Meal Train Quotes

Jen rolled her eyes and let out a huff of air. "You got the knocking part right, fluffy, but you forgot the part where you are asked to come in. You don't just knock and then walk-in." Jen turned to Sally, shaking her head. "You should think they at least have some sort of puppy training class or something." "If you aren't careful, he's going to be picking Jen-kibble out of his teeth after his next meal," Sally whispered under her breath as Decebel continued to stare Jen down. Jen's gaze never wavered as she responded to Sally, "And what makes you think I object to being dinner?

You must remember that the common criminal will always join the armed forces for, if nothing else, regular meals and expert training in the use of guns.

Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian short stories.

I think, quite frankly, that the world simply does not care for the complicated girls, the ones who seem too dark, too deep, too vibrant, too opinionated, the ones who are so intriguing that new men fall in love with them every day, at every meal where there's a waiter, in every taxi and on every train they board, in any instance where someone can get to know them just a little bit, just enough to get completely gone. But most men in the end don't quite have the stomach for that much person.

Nobody understands the art of living nowadays,... Catching trains, making appointments, fixing times for everything—all nonsense. Get up with the sun I say, have your meals when you feel like it, and never tie yourself to a time or a date. I could teach people how to live if they would listen to me.

The habit of praying before my meal trains me in a way of being-in-the-world. It reminds me that my personal experience is not what determines whether or not something is a grace and a wonder, and that some of the most astonishing gifts are the most easily overlooked.

People seem to have acquired the idea that they have the inalienable right to stroll through life without either having sweated, picked up anything heavy, worked hard, or eaten less than they wanted at every meal. This approach is, of course, wrong. And it has resulted in a lot of expensive, unattractive, and entirely preventable problems amongst people who seem puzzled about why things aren't going well.

With a shock, the trooper who had arrived to render aid to his fallen comrade recognized the one whose life was now bleeding out inside his armor. They had trained together. Shared meals, stories, experiences together. Now they were sharing death together.

It wasn't as if we were waiting for a train, it wasn't as if we were waiting for a meal - it was just that there were was nothing to wait for. Nothing.

I told him that it was very fine for well-fed, over-paid actors flaunting toughness at these deprived people, who are gentle and nice and, if ever tough, only so because of environment. I asked him how tough he would be if he were living the life that some of these unfortunate families must live. How easy for him, with five meals a day beneath that thrust-out chest with his muscles trained and perfect, trying to start something with these people. Of course they were not tough, but when it comes to four years of War, when it comes to losing an arm or a leg, then they are tough. But they are not going around looking for fights unless there is a reason.

Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. Once, when he had been a Four, he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, “I’m starving.” Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision. He was not starving, it was pointed out. He was hungry. No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving. To say “starving” was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And he had.

Just get to lunch,” I muttered to myself. It was the only way I could control my anxiety. In 1998, I’d made it through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, or BUD/S, by focusing on just making it to the next meal. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t feel my arms as we hoisted logs over our heads or if the cold surf soaked me to the core. It wasn’t going to last forever. There is a saying: “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is simple: “One bite at a time.” Only my bites were separated by meals: Make it to breakfast, train hard until lunch, and focus until dinner. Repeat.

It was dawning on the wizards that they were outside the University, at night and without permission, for the first time in decades. A certain suppressed excitement crackled from man to man. Any watch trained in reading body language would have been prepared to bet that, after the click, someone was going to suggest that they might as well go somewhere and have a few drinks, and then someone else would fancy a meal, and then there was always room for a few more drinks, and then it would be 5 a.m. and the city guards would be respectfully knocking on the University gates and asking if the Archchancellor would care to step down to the cells to identify some alleged wizards who were singing an obscene song in six-part harmony, and perhaps he would also care to bring some money to pay for all the damage. Because inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

Blake turned to Livia. “We were never formally introduced. When your father sees me at the train station from his patrol car, he often stops by later in the day with a bagged meal that he refuses to let me turn down. You, Livia, inherit your generous nature from him.

Song of myself Now I will do nothing but listen, To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it. I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals, I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice, I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals, The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick, The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence, The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters, The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights, The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two, (They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.) I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,) I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast. I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera, Ah this indeed is music--this suits me.

Everyone suffered the same affliction: an inability to think about much else except the meal you're having now and the one you're having next.

We Don't Need to Leave Yet, Do We? Or, Yes We Do One kind of person when catching a train always wants to allow an hour to cover the ten-block trip to the terminus, And the other kind looks at them as if they were verminous, And the second kind says that five minutes is plenty and will even leave one minute over for buying the tickets, And the first kind looks at them as if they had cerebral rickets. One kind when theater-bound sups lightly at six and hastens off to the play, And indeed I know one such person who is so such that it frequently arrives in time for the last act of the matinee, And the other kind sits down at eight to a meal that is positively sumptuous, Observing cynically that an eight-thirty curtain never rises till eight-forty, an observation which is less cynical than bumptious. And what the first kind, sitting uncomfortably in the waiting room while the train is made up in the yards, can never understand, Is the injustice of the second kind's reaching their scat just as the train moves out, just as they had planned, And what the second kind cannot understand as they stumble over the first kind's heel just as the footlights flash on at last Is that the first kind doesn't feel the least bit foolish at having entered the theater before the cast. Oh, the first kind always wants to start now and the second kind always wants to tarry, Which wouldn't make any difference, except that each other is what they always marry.

Our restaurant fostered a sense of camaraderie in a number of ways besides sharing the same nickname of 'chef.' Initially, we bonded through training. Once we opened, we worked in teams each night, meaning that we not only knew our colleagues well, we depended on them. Most importantly, we all had 'family meal' together every night, just like President Bush recommended to all families so that their children would have good values and grow up to be gun-toting, pro-life, pro-death, gas-guzzling, warmongering, monolingual, homophobic, wiretapped, Bible-thumping, genetically engineered, stem-cell harboring, abstinent creationists. Oops, I think I just lost all of my red state readers. To make up for it, I'll let you lose my ballot.

Have you ever been to the beach and wanted to feed the seagulls? The problem is you tear off a little crust from your sandwich and toss it to one, and ten more show up. Toss a little more and a flock descends. You start to wonder: if I run out of bread, will I become the meal? Turkeys are different. They startle easily and run for the barn. In the wild, they run for the hills. Of course, they’re very tasty. Benjamin Franklin thought them majestic enough to be an emblem for our country. I’m sorry, but Thanksgiving would be downright depressing. There’s our national symbol lying stuffed and roasted and ready to carve up for hungry guests. And then we have the eagles. Our forefathers were trained in the Bible. […]They would have known Isaiah 40:31. “Those who wait upon the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” They were making war on the greatest power in the world of the time; the world was watching them. What could this band of commoners do? What troubles me about our country today is how many seagulls there are, scrambling for more. Remember the movie “Finding Nemo”? “Mine, mine, mine!” And we sure have a lot of gutless turkeys running for the barn whenever hard decisions have to be made; like how to keep our country solvent so our children won’t be in soup lines… Where are the eagles? That’s what I want to know. Please, God, we need us some eagles!

In business since 1948 and claiming to serve 10,000 meals a day, the Rendezvous lies in a busy cellar down an alley near the grand Peabody Hotel, known for the trained ducks that waddle through its lobby twice daily to the music of John Philip Sousa.

When they find out what I do for a living, many people tell me they love music listening, but their music lessons 'didn't take.' I think they're being too hard on themselves. The chasm between musical experts and everyday musicians that has grown so wide in our culture makes people feel discouraged, and for some reason this is uniquely so with music. Even though most of us can't play basketball like Shaquille O'Neal, or cook like Julia Child, we can still enjoy playing a friendly backyard game of hoops, or cooking a holiday meal for our friends and family. This performance chasm does seem to be cultural, specific to contemporary Western society. And although many people say that music lessons didn't take, cognitive neuroscientists have found otherwise in their laboratories. Even just a small exposure to music lessons as a child creates neural circuits for music processing that are enhanced and more efficient than for those who lack training. Music lessons teach us to listen better, and they accelerate our ability to discern structure and form in music, making it easier for us to tell what music we like and what we don't like.

When Erasmus rejoined Rupert and Naudé after his successful phone call to Universal, he was congratulated on securing the money. Rupert put his hand on Erasmus’s shoulder as they left to go and have a meal: ‘You know, Mr Erasmus, the best training school for an accountant is poverty!’ 6

With chopsticks, I cut through the dark-skinned egg, releasing molten yoke into waiting broth. Face bathed in the warming steam, I tasted. Sheltered from the rain Soothing train, ramen-numbed brain I reap contentment With the Zen meal consumed and consumed by the Zen meal, I exited back into the chaotic Tokyo night.

