Rice Husband Quotes

Yo, guys," Ty says, peering down into the stroller. "What the hell is that thing? Satan's spawn?" "You'd better watch it!" Henry says. He puts on a serious face, throws an arm around my shoulders, and pulls me in close. "That's our child you're talking about." Ty smiles, then looks at Jerry Rice. "Its eyes are seriously creeping me out. And I knew something was going on between you two." "You're right," Henry says. "Woods is my husband, and I'm her wife.

Also because I’m always saying he could quit his job if he wanted and we’ll go somewhere cheap and live on rice and beans with our kid. My husband doesn’t believe me about that last bit. And why should he? Once I spent $13 on a piece of cheese.

By now she has learned that her husband likes his food on the salty side, that his favorite thing about lamb curry is the potatoes, and that he likes to finish his dinner with a small final helping of rice and dal.

Can I tell my daughter that I loved her father? This was the man who rubbed my feet at night. He praised the food that I cooked. He cried honestly when I brought out trinkets I had saved for the right day, the day he gave me my daughter, a tiger girl. How could I not love this man? But it was a love of a ghost. Arms that encircled but did not touch. A bowl full of rice but without my appetite to eat it. No hunger. No fullness. Now Saint is a ghost. He and I can now love equally. He knows the things I have been hiding all these years. Now I must tell my daughter everything. That she is a daughter of a ghost. She has no chi . This is my greatest shame. How can I leave this world without leaving her my spirit? So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. The pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is a way a mother loves her daughter. I hear my daughter speaking to her husband downstairs. They say words that mean nothing. They sit in a room with no life in it. I know a thing before it happens. She will hear the table and vase crashing on the floor. She will come upstairs and into my room. Her eyes will see nothing in the darkness, where I am waiting between the trees.

You should know this about the rich: they always want to get richer. It is never boring, getting your hands on more money. When I was a child, trying to find something to eat for dinner besides the old rice and dry beans in the kitchen, I would tell myself that if I could just have a good meal every night, I’d be happy. When I was at Sunset Studios, I told myself all I wanted was a mansion. When I got the mansion, I told myself all I wanted was two houses and a team of help. Here I was, just turned twenty-five, already realizing that no amount would ever really be enough.

He found it puzzling that so many rural people were hostile to, even terrified of, the place where they lived. It wasn't just that hard-working country folk had no time for the precious concerns of the effete urban environmentalists, what amazed Rice was how you could spend your whole life physically immersed in a particular ecological system and yet remain blinded to it by superstition, tradition, prejudice. Out west, it was ranchers' holy war on predators and their veneration of Indo-European domestic animals they husbanded on land too dry to support them. Here in the Appalachians, you saw rugged country men who refused to walk in the woods all summer because they were scared of snakes.

Here, you! The boss wants you. Buck up!' Mr Stafford was talking into the telephone. He replaced the receiver as Henry entered. 'Oh, Rice, here's a woman wants her husband shadowed while he's on the road. He's an actor. I'm sending you. Go to this address, and get photographs and all particulars. You'll have to catch the eleven o'clock train on Friday.' 'Yes, sir.' 'He's in "The Girl

Special combo, you got it," I say into the phone. "Which one?" "The winter melon soup." Winter melon is symbolic of a wife- a special order of the soup means someone's is about to be abducted. A special order of egg fried rice? Someone's kid. Fried pot stickers? A husband. Shanghai chow mein with chopped-up noodles? Someone's doomed to have their life cut short, the promise of longevity broken.

Now, we, as narrators, feel the need to inform you, dear reader, that we do not know how Edward always managed to thwart kisses. All we do know is that it was a gift he demonstrated throughout his life, most notably when his third cousin the Lady Dalrymple of Cheshire was about to kiss her new husband over their wedding altar, just after the priest pronounced them man and wife, and Edward stepped forward from his place of honor by the priest and said, "I hate to interrupt, but I thought now would be an excellent time to remind the wedding party not to throw rice, on account of the fact that birds, even kestrels, can choke on it.

She is sad. She does not speak Japanese. Her husband went to the desert months and months ago. Every day she goes to the market and brings back chocolate, a peach, and a salmon rice-ball for her dinner. She sits and eats and stares at the wall. Sometimes she watches television. Sometimes she walks three miles to Blue Street to look at necklaces in the window that she wishes someone would buy for her. Sometimes she walks along the pier to see the sunken bicycles, pinged into ruin by invisible arrows of battleship-sonar, crusted over with rust and coral. She likes to pet people’s dogs as they walk them. That is her whole life. What should she dream of?”   “Something better.

