when they still paid lip service to Christian virtues, they could be shamed into philanthropy. Now they use market forces to slide the whole thing into feudalism. New York University built a campus [in Abu Dhabi] with slave labor! In the Twenty-First Century AD! And has suffered no rebuke! Applications are at an all-time high! The historical arguments against Christianity are as facile as reviews on Goodreads.com, and come down to this: Why do you organize around bad people who tell you that a Skyman wants you to be good? To which the rejoinder is: yes, the clergy sucks, but who cares how normal people are delivered into goodness?

They had nationalities even: Thai eggplant, Chinese eggplant, Italian eggplant. The United Nations of eggplants terrified me because I knew the oblong purple vegetable as baingan, brinjal in English, and I could cook it in five different ways. Would this exotic brinjal still yield to my hands?

The least appealing part of the day, though, was definitely lunch. Our shepherd had decided that the finest specialty of the area was armadillo, and there wasn't a single Sunday that his wife failed to cook us up an armadillo—but only after clubbing the critter to death before our eyes.

Oh, and y'know what makes it even better? All the pretty ladies. Japanese ladies always look so young and elegant. They're so exotic! You, too, miss. You're the picture of Yamato Nadeshiko. You have a real pretty charm to you." *Yamato Nadeshiko means the personification of an idealized Japanese woman.* "Who, me?! Um! N-no, I'm not all that pretty..." "C'mon, Tadokoro! Quit being so humble.

So luscious! The dressing is extra-virgin olive oil and wine vinegar exquisitely melded with pureed pike liver. The rich, full-bodied flavor of the liver seeps into the tongue, gracefully underscoring the mild sweetness of the fatty meat. I feel like I'm drowning in a tidal wave of flavor and fragrance! Unbelievable! How many spices must he have mixed to-" "No. The spice used in this dish... ... is allspice alone." "What?!" "I thought Hayama's talent lay in the mixing of varied exotic spices to create the perfect fragrance." "No, his skill is in manipulating fragrance itself. He can do more than just add more spices into his recipes. In fact, this time he subtracted spices instead. In so doing, he accentuated the freshness and flavor of the in-season pike.

The law gave me an entirely new vocabulary, a language that non-lawyers derisively referred to as "legalese." Unlike the basic building blocks- the day-to-day words- that got me from the subway to the office and back, the words of my legal vocabulary, more often than not, triggered flavors that I had experienced after leaving Boiling Springs, flavors that I had chosen for myself, derived from foods that were never contained within the boxes and the cans of DeAnne's kitchen. Subpoenakiwifruit. InjunctionCamembert. Infringementlobster. Jurisdictionfreshgreenbeans. Appellantsourdoughbread. ArbitrationGuinness. Unconstitutionalasparagus. ExculpatoryNutella. I could go on and on, and I did. Every day I was paid an astonishing amount of money to shuffle these words around on paper and, better yet, to say them aloud. At my yearly reviews, the partners I worked for commented that they had never seen a young lawyer so visibly invigorated by her work. One of the many reasons I was on track to make partner, I thought. There were, of course, the rare and disconnecting exceptions. Some legal words reached back to the Dark Ages of my childhood and to the stunted diet that informed my earlier words. "Mitigating," for example, brought with it the unmistakable taste of elementary school cafeteria pizzas: rectangles of frozen dough topped with a ketchup-like sauce, the hard crumbled meat of some unidentifiable animal, and grated "cheese" that didn't melt when heated but instead retained the pattern of a badly crocheted coverlet. I had actually looked forward to the days when these rectangles were on the lunch menu, slapped onto my tray by the lunch ladies in hairnets and comfortable shoes. Those pizzas (even the word itself was pure exuberance with the two z's and the sound of satisfaction at the end... ah!) were evocative of some greater, more interesting locale, though how and where none of us at Boiling Springs Elementary circa 1975 were quite sure. We all knew what hamburgers and hot dogs were supposed to look and taste like, and we knew that the school cafeteria served us a second-rate version of these foods. Few of us students knew what a pizza was supposed to be. Kelly claimed that it was usually very big and round in shape, but both of these characteristics seemed highly improbable to me. By the time we were in middle school, a Pizza Inn had opened up along the feeder road to I-85. The Pizza Inn may or may not have been the first national chain of pizzerias to offer a weekly all-you-can-eat buffet. To the folks of the greater Boiling Springs-Shelby area, this was an idea that would expand their waistlines, if not their horizons. A Sizzler would later open next to the Pizza Inn (feeder road took on a new connotation), and it would offer the Holy Grail of all-you-can-eat buffets: steaks, baked potatoes, and, for the ladies, a salad bar complete with exotic fixings such as canned chickpeas and a tangle of slightly bruised alfalfa sprouts. Along with "mitigating," these were some of the other legal words that also transported me back in time: Egressredvelvetcake. PerpetuityFrenchsaladdressing. Compensatoryboiledpeanuts. ProbateReese'speanutbuttercup. FiduciaryCheerwine. AmortizationOreocookie.

The government offers a really useful website...mypyramidtrackerDOTgov...after you enter your daily food intake and physical activity, it generates wonderfully detailed charts... The site has its peculiarities. The fitness tracker, which wants you to account for all 24 hours of your day, has no entry for writing a movie review, had entries for "orange grove worker" and "steel mill: removing slag" and one category that integrates "forklift operator" with "yoga instruction." Not since Jennifer Beals in "Flashdance"--welder by day, exotic dancer by night--has there been such an intriguing job combo. Under "hone activities," the limited choices include "butchering animals" and "cooking Indian bread on an outside stove"; I'm happy to try just as soon as I remove some slag and get my degree in forklift/yoga." page. 221-222

There was something deeply ironic about the fact that so many of the "exotic" food items that had gotten us teased and bullied by our white classmates were now fetishized by white hipsters.

He could smell the earth and the trees around the shallow lake beneath the balcony. It was a cloudy night and very dark, just a hint of glow directly above, where the clouds were lit by the shining Plates of the Orbital’s distant daylight side. Waves lapped in the darkness, loud slappings against the hulls of unseen boats. Lights twinkled round the edges of the lake, where low college buildings were set among the trees. The party was a presence at his back, something unseen, surging like the sound and smell of thunder from the faculty building; music and laughter and the scents of perfumes and food and exotic, unidentifiable fumes.

Foreign leaves feed many a marsupial, grub and duck. Koalas often munch on American cypress pine needles and camphor laurel leaves. (They also like to perch in camphor laurels in summer for the cool shade they throw.) Exotic foods, and I don’t just mean weeds, are thoroughly enmeshed in foodwebs. Most Australia’s birds of prey take exotic meats. A study around Mildura found that young rabbits were the staple food (60-92 percent by weight) of eagles, goshawks, harriers, kites and falcons – eight species in all. That was be calicivirus struck. Wedge-tailed eagles will eat feral cats. In Western Australia little eagles moved into the south-west when rabbits arrived, then retreated after myxomatosis struck. House mice feed hawks, snakes and owls in central Australia, making up to 97 percent of barn owl diets.

Today, Chefs, I have prepared for you a coconut-curry chicken, served on a naan waffle. And while the flavor profile is a little more on the exotic side, I think even exotic food should be comfort food. To that end, you'll see that you also have a side of warmed sweet and slightly spicy plum chutney. I'll ask you to pour that over the dish, as you would maple syrup over the traditional Southern version of chicken and waffles.