Grant adopted unusual precautions, returning to the Willard Hotel twice daily for meals and staying indoors at night. When he set eyes on images of John Wilkes Booth, he immediately recognized the sinister horseman who had shadowed his path to the train station and knew that he himself had stood on the death list of intended victims.

In Louisiana, a group of nine Negro GIs boarded a train for transfer from the hospital at Camp Claiborne to the hospital at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. The train was delayed for twelve hours. “The only place that would serve us was the lunch room at the station,” one of the nine reported. “But we couldn’t eat where the white people were eating. To do that would contaminate the very air of the place, so we had to go to the kitchen. That was bad enough but that’s not all. About 11:30 that same morning, about two dozen German prisoners of war came to the lunchroom with two guards. They entered the large room, sat at the table. Then meals were served them. They smoked and had a swell time. As we stood on the outside and saw what was going on, we could scarcely believe our own eyes. There they sat: eating, talking, laughing, smoking. They were enemies of our country, people sworn to destroy all the so-called democratic governments of the world . . . . What are we fighting for?

Who should serve the Lord’s Supper? Well in the early church, considering Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 11, the host of the home presumably was the host of the meal, and as I have said, really, the Lord is the host at his own table, not any of us. We are all just participants, we are all celebrants. I don’t think there is any biblical warrant for the serving of the Lord’s Supper to be confined to ministers, but I do think that anyone who undertakes such a sacred task should be trained to do it in a respectful manner.

45 Bistro Restaurant, East Broughton Street, Savannah, Georgia The Gulfstream Corporate Weekly Dinner was being held at 45 Bistro this week, and the usual gang from Customer Service and Marketing always hosted a splendid meal.  Aircrew from all over the world flew into Savannah, Georgia for semi-annual training, as did new owners, technicians, and anyone else affiliated with Gulfstream for the week.  It was their special night out, all expenses paid, to show their appreciation for the business they gave Gulfstream. 

Like most people in this age group, I was sent up the ladder of academic development: first grade to second grade, fifth grade to sixth, all the way through high school and college. Then I was released into the world as if I’d been trained for a life beyond academia. But I hadn’t been. I hadn’t been taught how to cook healthy meals or change a tire, let alone how to ask myself who I was or what I wanted out of life. Moreover, I hadn’t been offered tools to make sense of living in a world beset by countless overlapping social and environmental catastrophes.

We fine-tune our moods with pharmaceuticals and classic rock. Craft our meals around our allergies and ideologies. Customize our bodies with cross training, with ink and metal, with surgery and wearable technologies. We can choose a vehicle to express our hipness or hostility. We can move to a neighborhood that matches our social values, find a news outlet that mirrors our politics, create a social network that “likes” everything we say or post. With each transaction and upgrade, each choice and click, life moves closer to us, and the world becomes our world.

It wasn’t too tough a trip. There were many others like me riding the rods for one reason or another, some heading nowhere in particular—people without anchors, just drifting along. Others were going someplace definite—home or to a new place where a job might be found. They too were like other people, some nice and helpful, some nasty and mean, but on the whole I got along. I minded my own business, never stayed on one train too long, jumped off at an occasional town along the route to hole up for a day and night in a cheap room and eat a few decent meals, and then I’d be on my way again.

Taking the Blackhawk Out for Lunch               A concerned citizen contacted the Inspector General after seeing a Blackhawk helicopter parked in a field behind a restaurant. Inside, he found five service members that had stopped for lunch and were enjoying their meal with several civilians. An investigation revealed that the soldiers were on a training mission, but they had properly listed the restaurant stop in their mission plan. Since the stop was properly listed, the soldiers had not violated any regulations, but they still received verbal counseling because their actions created an appearance of impropriety.

if they label you soft, feather weight and white-livered, if the locker room tosses back its sweaty head, and laughs at how quiet your hands stay, if they come to trample the dandelions roaring in your throat, you tell them that you were forged inside of a woman who had to survive fifteen different species of disaster to bring you here, and you didn’t come to piss on trees. you ain’t nobody’s thick-necked pitbull boy, don’t need to prove yourself worthy of this inheritance of street-corner logic, this blood legend, this index of catcalls, “three hundred ways to turn a woman into a three course meal”, this legacy of shame, and man, and pillage, and man, and rape, and man. you boy. you won’t be some girl’s slit wrists dazzling the bathtub, won’t be some girl’s, “i didn’t ask for it but he gave it to me anyway”, the torn skirt panting behind the bedroom door, some father’s excuse to polish his gun. if they say, “take what you want”, you tell them you already have everything you need; you come from scabbed knuckles and women who never stopped swinging, you come men who drank away their life savings, and men who raised daughters alone. you come from love you gotta put your back into, elbow-grease loving like slow-dancing on dirty linoleum, you come from that house of worship. boy, i dare you to hold something like that. love whatever feels most like your grandmother’s cooking. love whatever music looks best on your feet. whatever woman beckons your blood to the boiling point, you treat her like she is the god of your pulse, you treat her like you would want your father to treat me: i dare you to be that much man one day. that you would give up your seat on the train to the invisible women, juggling babies and groceries. that you would hold doors, and say thank-you, and understand that women know they are beautiful without you having to yell it at them from across the street. the day i hear you call a woman a “bitch” is the day i dig my own grave. see how you feel writing that eulogy. and if you are ever left with your love’s skin trembling under your nails, if there is ever a powder-blue heart left for dead on your doorstep, and too many places in this city that remind you of her tears, be gentle when you drape the remains of your lives in burial cloth. don’t think yourself mighty enough to turn her into a poem, or a song, or some other sweetness to soften the blow, boy, i dare you to break like that. you look too much like your mother not t

No, it's not Cathy, it's not even Ashbury that bothers me most about my new situation (I still think of it as new, although it's been two years). It's the loss of control. In Cathy's flat I always feel like a guest at the very outer limit of her welcome. I feel it in the kitchen, where we jostle for space when cooking our evening meals. I feel it when I sit beside her on the sofa, the remote firmly within her grasp. The only space that feels like mine is my tiny bedroom, into which a double bed and a desk have been crammed, with barely enough space to walk between them. It's comfortable enough, but it isn't a place you want to be, so instead I linger in the living room or at the kitchen table, ill at ease and powerless. I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.

Sample House-training Schedule for a Young Puppy 6:30 a.m. Rise. Walk pup briefly. 7:00 a.m. Feed pup and offer a drink of water. Walk puppy. Return home and play briefly with pup. Pup stays in crate. Midmorning Walk pup. After walk, pup stays with owner fifteen minutes. Pup returns to crate. Noon–1:00 p.m Feed pup second meal and offer water. Walk puppy. Return home and play with pup. Pup returns to crate. Midafternoon Offer pup water. Walk puppy. Pup returns to crate. 5:00 p.m. Feed pup third meal and offer water. Walk puppy. Allow pup to play in kitchen while dinner is being prepared. 7:00 p.m. Walk pup briefly. Return home and play with puppy. Pup returns to create Before bed Walk pup. Puppy sleeps in crate or on a tether (preferably with metal chain) in your bedroom.

It never ceased to surprise him how many of her dishes were cooked without meat. Her pasta sauces often consisted of just one or two ingredients, such as garlic and oil, or grated lemon zest and cream. Many more were based on a vegetable, with peperone, anchovy or cheese providing a subtle kick. Often it didn't occur to him that he hadn't eaten meat until after the meal was over. His very favorite dish was her melanzane alla parmigiana, but it was only as his palate became more trained that he realized this, too, contained nothing more substantial than dense chunks of eggplant. As for gravy, he had never missed it once. He mentioned this to her, and she laughed. "We've never had a lot of meat to spare in Campania. Even before the war, it was expensive. So we had to learn to use our ingenuity.

Gerlitz, Claudia Förster, and fifteen-year-old Jutta Pfennig—are transported from Essen to Berlin to work in a machine parts factory. For ten hours a day, six days a week, they disassemble massive forging presses and stack the usable metal in crates to be loaded onto train cars. Unscrewing, sawing, hauling. Most days Frau Elena works close by, wearing a torn ski jacket she has found, mumbling to herself in French or singing songs from childhood. They live above a printing company abandoned a month before. Hundreds of crates of misprinted dictionaries are stacked in the halls, and the girls burn them page by page in the potbelly stove. Yesterday Dankeswort, Dankesworte, Dankgebet, Dankopfer. Today Frauenverband, Frauenverein, Frauenvorsteher, Frauenwahlrecht. For meals they have cabbage and barley in the factory canteen at noon, endless ration lines

Vincent’s House in Arles (The Yellow House) This painting depicts the right wing of 2 Place Lamartine, Arles, France — the house van Gogh rented in May 1888. The window on the first floor near the corner with both shutters open is the artist’s guest room, where Gauguin lived for nine weeks later in the same year. Behind the next window, with one shutter closed, is van Gogh’s bedroom. Van Gogh depicts the restaurant, where he used to have his meals, in the building painted pink close to the left edge of the painting. To the right side of the Yellow House, the Avenue Montmajour runs down to the two railway bridges. The first line, with a train just passing, served the local connection to Lunel, which is on the opposite bank of the river Rhône. Sadly, the building was severely damaged in a bombing raid by the Allies on June 25, 1944 and was later demolished.