My family’s tradition of ‘matching-matching’ names is so obsessive, it’s against the order of nature. When my uncles Anil and Anant married, they took advantage of a heinous custom in Marathi weddings. After the pheras, a dish of uncooked rice is placed before the newlyweds, and whatever name the husband chooses to write in the rice becomes the new name of his wife. Because marriage in our culture is akin to buying a puppy at a pet shop and saying, ‘I am your new owner, and I shall call you Flu y.’ So Anil Adarkar brought home Asha Adarkar (née Kiran), and Anant Adarkar brought home Anita Adarkar (née Geeta). And to complete this picture of divine perfection they named their children Aniket, and Ashwini and Ashleysha, respectively.

Okay, here it goes--bread, so you’ll never go hungry; a broom, so you can sweep away evil; a candle, so you’ll always have light; honey, so life will always be sweet; a coin, to bring good fortune for the year; olive oil, for health, life, and believe it or not, to keep your husband, or in this case, your boyfriend faithful; a plant, so you’ll always have life; rice, to ensure your fertility, but that’s taken care of, eh? Salt represents life’s tears. I recommend you place a pinch of salt on the threshold of every door and window for good luck and according to my grandmother Chetta it also mends old wounds. Oh and... ah, yes, wine, sparkling non-alcoholic wine, so you never go thirsty and always have joy and last, but not least wood, so your home will always have harmony, stability, and peace.

He stood up, rushed to the fanned-out glossy company brochures. His finger landed on one in the center. Three stylized gold crowns. Corona Labs—BRINGING THE FUTURE TODAY. “This,” he said, finger tapping. Each time he touched the paper it seemed to get warmer. This turned out to be the brochure for a new company. Catherine picked it up, showed it to her husband. “I thought I knew more or less all the research labs in the country, but this is a new one.” Mac turned the glossy paper over in his big hands. There was a videolette loop embedded in the paper, all the rage nowadays. Some smiling woman in a lab coat endlessly raising a test tube in triumph, putting it down, raising it . . . Nick was shaking with tension. The logo, the name Corona Laboratories meant nothing to him, but still they shone in his mind.

In the northern colonies, European Americans tended to own one or two slaves who worked on the family farm or were hired out. Rhode Island and Connecticut had a few large farms, where twenty or thirty slaves would live and work. Plantation-based slavery was more common in the South, where hundreds of slaves could be owned by the same person and forced to work in tobacco, indigo, or rice fields. In most cities, slaveholdings were small, usually one or two slaves who slept in the attic or cellar of the slave owner’s home. Abigail Smith Adams, a Congregational minister’s daughter, grew up outside Boston in a household that owned two slaves, Tom and Pheby. As an adult, she denounced slavery, as did her husband, John Adams, the second President of the United States. Historians recently discovered the remains of slaves found in the African Burial Ground near today’s City Hall in New York City. By studying the skeletons, scientists discovered that the slaves of New York suffered from poor nutrition, disease, and years of backbreaking labor. Most of them died young.

In the car ahead, Jane was thinking fast and furiously. She had felt the purpose for which Tarzan had asked a few words with her, and she knew that she must be prepared to give him an answer in the very near future. He was not the sort of person one could put off, and somehow that very thought made her wonder if she did not really fear him. And could she love where she feared? She realized the spell that had been upon her in the depths of that far-off jungle, but there was no spell of enchantment now in prosaic Wisconsin. Nor did the immaculate young Frenchman appeal to the primal woman in her, as had the stalwart forest god. Did she love him? She did not know—now. She glanced at Clayton out of the corner of her eye. Was not here a man trained in the same school of environment in which she had been trained—a man with social position and culture such as she had been taught to consider as the prime essentials to congenial association? Did not her best judgment point to this young English nobleman, whose love she knew to be of the sort a civilized woman should crave, as the logical mate for such as herself? Could she love Clayton? She could see no reason why she could not. Jane was not coldly calculating by nature, but training, environment and heredity had all combined to teach her to reason even in matters of the heart. That she had been carried off her feet by the strength of the young giant when his great arms were about her in the distant African forest, and again today, in the Wisconsin woods, seemed to her only attributable to a temporary mental reversion to type on her part—to the psychological appeal of the primeval man to the primeval woman in her nature. If he should never touch her again, she reasoned, she would never feel attracted toward him. She had not loved him, then. It had been nothing more than a passing hallucination, super-induced by excitement and by personal contact. Excitement would not always mark their future relations, should she marry him, and the power of personal contact eventually would be dulled by familiarity. Again she glanced at Clayton. He was very handsome and every inch a gentleman. She should be very proud of such a husband.