There were, of course, other heroes, little ones who did little things to help people get through: merchants who let profits disappear rather than lay off clerks, store owners who accepted teachers' scrip at face value not knowing if the state would ever redeem it, churches that set up soup kitchens, landlords who let tenants stay on the place while other owners turned to cattle, housewives who set out plates of cold food (biscuits and sweet potatoes seemed the fare of choice) so transients could eat without begging, railroad "bulls" who turned the other way when hoboes slipped on and off the trains, affluent families that carefully wrapped leftover food because they knew that residents of "Hooverville" down by the dump would be scavenging their garbage for their next meal, and more, an more. But they were not enough, could not have been enough, so when the government stepped in to help, those needing help we're thankful.

Coal smuts fly past and the train ploughs forwards, fire-bellied and smoke-spitting, a mystery of steam pressure and pistons, a miracle of gauges. The engine is a painted comet, its tail rattling behind with every class of passenger hanging on. Many undertake this mode of transportation with nervous trepidation, as well they might; it is well known that regular rail travel contributes to the premature ageing of passengers. Unnatural speed and the rapid travelling of distances have a baleful effect on the organs. Hurrying can prove fatal, notably when combined with suet-based meals, improving spirits and fine tobaccos. The worst offender: the new-built, gas-lit, steam-hauled carriages of Hades which will convey a passenger between Paddington and Farringdon under the very ground of the metropolis. According to reports miscellaneous, the passenger (smoke-blinded, nerve-rattled, near-suffocated) will emerge from the experience variously six months to five years older.

LEADING LESSONS Live in a state of gratitude. When I was a little boy, my dad taught us how to pray. We’d give thanks for meals; in church we’d thank God for his blessings. But as we grow older, expressing gratitude seems less important. We’re not as appreciative of the little things; we lose sight of what we already have in our quest to have more. I’m not a religious person anymore, but I see the value in prayer. It’s a brilliant incantation you deliver at any time during the day. You physically change your body--you fold your arms, you bow your head--and then you give thanks out loud for all that’s good in your life while expressing faith that what’s bad will get better. Gratitude reminds us to not give up, to have a positive attitude, and to open our hearts. When I was in London, I would gaze out the train window and think to myself, How lucky am I? Not every kid gets to follow his passion with every fiber of his being. I was so grateful, and that made everything I experienced so much richer. Today, in the crazy rush that is my life and my career, I constantly have to remind myself to stop and take stock.

The American dinner-table, in truth, becomes a monument to the defective technic of the American housewife. The guest who respects his oesophagus, invited to feed upon its discordant and ill-prepared victuals, evades the experience as long and as often as he can, and resigns himself to it as he might resign himself to being shaved by a paralytic. Nowhere else in the world have women more leisure and freedom to improve their minds, and nowhere else do they show a higher level of intelligence, or take part more effectively in affairs of the first importance. But nowhere else is there worse cooking in the home, or a more inept handling of the whole domestic economy, or a larger dependence upon the aid of external substitutes, by men provided, for the skill that is wanting where it theoretically exists. It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready-made. And nowhere else is there more striking tendency to throw the whole business of training the minds of children upon professional teachers, and the whole business of instructing them in morals and religion upon so-called Sunday-schools, and the whole business of developing and caring for their bodies upon playground experts, sex hygienists and other such professionals, most of them mountebanks.

A folktale in Hokkaido just after the war and passed from conductor to conductor held that the floor of heaven is laced with silver train tracks, and the third rail is solid pearl. The trains that ran along them were fabulous even by the Shinkansen of today: carriages containing whole pine forests hung with gold lanterns, carriages full of rice terraces, carriages lined in red silk where the meal service bought soup, rice-balls, and a neat lump of opium with persimmon tea poured over it in the most delicate of cups. These trains sped past each other, utterly silent, carrying each a complement of ghosts who clutched the branches like leather handholds, and plucked the green rice to eat raw, amd fell back insensate into the laps of women whose faces were painted red from brow to chin. They never stop, never slow, and only with great courage and grace could a spirit slowly progress from car to car, all the way to the conductor's cabin, where all accounts cease, and no man knows what lies therein. In Hokkaido, where the snow and the ice are so white and pure they glow blue, it is said only the highest engineers of Japan Railways know the layout of the railroads on the floor of heaven. They say that these exalted engineers are working slowly, generation by generation, to lay the tracks to earth so that they mirror exactly the tracks in heaven. When this is done, those marvelous carriages will fall from the sky, and we may know on earth, without paying the terrible fare of death, the gaze of the red women, the light of the forest lanterns, and the taste of persimmon tea.

The Magic of Goulash “The trip down the aisle [on a bus or train, during his travels] was where all the stakes were. Because as I’m going down that aisle, I’ve got to look for an empty seat next to somebody who seems interesting. Somebody I can trust, somebody who might be able to trust me. The stakes are high because I know that at the end of that ride, wherever it was going, that person had to invite me to their home. Because I had no money to spend night after night in a hotel.” The clincher question Cal used to get free room and board around Europe as a poor traveler was: “Can you tell me: How do you make the perfect goulash?” He would purposefully sit down next to grandmas, who would then pour out their souls. After a few minutes of passionate pantomiming, people would come from around the train to help translate, no matter the country. Cal never had to worry about where he was spending the night. “During [one dinner party a grandma threw in Hungary to feed me goulash,] one of the neighbors says, ‘Have you ever tasted apricot brandy? Because nobody makes apricot brandy like my father. He lives a half an hour away. You’ve got to come to taste the apricot brandy.’ That weekend, we’re tasting apricot brandy, having a great time. Another party starts, another neighbor comes over to me. ‘Have you ever been to Kiskunhalas, the paprika capital of the world? You cannot leave Hungary without visiting Kiskunhalas.’ Now we’re off to Kiskunhalas. I’m telling you, a single question about goulash could get me 6 weeks of lodging and meals, and that’s how I got passed around the world. 10 years. 10 years.

The Negro today is not struggling for some abstract, vague rights, but for concrete and prompt improvement in his way of life. What will it profit him to be able to send his children to an integrated school if the family income is insufficient to buy them school clothes? What will he gain by being permitted to move to an integrated neighborhood if he cannot afford to do so because he is unemployed or has a low-paying job with no future? During the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, a nightclub comic observed that, had the demonstrators been served, some of them could not have paid for the meal. Of what advantage is it to the Negro to establish that he can be served in integrated restaurants, or accommodated in integrated hotels, if he is bound to the kind of financial servitude which will not allow him to take a vacation or even to take his wife out to dine? Negroes must not only have the right to go into any establishment open to the public, but they must also be absorbed into our economic system in such a manner that they can afford to exercise that right. The struggle for rights is, at bottom, a struggle for opportunities. In asking for something special, the Negro is not seeking charity. He does not want to languish on welfare rolls any more than the next man. He does not want to be given a job he cannot handle. Neither, however, does he want to be told that there is no place where he can be trained to handle it. So with equal opportunity must come the practical, realistic aid which will equip him to seize it. Giving a pair of shoes to a man who has not learned to walk is a cruel jest.

Some of us are confused by children’s needs for both dependency and independence, and instead of listening to them, we impatiently hurry them along. In an article on dependency in Mothering, a parenting magazine I respect, Peggy O’Mara, the editor, wrote, We have a cultural bias against dependency, against any emotion or behavior that indicates weakness. This is nowhere more tragically evident than in the way we push our children beyond their limitations and timetables. We establish outside standards as more important than inner experience when we wean our children rather than trusting that they will wean themselves, when we insist that our children sit at the table and finish their meals rather than trusting that they will eat well if healthful food is provided on a regular basis, and when we toilet train them at an early age rather than trusting that they will learn to use the toilet when they are ready to do so. It is the nature of the child to be dependent and it is the nature of dependence to be outgrown. Dependency, insecurity, and weakness are natural states for a child. They’re the natural states of all of us at times, but for children, especially young ones, they are predominant conditions and they are outgrown. Just as we grow from crawling to walking, from babbling to talking, from puberty into sexuality, as humans we move from weakness to strength, from uncertainty to mastery. When we refuse to acknowledge the stages prior to mastery, we teach our children to hate and distrust their weaknesses, and we start them on a journey of a lifetime of conflict, conflict with themselves, using external standards to set up an inner duality, a conflict between what is immediately their experience and how they’re supposed to be. Begrudging dependency because it is not independence is like begrudging winter because it is not yet spring. Dependency blossoms into independence in its own sweet time.

Ryder! What’s taking you so long?” “I’m on my way!” he yells back. It feels like forever before he pushes open the door and ducks inside. Then I see why it took him so long. He’s somehow got the three cats tucked under one arm and the cake plate clutched in the other hand. No spare for a flashlight or lantern--so he accomplished this all in the dark. “Here,” he says, handing off the cake to me before releasing Kirk, Spock, and Sulu into the crate and latching the door. “Seriously, Ryder? You brought the cake?” He shrugs. “I was hungry.” Hmm, I guess all that kissing worked up his appetite. For cake. I’m not sure if I should be offended or not. On the plus side, he doesn’t look like he’s about to puke. So we’re making progress as far as his fear of storms goes. I guess that’s something. “Did you happen to bring a fork?” I ask, setting the plate on the makeshift tabletop. He produces two from his pocket, holding them up triumphantly. So we eat cake while the sirens blare. Actually, it doesn’t sound that bad out there. Still, the fact that we’re so calm--that Ryder’s so calm--should tell you how routine this is getting. As long as we don’t hear that awful freight-train sound, we’re good. “What happened to the cake?” he asks between bites. “It looks like someone mutilated it while I was gone.” “Sorry,” I mutter. “Guess I did some stress bingeing. You realize you’re not wearing a shirt, right?” He glances down and shrugs, his cheeks flushing ever so slightly. “Sorry ’bout that.” It might seem silly that he’s apologizing, but at Magnolia Landing, you don’t come to the table unless you’re fully dressed. It’s one of Laura Grace’s most unbendable rules--you dress for meals, even breakfast. Not that this counts as a meal, and I’m not sure you could call this plywood-on-top-of-a-crate thing a “table.” But still… By the time the sirens shut off, we’ve completely cleaned the plate, even scraping off the hardened frosting with our fingers. “That was quick,” I say, setting aside the now-empty plate. Ryder nods. “I guess we should give it a minute or two. You know, make sure it’s not coming back on.” So we wait. Silently. Ryder can’t even meet my eyes, and all I want to do is stare at his lips. This is crazy. I mean, what do we do now--now that the sirens are off and the cake is gone? Apparently, the answer is pretend like nothing happened.

[14] It is in accordance with this plan of action above all that one should train oneself. As soon as you leave the house at break of day, examine everyone whom you see, everyone whom you hear, and answer as if under questioning. What did you see? A handsome man or beautiful woman? Apply the rule. Does this lie within the sphere of choice, or outside it? Outside. Throw it away. [15] What did you see? Someone grieving over the death of his child? Apply the rule. Death is something that lies outside the sphere of choice. Away with it. You met a consul? Apply the rule. What kind of thing is a consulship? One that lies outside the sphere of choice, or inside? Outside. Throw that away too, it doesn’t stand the test. Away with it; it is nothing to you. [16] If we acted in such a way and practised this exercise from morning until night, we would then have achieved something, by the gods. [17] But as things are, we’re caught gazing open-mouthed at every impression that comes along, and it is only in the schoolroom that we wake up a little, if indeed we ever do. Afterwards, when we go outside, if we see someone in distress, we say, ‘He’s done for,’ or if we see a consul, exclaim, ‘A most fortunate man’; if an exile, ‘Poor wretch!’; if someone in poverty, ‘How terrible for him; he hasn’t money enough to buy a meal.’ [18] These vicious judgements must be rooted out, then; that is what we should concentrate our efforts on. For what is weeping and groaning? A judgement. What is misfortune? A judgement. What is civil strife, dissension, fault-finding, accusation, impiety, foolishness? [19] All of these are judgements and nothing more, and judgements that are passed, moreover, about things that lie outside the sphere of choice, under the supposition that such things are good or bad. Let someone transfer these judgements to things that lie within the sphere of choice, and I guarantee that he’ll preserve his peace of mind, regardless of what his circumstances may be. [20] The mind is rather like a bowl filled with water, and impressions are like a ray of light that falls on that water. [21] When the water is disturbed, the ray of light gives the appearance of being disturbed, but that isn’t really the case. [22] So accordingly, whenever someone suffers an attack of vertigo, it isn’t the arts and virtues that are thrown into confusion, but the spirit in which they’re contained; and when the spirit comes to rest again, so will they too.

Enjoyment requires discernment. It can be a gift to wrap up in a blanket and lose myself in a TV show but we can also amuse ourselves to death. My pleasure in wine or tea or exercise is good in itself but it can become disordered. As we learn to practice enjoyment we need to learn the craft of discernment: How to enjoy rightly, to have, to read pleasure well. There is a symbiotic relationship, cross-training, if you will, between the pleasures we find in gathered worship and those in my tea cup, or in a warm blanket, or the smell of bread baking. Lewis reminds us that one must walk before one can run. We will not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable but we shall not have found Him so. These tiny moments of beauty in our day train us in the habits of adoration and discernment, and the pleasure and sensuousness of our gathered worship teach us to look for and receive these small moments in our days, together they train us in the art of noticing and reveling in our God’s goodness and artistry. A few weeks ago I was walking to work, standing on the corner of tire and auto parts store, waiting to cross the street when I suddenly heard church bells begin to ring, loud and long. I froze, riveted. They were beautiful. A moment of transcendence right in the middle of the grimy street, glory next to the discount tire and auto parts. Liturgical worship has been referred to sometimes derisively as smells and bells because of the sensuous ways Christians have historically worshipped: Smells, the sweet and pungent smell of incense, and bells, like the one I heard in neighborhood which rang out from a catholic church. At my church we ring bells during the practice of our eucharist. The acolyte, the person often a child, assisting the priest, rings chimes when our pastor prepares the communion meal. There is nothing magic about these chimes, nothing superstitious, they’re just bells. We ring them in the eucharist liturgy as a way of saying, “pay attention.” They’re an alarm to rouse the congregation to jostle us to attention, telling us to take note, sit up, and lean forward, and notice Christ in our midst. We need this kind of embodied beauty, smells and bells, in our gathered worship, and we need it in our ordinary day to remind us to take notice of Christ right where we are. Dostoevsky wrote that “beauty will save the world.” This might strike us as mere hyperbole but as our culture increasingly rejects the idea and language of truth, the churches role as the harbinger of beauty is a powerful witness to the God of all beauty. Czeslaw Milosz wrote in his poem, “One more day,” “Though the good is weak, beauty is very strong.” And when people cease to believe there is good and evil, only beauty will call to them and save them so that they still know how to say, “this is true and that is false.” Being curators of beauty, pleasure, and delight is therefore and intrinsic part of our mission, a mission that recognizes the reality that truth is beautiful. These moments of loveliness, good tea, bare trees, and soft shadows, or church bells, in my dimness, they jolt me to attention and remind me that Christ is in our midst. His song of truth, sung by His people all over the world, echos down my ordinary street, spilling even into my living room.

So I might be over two thousand miles from my next hot meal, cold beer or decent shower, but at least I wasn't strap-hanging in the overcrowded train carriages of London's Waterloo and City Line, crammed into the armpit of a stranger.

Your Performance Day Sample Meals TIME—MEAL 7 a.m.—Oatmeal, berries, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons flaxseeds 9:15 a.m.—Preworkout shooter 11:15 a.m.—Postworkout shake 12:15 p.m.—Turkey sandwich on 100 percent whole wheat bread with 6 ounces turkey, avocado, and piled with other vegetables, along with a spinach salad with olive oil and vinegar dressing 3 p.m.—Apple with 1/4 cup nuts 6 p.m.—5 ounces grilled salmon, 1/2 cup whole wheat couscous, steamed asparagus drizzled with olive oil and lemon after cooking 9:30 p.m.—1 cup low-fat cottage cheese and 1/2 cup berries

Sample Daily Plan: Begin your morning with hydration – think green tea and water. Also, make a breakfast that has lean proteins and don’t forget to do your yoga. If mornings are easy for you, get in your exercise. Try for 30-60 minutes of cardio and 15 minutes of strength training. Have 5-6 mini-meals, making sure you don’t exceed your calculated calorie count. Get your daily intake of water. (1 ounce for every 2 pounds you weigh) Stay away from sugar and salt. Spend your evening time engaged in some relaxing stretches. Soothe your body even more by drinking a warm cup of tea or reading a good book. Get 7-10 hours of sleep. Make all seven days like this. Remember, you need to eat well, exercise often and sleep good at night.

untrained dogs and they will urinate over them.  Purchase a crate or cage that is big enough for your pup to lie down, turn around, and stand up in.  Create a food and potty schedule. It should include:  Meal Potty Time Play Time Training Time Sleep in Crate Repeat from A Every Four Hours No matter what, don’t leave your poor pup in the crate all the time. At the same time, though, the crate should give it time to relax and nap between potty and play sessions.  Walk the dog about 15-30 minutes after every meal.  Always praise the dog for going outside.  Never ever use hitting or yelling if the dog has an accident in the house.  Now, as far as behavior training, you will need to follow a schedule to make sure neither you nor the pup gets too tired or frustrated. That’s what we are going to talk about next.