Dame Aline, somewhat younger than her husband, was a short, sturdily built woman with fair hair beneath a white lace coif, small square hands, a merry giggle. She had a mask of light freckles across her face that on feast days she hid beneath a powder of rice mixed with dried white rose-petal: a faint scent of rose hung about her even tonight, when she wore no powder. Her cheeks were full, making Hob think at first of a squirrel with acorns in its cheeks. He thought her plain, especially next to the ivory perfection of Lady Isabeau. As the evening wore on, though, she seemed more appealing to him, by reason of her blithe chatter, her delight in each jest, and above all the contrast she made with the dire ominous bulk of her husband. He sat beside her and cut her meat, as was polite: men cut for women, the younger for the elder, the lesser for the greater. When he had done, she placed her hand on his arm affectionately; she smiled in his face. Her rounded cheek, her easy laugh, lent her a childlike prettiness, and Hob wondered that she had no fear of the sinister castellan, who made even the tough-as-gristle sergeant Ranulf uneasy.

But this isn't standard Japanese picnic fare: not a grain of rice or a pickled plum in sight. Instead, they fill the varnished wooden tables with thick slices of crusty bread, wedges of weeping cheese, batons of hard salamis, and slices of cured ham. To drink, bottles of local white wine, covered in condensation, and high-alcohol microbews rich in hops and local iconography. From the coastline we begin our slow, dramatic ascent into the mountains of Hokkaido. The colors bleed from broccoli to banana to butternut to beet as we climb, inching ever closer to the heart of autumn. My neighbors, an increasingly jovial group of thirtysomethings with a few words of English to spare, pass me a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I begin to feel the fog dissipate. We stop at a small train station in the foothills outside of Ginzan, and my entire car suddenly empties. A husband-and-wife team has set up a small stand on the train platform, selling warm apple hand pies made with layers of flaky pastry and apples from their orchard just outside of town. I buy one, take a bite, then immediately buy there more. Back on the train, young uniformed women flood the cars with samples of Hokkaido ice cream. The group behind me breaks out in song, a ballad, I'm later told, dedicated to the beauty of the season. Everywhere we go, from the golden fields of empty cornstalks to the dense forest thickets to the rushing rivers that carve up this land like the fat of a Wagyu steak, groups of camouflaged photographers lie in wait, tripods and shutter releases ready, hoping to capture the perfect photo of the SL Niseko steaming its way through the hills of Hokkaido.

She started to head out, but she passed her room. It was the same as she'd left it: a pile of cushions by her bed for Little Brother to sleep on, a stack of poetry and famous literature on her desk that she was supposed to study to become a "model bride," and the lavender shawl and silk robes she'd worn the day before she left home. The jade comb Mulan had left in exchange for the conscription notice caught her eye; it now rested in front of her mirror. Mulan's gaze lingered on the comb, on its green teeth and the pearl-colored flower nestled on its shoulder. She wanted to hold it, to put it in her hair and show her family- to show everyone- she was worthy. After all, her surname, Fa, meant flower. She needed to show them that she had bloomed to be worthy of her family name. But no one was here, and she didn't want to face her reflection. Who knew what it would show, especially in Diyu? She isn't a boy, her mother had told her father once. She shouldn't be riding horses and letting her hair loose. The neighbors will talk. She won't find a good husband- Let her, Fa Zhou had consoled his wife. When she leaves this household as a bride, she'll no longer be able to do these things. Mulan hadn't understood what he meant then. She hadn't understood the significance of what it meant for her to be the only girl in the village who skipped learning ribbon dances to ride Khan through the village rice fields, who chased after chickens and helped herd the cows instead of learning the zither or practicing her painting, who was allowed to have opinions- at all. She'd taken the freedom of her childhood for granted. When she turned fourteen, everything changed. I know this will be a hard change to make, Fa Li had told her, but it's for your own good. Men want a girl who is quiet and demure, polite and poised- not someone who speaks out of turn and runs wild about the garden. A girl who can't make a good match won't bring honor to the family. And worse yet, she'll have nothing: not respect, or money of her own, or a home. She'd touched Mulan's cheek with a resigned sigh. I don't want that fate for you, Mulan. Every morning for a year, her mother tied a rod of bamboo to Mulan's spine to remind her to stand straight, stuffed her mouth with persimmon seeds to remind her to speak softly, and helped Mulan practice wearing heeled shoes by tying ribbons to her feet and guiding her along the garden. Oh, how she'd wanted to please her mother, and especially her father. She hadn't wanted to let them down. But maybe she hadn't tried enough. For despite Fa Li's careful preparation, she had failed the Matchmaker's exam. The look of hopefulness on her father's face that day- the thought that she'd disappointed him still haunted her. Then fate had taken its turn, and Mulan had thrown everything away to become a soldier. To learn how to punch and kick and hold a sword and shield, to shoot arrows and run and yell. To save her country, and bring honor home to her family. How much she had wanted them to be proud of her.