In one set of experiments, for example, researchers affiliated with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism trained mice to press levers in response to certain cues until the behavior became a habit. The mice were always rewarded with food. Then, the scientists poisoned the food so that it made the animals violently ill, or electrified the floor, so that when the mice walked toward their reward they received a shock. The mice knew the food and cage were dangerous—when they were offered the poisoned pellets in a bowl or saw the electrified floor panels, they stayed away. When they saw their old cues, however, they unthinkingly pressed the lever and ate the food, or they walked across the floor, even as they vomited or jumped from the electricity. The habit was so ingrained the mice couldn’t stop themselves.1.23 It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.

Simply because children live in a home where parents are saved, where the essentials of life are provided, where members give money to the church, pray at meals, and read the Bible once in a while, does not mean they are receiving Christian training.

Because of their tiny stomachs, puppies must be fed three or four small meals a day. When most dogs are six months old, you can reduce the number of feedings to two, and from there, get your vet’s advice on adjusting your growing dog’s diet. Most

Hand-Feeding Protocol Before you start formally training your new dog, it’s best that you feed her all meals by hand. Hand-feeding establishes you as the source of your dog’s food, sending her the message that it’s your food that you are, in your benevolence, giving to her. This

want you to begin to ask your dog to sit for everything, including her meals. Because

To begin, measure out your dog’s food and put some of her meal in her bowl. Sitting in a chair (or on the floor if it’s a puppy or small dog), scoop some food into your hand, and let your dog (who should be on a tether or leash) eat right out of your hand. Hand-feed the whole meal to her, and do it for every meal for a whole week. If you have a puppy, you will hand-feed small meals to her throughout the day. Don’t wear rubber gloves and don’t be squeamish. Have fun with it; hand-feeding is no messier than kindergarten finger paints. Just wash your hands before you start, and make sure you’ve rinsed off any soap or hand sanitizer.

I’d been proud of the parlor, over which I had spent a great deal of time. The ceiling had inlaid tiles in the same summer-sky blue that comprised the main color of the rugs and cushions and the tapestry on the wall opposite the newly glassed windows. Now I sneaked a look at the Marquis, dreading an expression of amusement or disdain. But his attention seemed to be reserved for the lady as he led her to the scattering of cushions before the fireplace, where she knelt down with a graceful sweeping of her skirts. Bran went over and opened the fire vents. “If I’d known of your arrival, it would have been warm in here.” Bran looked over his shoulder in surprise. “Well, where d’you spend your days? Not still in the kitchens?” “In the kitchens and the library and wherever else I’m needed,” I said; and though I tried to sound cheery, it came out sounding resentful. “I’ll be back after I see about food and drink.” Feeling very much like I was making a cowardly retreat, I ran down the long halls to the kitchen, cursing my bad luck as I went. There I found Julen, Oria, the new cook, and his assistant all standing in a knot talking at once. As soon as I appeared, the conversation stopped. Julen and Oria turned to face me--Oria on the verge of laughter. “The lady can have the new rose room, and the lord the corner suite next to your brother. But they’ve got an army of servants with them, Countess,” Julen said heavily. Whenever she called me Countess, it was a sure sign she was deeply disturbed over something. “Where’ll we house them? There’s no space in our wing, not till we finish the walls.” “And who’s to wait on whom?” Oria asked as she carefully brought my mother’s good silver trays out from the wall-shelves behind the new-woven coverings. “Glad we’ve kept these polished,” she added. “I’d say find out how many of those fancy palace servants are kitchen trained, and draft ‘em. And then see if some of the people from that new inn will come up, for extra wages. Bran can unpocket the extra pay,” I said darkly, “if he’s going to make a habit of disappearing for half a year and reappearing with armies of retainers. As for housing, well, the garrison does have a new roof, so they can all sleep there. We’ve got those new Fire Sticks to warm ‘em up with.” “What about meals for your guests?” Oria said, her eyes wide. I’d told Oria last summer that she could become steward of the house. While I’d been ordering books on trade, and world history, and governments, she had been doing research on how the great houses were currently run; and it was she who had hired Demnan, the new cook. We’d eaten well over the winter, thanks to his genius. I looked at Oria. “This is it. No longer just us, no longer practice, it’s time to dig out all your plans for running a fine house for a noble family. Bran and his two Court guests will need something now after their long journey, and I have no idea what’s proper to offer Court people.” “Well, I do,” Oria said, whirling around, hands on hips, her face flushed with pleasure. “We’ll make you proud, I promise.” I sighed. “Then…I guess I’d better go back.” As I ran to the parlor, pausing only to ditch my blanket in an empty room, I steeled myself to be polite and pleasant no matter how much my exasperating brother inadvertently provoked me--but when I pushed aside the tapestry at the door, they weren’t there. And why should they be? This was Branaric’s home, too.

Porter’s aerial palace, complete with twenty-six windows, a long exhaust pipe for steam sticking out the rear, and a giant American flag fluttering over the rudders, was designed to ride beneath an immense cigar-shaped dirigible. The engineering was lunacy, but Porter’s marketing was brilliant. He proposed dispensing entirely with the notorious jumping-off hassles along the Missouri River by launching his “aerial locomotive” from New York. The coast-to-coast trip, Porter’s calculations showed, could be made in just three days—five days if the prevailing headwinds were particularly bad that week. Porter aggressively advertised his “Air Line to California” in eastern newspapers and magazines. Amazingly, over two hundred suckers paid a subscription price of $50, which included three-course meals and wine, for the inaugural balloon hop to the gold fields. That winter, a large crowd gathered in a Long Island cornfield to watch Porter test a model of his airship. But the craft never left the ground because the steam engines were far too heavy for the balloon. The would-be Porter aeronauts, however, were the lucky ones—they never had to leave in the first place. The 125 paying passengers on the first Turner and Allen Pioneer Train were not so fortunate. The Turner and Allen expedition of 1849

We saw Bran and Shevraeth only at dinner, and that seldom enough, for they were often away. When the weather was particularly bad, they might be gone for several days. On the evenings we were alone, Nee and I would curl up in her room or mine, eating from silver trays and talking. Branaric and the Marquis managed to be around on most days when the weather permitted gatherings in the old garrison courtyard for swordfighting practice. Even though I was not very good at it, I enjoyed sword work. At least I enjoyed it when not rendered acutely conscious of all my failings, when the bouts were attended by someone tall, strong, naturally gifted with grace, and trained since childhood--such as the Marquis of Shevraeth. So after a couple of particularly bad practices (in which I tried so hard not to get laughed at that I made more mistakes than ever), I stopped going whenever I saw him there. When Nee and I did join Bran and the Marquis for dinner, for the most part I sat in silence and watched Nee covertly, trying to copy her manners. No one--not even Bran--remarked on it if I sat through an entire meal without speaking. Thus I was not able to engender any discussions about the Marquise of Merindar, so the letter--and the question of kingship--stayed dormant, except at night in my troubled dreams.

The lunch menu consisted of a seafood appetizer, creamy chicken in a pastry shell, and a green salad--none of which was really kids’ food. Patrick and Caroline toyed silently with their seafood and managed a few obligatory bites. I noticed Diana’s eyes twinkling with amusement as she watched them. I had to admit “Patrick and Caroline aren’t especially fond of shellfish.” When the chicken was served, Caroline didn’t know how to serve herself and cast an imploring look at me that said, “Oh, help! What do I do, Mom?” Before I could react, Diana, so attuned to children, jumped up and came over to serve Caroline and cut up her chicken. I was speechless at her rapid, sympathetic response. Caroline thanked her, then gazed at her in adoration for the rest of the meal. She was in heaven! Dessert was tricky and delicious--ice cream in a slippery chocolate shell. This time two people served all of us, so my children would not have to struggle for themselves. During lunch, Diana made a point of asking Patrick and Caroline about their travels, their schools, and their hobbies. Patrick’s responses were very polite, but tended to be rather subdued and brief. I wanted him to sound a bit more animated. I resisted the urge to give him a sharp kick under the table. Caroline was more talkative. Diana seemed to enjoy my lively, spunky daughter. My children behaved themselves beautifully amidst the unaccustomed formality and luxury. My years of daily training paid off. They answered questions politely, sat up straight in their chairs, and even chewed with their mouths closed. I thought of my mother-in-law’s claim, “You can take those children anywhere.” Their lunch with the Princess of Wales certainly proved her point. I was very proud of them.

And that's exactly the trouble with having celebrities take the "SNAP challenge": Gwyneth would hardly feature a spaghetti-and-hot dogs meal on GOOP.com, unless the spaghetti was artisinal, hand made only by women over the age of 70, in an Italian town that doesn't have the Internet yet and relies on goats to deliver important messages to the next village, wrapped lovingly in antique parchment and flown in on a private jet, while packed in ice hammered out of the Alps and carefully reformed into crystal clear "ice globes," served only with hot dogs fashioned from macrobiotic tofu, made of hand-selected soybeans in rural Japan, aged to perfection in the bosom of a 16th century Samurai warrior's armor, and then hand cut with a 24-karat gold wire. The very thought of setting foot in a discount grocery store where she has to pack her own generic, store-brand dried fruit and expired milk in a cardboard box after counting out her pennies probably breaks her out in such nasty hives, she has to have an allergy-banishing skin cream custom mixed for her in Paris by trained monkeys in bellhop uniforms.

Christian schools have often become comfortable sanctuaries where children are sheltered from the devices of the devil, instead of becoming Holy Spirit terrorist training centers that sharpen these arrows for the destruction of evil forces. It is time that we give our children more than a Happy Meal. We need to teach them how to deal with the destructive forces of evil from the time they are little. Kingdom combat training should be part of every homeschooler’s life, every Christian school’s curriculum and every parent’s instruction.

injured her ankle during the first week of physical training so that had been the end of her WAAF career. Now Susan extricated her arm from the blanket and glanced at her wristwatch. ‘The NAAFI should be open any time now for some cocoa and supper,’ she commented as Livvy rose to throw some more wood onto the stove that stood in the middle of the room. It was a temperamental thing, often throwing out more smoke than heat. ‘Ouch!’ Livvy cried as she opened the door and it spat at her. ‘I swear this ruddy thing waits for me to do that!’ She hastily threw the log she was holding in and slammed the door shut, causing smoke to billow into the hut and make them all cough. Amanda quickly took out her compact and applied lipstick and powder to her nose, then fluffing her hair up she asked, ‘So who’s coming then?’ As they had all discovered, Amanda hated being seen without her make-up, whereas the rest of them were usually bundled up in layers of clothing just intent on keeping as warm as they could with no thought to how they looked. They all rose and when Nell opened the door a gust of snow blew in at them. ‘Ugh! Bloody weather,’ Susan grumbled as they stepped out into the raging blizzard. ‘Perhaps we should have put the kettle on the stove and made our own drinks tonight!’ ‘Ah, but some of those handsome RAF chaps could be in,’ Amanda pointed out. The RAF base was not far from theirs and when the pilots weren’t flying they often used the NAAFI for a meal. Susan and Livvy exchanged an amused glance, then, heads bent, they picked their way through the deepening snow and just for a moment Livvy thought of the warm, cosy little kitchen back at the lodge. In the very kitchen that Livvy was thinking of, Sunday was just opening the door to John, who had popped in to check that all was well. Their relationship had undergone a subtle change since he had made the unexpected proposal. For a time, they had lost their easy relationship and she had felt slightly embarrassed when in his company and had stopped visiting Treetops as frequently as she had previously. But since the departure of Giles and Livvy they were becoming closer again, finding comfort in each other’s company. ‘How are you all?’ he asked as Sunday quickly closed the door behind him and he stamped the snow from his boots. Already his coat was beginning to steam in the warm atmosphere, and she smiled as she ushered him to the fireside chair and hurried off to set the kettle on the range. ‘We’re fine. Kathy is upstairs getting the twins to sleep.’ Without asking she spooned tea leaves into the pot from the caddy and lifted down two cups

She was no use at maths homework, and some days you could starve rather than get a hot meal from her, but Shuggie looked at her now and understood this was where she excelled. Everyday with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high. When she had disgraced herself with drink, she got up the next day, put on her best coat, and faced the world. When her belly was empty and her weans were hungry, she did her hair and let the world think otherwise. It was hard at first to start moving again, the feel the music, to go to that other place in your head where you keep your confidence. It didn't go together, the shuffling feet and the jangly limbs, but like a slow train it caught speed and soon he was flying again. He tried to tone down the big showy moves, the shaking hips and the big sweeping arms. But it was in him, and as it poured out, he found he was helpless to stop it.

Many of us have a habit of bonding with the food itself instead of the One who provided the food or the person who prepared it. Bonding with food leads to food addictions and unhealthy eating habits. When we bond with the food, we do not build our attachment with others at the table and God who provided the meal. For food to act as a bonding agent, we need good teaching and training in the community. Learning how to use food and drink to build our love for each other should be part of every church’s discipleship program.

Life on the road, even for a worldly man like C. W. Post and his well-bred daughter, presented certain challenges. although he could order meals, fasten Marjorie's buttons, and make sure that she was properly dressed, C. W. could not fix her hair.

So instead, I did what I’d done since I was a child—I took comfort in food. Not in a binge-eating sort of way, which wasn’t focusing at all, but grounding myself in the here and now by noticing exactly what I ate. Right now, in this hotel room in front of a gas fire, the fish was fresh and sturdy beneath its crisp breading, the chips thick and expertly salted. My pint of ale was the color of walnuts, with flavor that had been developed over centuries. Salt eddied through my mouth, grounding me, and I thought of an essay M. F. K. Fisher had written about a meal she’d eaten in Paris after getting stuck on a train. It made me feel cosmopolitan rather than lonely. For the first moment since my mother died, I felt something akin to peace. Maybe I’d write about it in the morning. But for now, it was a relief to be far away from the drama of my life, with a full belly and a sense of quiet stealing over me. As I was falling asleep, my brain fancifully tried to write limericks with fish-and-chips at the center. They were incredibly clever in my compromised state, and I told myself to remember them in the morning. It was probably just as well that I didn’t.

Steven grinned as though he could see right through her. He was finely dressed, but she could see the bulge of his .45 beneath his suitcoat. “Hello, Miss Emma,” he said, taking off his new beaver hat. “Mr. Fairfax,” Emma replied, stepping back to admit him. There in the shadowed light of the entryway, he brought a very small box from the pocket of his vest and held it out. “This is for you.” Emma fairly lunged for the package, before remembering it wasn’t polite to go grasping at things in other people’s hands. “You shouldn’t have,” she said. Steven’s eyes glittered with silent laughter. “But I did,” he reasoned. “That’s true,” Emma replied, snatching it from his fingers and ripping off the paper. The package contained a tiny bottle of real French perfume, and Emma’s eyes went round at the sight of it. Uncorking the little crystal lid, she held the splendid stuff to her nose and sniffed. Surely heaven didn’t smell any better. “Thank you,” she breathed, amazed that a cowboy could give such an elegant, costly gift. Even Fulton, with all his money, had never presented her with anything so dazzlingly extravagant. Steven smiled. “You’re welcome, Miss Emma. Now, are we going on that picnic or not?” Emma led the way back through the house. “Daisy’s fixed us a grand basket.” “We’ll have plenty to eat then, darlin’, because I just picked up a full meal from the hotel.” Emma turned and looked at him in surprise. “But the lady always provides the food,” she said. “That doesn’t seem quite fair, since it was the gentleman who did the asking,” Steven replied in a mischievous whisper. Daisy

Also today when you sit down to eat your meal, no matter where you are, try to think about the many people who have made the meal possible.  See if you can engage in this activity while you eat slowly.  Let appreciation well up from within you as your taste buds are activated.  Think of the people who built your car with all of its complex components that work together to provide transportation.  Or think of the bus driver or train engineers.  Think of those who laid the roads or rails.  Think of the cashier who stands on their feet all day long ringing up purchases.  Think of the truck driver who delivered the merchandise to the store.  Think of the packagers.  Think of the farm laborers who make the food possible.  Think of those in oil producing countries who provide their natural resources and labor.  The list is almost endless.  I can imagine that by the end of the meal you still have not thought of all the countless labors, big and small, that made that meal possible.  Don’t forget to include your own labors as well.

Lentil-Mushroom Burgers For any reluctant vegan who worries that nothing will ever replace the taste or texture of a juicy beef patty, consider the lentil burger. It might not matter so much that lentils are an excellent source of protein, that they are one of the fastest-cooking legumes, or that they are consumed in large quantities all over Europe, Asia, and Africa (even Idaho!). What will impress you is how tender, juicy, and “meaty” they taste. I grew up grilling over campfires, and I know burgers. These are as delicious as they come. Sometimes I’ll even take a few patties with me on long training runs and races.        1 cup dried green lentils (2¼ cups cooked)      2¼ cups water      1 teaspoon dried parsley      ¼ teaspoon black pepper      3 garlic cloves, minced      1¼ cups finely chopped onion      ¾ cup finely chopped walnuts      2 cups fine bread crumbs (see Note)      ½ cup ground flax seed (flax seed meal)      3 cups finely chopped mushrooms   1½ cups destemmed, finely chopped kale, spinach, or winter greens      2 tablespoons coconut oil or olive oil      3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar      2 tablespoons Dijon mustard      2 tablespoons nutritional yeast      1 teaspoon sea salt      ½ teaspoon black pepper      ½ teaspoon paprika   In a small pot, bring the lentils, water, parsley, 1 garlic clove, and ¼ cup of the onion to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, for 35 to 40 minutes, until the water is absorbed and the lentils are soft. While the lentils are cooking, combine the walnuts, bread crumbs, and flax seed in a bowl. Add the nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, and paprika and mix well. Sauté the remaining onion, remaining garlic, the mushrooms, and greens in the oil for 8 to 10 minutes, then set aside. Remove the lentils from the heat, add the vinegar and mustard, and mash with a potato masher or wooden spoon to a thick paste. In a large mixing bowl, combine the lentils, sautéed veggies, and bread crumb mixtures, and mix well. Cool in the refrigerator for 15 to 30 minutes or more. Using your hands, form burger patties to your desired size and place on waxed paper. Lightly fry in a seasoned skillet, broil, or grill until lightly browned and crisp, 3 to 5 minutes on each side. Extra uncooked patties can be frozen on wax paper in plastic bags or wrapped individually in aluminum foil, making for a quick dinner or wholesome burger for the next barbecue.   MAKES A DOZEN 4-INCH DIAMETER BURGERS   NOTE: To make the bread crumbs, you’ll need about half of a loaf of day-old bread (I use Ezekiel 4:9). Slice the bread, then tear or cut into 2- to 3-inch pieces and chop in a food processor for 1 to 2 minutes, until a fine crumb results. The walnuts can also be chopped in the food processor with the bread.  

am: 10g (grams) of BCAAs 7:00 am: Weight Training 9:00 am: 10g of BCAAs 11:00 am: 10g of BCAAs 1:00 pm: Meal 4:00 pm: Snack (optional) 8:00 pm: Meal This

Henry McIntyre met Cobb at the train station and insisted his son’s “close friend” should stay at his house instead of in a hotel. The temptation to eat a home-cooked meal was so great, Cobb took Henry McIntyre up on the offer, even though he didn’t actually know Odd.

Well, then,” Mrs. Byrne says. “Let’s get back to work. Dorothy, your suitcase is in the foyer. We’ll discuss sleeping arrangements at supper.” She turns to leave, then adds, “We keep strict hours for mealtimes. Breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve, supper at six. There is no snacking between meals. Self-discipline is one of the most important qualities a young lady can possess.

At the back of the yard, tufted with grass like sparse hair on a balding head, is a weathered gray shed with a slit cut out of the door. Fanny nods toward it. “I’ll wait.” “You don’t have to.” “The longer you’re in there, the longer my fingers get a break.” The shed is drafty, and I can see a sliver of daylight through the slit. A black toilet seat, worn through to wood in some places, is set in the middle of a rough-hewn bench. Strips of newspaper hang on a roll on the wall. I remember the privy behind our cottage in Kinvara, so the smell doesn’t shock me, though the seat is cold. What will it be like out here in a snowstorm? Like this, I suppose, only worse. When I’m finished, I open the door, pulling down my dress. “You’re pitiful thin,” Fanny says. “I’ll bet you’re hungry.” Hongry. She’s right. My stomach feels like a cavern. “A little,” I admit. Fanny’s face is creased and puckered, but her eyes are bright. I can’t tell if she’s seventy or a hundred. She’s wearing a pretty purple flowered dress with a gathered bodice, and I wonder if she made it herself. “Mrs. Byrne don’t give us much for lunch, but it’s prolly more’n you had.” She reaches into the side pocket of her dress and pulls out a small shiny apple. “I always save something for later, case I need it. She locks up the refrigerator between meals.” “No,” I say. “Oh yes she does. Says she don’t want us rooting around in there without her permission. But I usually manage to save something.” She hands me the apple. “I can’t—

The most satisfying foods they tested were plain boiled potatoes, brown pasta, oatmeal, fish, and meat. People who consumed these foods were less likely to feel hungry immediately afterward. Foods that did the worst job of satisfying hunger were croissants, donuts, candy, and peanuts.

He ate as much as he wanted and ate whatever he wanted, but he ate at specified times during the day. He lost 42 pounds in two years and has kept it off for seven years and counting.

The One Meal a Day Diet, also called the OMAD Diet is a method of losing weight that is based on intermittent fasting, meal frequency, and meal timing. It’s an easy and fast way to get thin and stay thin forever (no more yo-yo weight battles). It’s possible to eat whatever you want and still lose weight.

The OMAD Diet is not a temporary weight-loss method or fad diet. It’s a lifestyle plan that works for the long-term. This scientifically-based, comprehensive lifestyle plan works simply because, unlike short-term weight-loss diets, an easy-to-follow, lifelong weight-management lifestyle will help you lose weight and keep it off permanently.

Besides helping you achieve permanent weight loss, this book will teach you how to achieve good health by eating properly.

The study found that a ketogenic diet can lead to insulin resistance, fatty liver, a pro-inflammatory state, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and unhealthy fat regulation, as well as elevated levels of cholesterol, triglycerides, and leptin.

The secret to losing weight and keeping it off, as well as to improving one’s health, is reducing eating frequency.1 If you get only one thing out of this book, keep this in mind: Eat only once or twice per day and do not have any snacks at all.

Most cultures around the world eat only two or three meals per day and do not eat snacks. The skinny French and Chinese cultures do not snack at all or do so very rarely.

Most overweight people are unable to estimate proper portion sizes, which results in excessive calorie intake.15 Therefore, to limit excess food and calorie intake at dinnertime, drink a liquid meal. Studies have found that liquid meals help individuals lose weight.16 17

By eating only once or twice per day, and eating as much as you want at that time, you can take part in fasting without going hungry.

If you can afford it, eat out twice a day at restaurants offering healthy food and leave your fridge and freezer empty.

The best time to eat your one meal is at lunch like the Romans did.

When eating your one meal, eat as much as you feel like, until you’re completely satisfied. You can do a full-course meal consisting of a soup, entrée, main course, and dessert.

With a new puppy, we have a wonderful opportunity to teach them that yours is the hand that gives and doesn’t take. This is accomplished by hand-feeding their entire meal to them, one piece of kibble at a time.

We were getting ready to close the store for what we thought might be as long as two months now. I was looking over the day’s reports when Dissatisfaction came into the building. His fingers roamed along the spines of the books, sometimes tracing one, pulling it out to read the first line. Since he’d read The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald, he and I had compiled a list of short perfect novels. Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabel Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haien Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai These are books that knock you sideways in around 200 pages. Between the covers there exists a complete world. The story is unforgettably peopled and nothing is extraneous. Reading one of these books takes only an hour or two but leaves a lifetime imprint. Still, to Dissatisfaction, they are but exquisite appetizers. Now he needs a meal. I knew that he’d read Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels and was lukewarm. He called them soap opera books, which I thought was the point. He did like The Days of Abandonment, which was perhaps a short perfect novel. ‘She walked the edge with that one,’ he said. He liked Knausgaard (not a short perfect). He called the writing better than Novocain. My Struggle had numbed his mind but every so often, he told me, he’d felt the crystal pain of the drill. In desperation, I handed over The Known World. He thrust it back in outrage, his soft voice a hiss, Are you kidding me? I have read this one six times. Now what do you have? In the end, I placated him with Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger, the latest Amitav Ghosh, NW by Zadie Smith, and Jane Gardam’s Old Filth books in a sturdy Europa boxed set, which he hungrily seized. He’d run his prey to earth and now he would feast. Watching him closely after he paid for the books and took the package into his hands, I saw his pupils dilate the way a diner’s do when food is brought to the table.

When Erasmus rejoined Rupert and Naudé after his successful phone call to Universal, he was congratulated on securing the money. Rupert put his hand on Erasmus’s shoulder as they left to go and have a meal: ‘You know, Mr Erasmus, the best training school for an accountant is poverty!’6

It was as if they could dip their hands beneath the surface of the day and feel the current of that other life, only nine months earlier, running just beneath it. There was Cleo running naked through the living room, dripping lake water across the floor, and Frank laughing just behind her, trying to grab her slippery limbs. Here was the kitchen where they had eaten fresh fruit, cereal, or sandwiches for every meal because neither of them could cook. There was Frank dozing on the sofa, a book tented on his bare chest, and Cleo gently setting it aside to lay her head in its place. It was on the train home that he had asked her to marry him. She’d lifted her cheek from his shoulder in wonder. How did you know that was what I wanted? He’d laughed. So that’s a yes? Yes , she’d said, a thousand yeses, yes. And it had felt like the beginning of everything.

Want to lose weight? Gain muscle? Better your body composition? Improve performance/ mobility/strength? Feel and look healthier? We tailor-make nutrition and training plans to help you reach YOUR specific goals and give you all the tools to make a lasting and sustainable lifestyle change! Check-in! Get weighed, measured, ideas coached and meal plans tweaked to help stay on track and reach your goals. We use an individually catered scientific & systematic approach to help achieve your goals!

YOUR LONGEVITY HEALTH, FITNESS & LONGEVITY WEEKLY CHECKLIST 1. Hydrate. Drink half your body weight in ounces of water per day. Add some fresh lemon and a pinch of Celtic sea salt to optimize your hydration and electrolyte balance. 2. Eat foods closest to their natural source. Avoid processed carbs, and low quality processed meats. 3. Decrease Disease Risk. Consume at least one serving of cruciferous vegetables per day including broccoli sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, or kale. 4. Commit to a structured eating window. Consume meals in an 8 to 12 hours and fast for 12-16 hour window each day. 5. Stay consistent with sleep. Go to sleep and wake up at about the same times each day. 6. Get strong. Perform three resistance training sessions per week. 7. Strengthen your heart, lungs, and build endurance with 3 cardiovascular exercise sessions of 20 to 30 minutes each session. 8. Consider the power of using heat and cold to use positive stressors to lower your blood pressure, reduce inflammation, reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s, and cut your risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 50%.

The prize money certainly said something about FIFA’s priorities, though. The same week the 2015 Women’s World Cup kicked off, United Passions debuted in movie theaters. It was a propaganda film that FIFA produced about itself and bankrolled for around $30 million. That’s double the total amount of prize money FIFA made available to all teams participating in the 2015 Women’s World Cup. The film earned less than $1,000 in its debut weekend in North America, for the worst box-office opening in history, and it went down as the lowest-grossing film in U.S. history. Almost all the millions of dollars FIFA poured into making the movie was lost. The film has a 0% rating on the popular movie-review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, and a New York Times review called it “one of the most unwatchable films in recent memory.” And remember the uncomfortable encounter at the team hotel between the Americans and Brazilians after the 2007 Women’s World Cup semifinal? That would never happen in a men’s World Cup. That’s because FIFA assigns different hotels and training facilities to each men’s team, to serve as a base camp throughout the tournament. The women don’t get base camps—they jump from city to city and from hotel to hotel during the World Cup, and they usually end up bumping into their opponents, who are given the same accommodations. American coach Jill Ellis said she almost walked into the German meal room at the World Cup once. “Sometimes you’re in the elevator with your opponent going down to the team buses for a game,” Heather O’Reilly says. “It’s pretty awkward.

Over the next weeks and months, my daughters had to learn to live without their father, and me without my husband. In addition to the overwhelming, everyday tasks like buying groceries, making meals, and getting the girls to their activities, I suddenly had to navigate the legal system and file for divorce. I had to figure out the nearly impossible feat of owning a small business and solo parenting two active, preteen girls. I learned the hard way that you have to remove the leaves from the gutter if you don’t want your basement to flood. I had to muster the courage to pull the hair out of the shower drain. I had to somehow find the time and energy to decontaminate the entire house when the dreaded scourge that is lice made its unwanted appearance. And I had to do it all with the added anger, sadness, and sheer frustration that these were all things John used to take care of. As tempting as it was to collapse, I had two girls who needed me now more than ever. I needed my business to survive. I had a mountain of legal bills—tens of thousands of dollars and increasing daily. As a business owner, if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid. Stepping away to take care of my mental and emotional state was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I had to balance what was best for my business in the long term with what the girls and I needed in the short term. I had to get through each day and keep moving forward. This meant I toggled back and forth between dealing with this trauma and running a business. I lived in a constant state of holding it all together, while simultaneously watching it all fall apart.

Offer A Treat. For confident kittens that like exploring in the car, make meal time car time. After he's calm in the car, feed some of his meals in the car for a week, or offer very high-value treats that kitty gets at no other time. If your cat is more motivated by play or catnip, indulge him with favorites during the car times. He should learn that only these good things in life happen when you're near or inside the car. Add the Crate. You should be combining the crate training with car visits. Once kitty accepts the car as his territory, place him in his carrier, set it on the back seat (away from air bag danger), and start the car. Then turn off the motor and take him out without going anywhere. Do this three or four times during the day until the cat takes it as a matter of course. Each time, you'll give him lots of play or other rewards once he's released from the crate. Start The Car. Finally, after you start the car, open the garage door (if that’s where your car is), and back the car to the end of the driveway and stop. Do this two or three times in a day, always letting the pet out after you return. If the pet cries or shows stress, you may be moving too fast for him. The garage door is noisy, after all, and the movement of the car feels odd. The process takes forever, but it works. Increase The Time. Continue increasing the car-time by increments:  a trip around the block and then home, then a trip down the street and back, and so on. Cat calming music CDs may also help during the trip. Make every car trip upbeat and positive so the experience makes the cat look forward to the next trip. Visit The Vet. As mentioned earlier, it’s ideal for your kitten to have visits to the vet that are FUN and result in playing, petting and treats, with no scary or unpleasant experiences. That prepares kitty for the times when a veterinary exam is necessary.

the carrier to elevate the benefit of hanging out in the carrier. Offer A Treat. Many cats respond well to treat rewards. To make the carrier an even better experience, try tossing a few inside for your kitten to discover. If he figures out that every now and then, going inside brings a bonus of yummies, your kitten will be more likely to explore and figure out the crate is a terrific place. Make sure that the treats you use for crate training are irresistible, and reserve them for this situation only. Once your cat has begun to visit the crate on his own, try offering an occasional high-value meal (like pungent canned food) but only when he’s inside. Teach Him Tolerance. After your kitten spends time willingly inside, try shutting the door briefly. Most kitties tolerate the door shut at least as long as they have something to munch. Praise the dickens out of him! He should know that staying calmly inside the crate earns him good things, maybe even a game of chase-the-red-dot. Repeat several times over the next few days, each time letting the kitten out after a few minutes. Extend Crate Time. By the end of the first week, you can begin increasing the time the kitten spends in the crate. Some cats feel calmer when inside the carrier if you cover it with a towel because this shuts out at least the visual cues that may raise stress. Scent the towel with the Feliway. Carry Kitty Around. Once your kitten feels comfortable in the carrier with the door shut, drop in a couple of treats and then pick up the carrier while he’s in it and carry him around. Give him another treat or play a favorite game as soon as you let him out.

Our RMR decreases by about 5% every decade after thirty, mainly because of the loss of muscle mass associated with aging. Fortunately, our lean body mass can be controlled through proper nutrition and strength training. It only takes a few months of training to recover one or two decades of decrease in our RMR. Metabolically, muscle is very expensive tissue, even when it is at rest. Another way to positively influence our RMR is to provide our body with a steady flow of nutrients. The body is extremely resourceful, and during times of starvation it adapts by slowing down its RMR. It tries to save every calorie consumed by storing some as fat. Any of the common diets that severely restrict your caloric intake neglect this principal, and that is why people on those diets almost always gain at least their original weight back. When the body receives a regular flow of calories, in the form of frequent meals, it allows the RMR to remain high, and burn those very same calories off. Frequent meals also utilize the thermal effect of food. Eating temporarily cranks up your metabolism. The more meals you eat in a day, the more consistently your metabolism is boosted. You experience an increase in your RMR for about 5 hours every time you eat. This accounts for 5 – 10% of your total calorie expenditure. Over the long haul this can make quite a difference.