In one such book, provocatively titled “Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers,” Rice explained that God had commanded women never to cut their hair, that God intended women to be subordinate to their husbands, and that women should never pastor churches.[‡‡‡‡]

Of course the predictable festival of crisis managing has begun in earnest now. Rice and his wife Janay will appear on The Today Show this week with Matt Lauer. Janay Rice tells a first-person story to ESPN, standing behind the man who laid her out and somehow trying to stand for victims of domestic violence at the same time, as she tries to help her husband get his old job in football back, so he stops being an unemployed wife beater sometime soon.

May God who gives patience…and encouragement help you to live in complete harmony with each other.… —Romans 15:5 (TLB) HOLY SATURDAY: LIVING IN HARMONY Depending on which source you consult, Americans spend forty-five minutes to an hour each day waiting: waiting in lines, waiting for files to download, sitting in traffic…waiting. If you ever spy me waiting in traffic, I look patient. I am not. My demeanor masks a very angry man who is contemplating mayhem. I once sat in my car in a highway construction zone on a hot summer afternoon beside a flashing sign that read, SLOW DOWN! YOUR CURRENT SPEED IS 0 MILES AN HOUR. I thought the long wait might cause overheating and then a blown gasket—and I don’t mean the car. It takes a special kind of person to be given a life of unfathomable gifts (food, drink, leisure time, central air) and then complain about occasional delays in living that life. I could, for instance, spend that time enjoying music or praying or pondering my existence rather than pondering mayhem, but no. I have chosen to seethe. Meanwhile, somewhere a child waits for rice from the back of a UN truck. A mother waits for a husband missing in Afghanistan. A couple waits for word about an adoption. A young man in a faraway time waits for the welcome death to end His suffering, accompanied by nothing but two thieves and vinegar mixed with some gall. Lord, I realize that’s what I have: gall. To grumble with such pettiness takes a lot of gall. Perhaps I’ve found something else to ponder the next time I await Your return when I have lost sight of You. —Mark Collins Digging Deeper: Ps 27:14; Mi 7:7

In Japan: The shortage of wives for farmers became a rural crisis. In one village in the late 1980s, of unmarried persons between ages 25 and 39, 120 were men and only 31 were women, a ratio of 4:1. Some Japanese villages organized to find wives for their bachelors. One mountain village placed newspaper ads, promising free winter skiing vacations to all young women who visited and agreed to meet its men. Over a fiveyear period, 300 women responded, but none became wives of a village man. In another mountain village of 7,000, there were three bachelors for every unmarried woman, so the local government became a marriage agent. It brought in 22 women from the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and other Asian countries to marry its men, many in their 40s and 50s. Some marriages endured, but others ended in divorce because of the labor demands of farm life, the burden wives bore in caring for their husband’s elderly parents, and cultural differences. Small businesses developed that offered counseling services for bicultural couples and served as marriage brokers to match Japanese men with foreign women. Even today, many Japanese farm men remain bachelors. Farming in Japan is now primarily a part-time occupation—farmers find off-season jobs in construction or other tasks, unable to make an acceptable living even with government subsidies. And farming is now largely performed by older persons. For example, in one important rice-growing area, between 1980 and 2003, the number of people making most of their money from farming fell by 56 percent, and the number of people between ages 15 and 59 fell by 83 percent. There was one increase, though: there were 600 more farmers older than 70 in 2003 than in 1980.

Drunk or just drinking, Skye had passed many hours trying not to think about the hunt, about the gun and Andrew Lockwood, about any of it. She had drunk to get loaded, to get wasted, to get happy, to get sad, because she loved the taste, because she was against killing animals, because her husband liked rough sex, because she had nightmares about snakes under her tent, because her father had stopped loving her, because she hated Swan Lake, because she had gone to Redhawk, because she was mad at her mother for offering to trade her life for Caroline’s, because Skye herself had killed a man dead.

But her life on this earth had taught her this: that love, in the end, was all that mattered. Friends, families, suitors, husbands: Goodness abounded in all of them.

Recipes of Sita People have to be fed during a war. And so the kitchens of Lanka were busy. Those who were going to the war had to be fed; those who were returning from the war had to be fed. Food had to inspire, comfort and stir passions. The smell of rice boiling, vegetables frying and fish roasting filled the city streets, mingling with the smell of blood, rotting flesh and burning towers. The aromas reached Sita’s grove. ‘Don’t you like that smell?’ asked Trijata noticing Sita’s expression as she inhaled the vapours. Trijata, Vibhishana’s daughter, had become a friend. ‘If I was cooking, I would change the proportion of the spices,’ Sita said. She gave her suggestions to Trijata, who promptly conveyed them to the royal kitchen. Mandodari followed these instructions and soon a different aroma wafted out of the kitchen. So enticing was the resulting aroma that other rakshasa cooks came to the Ashoka grove and asked Sita for cooking tips. Without tasting the food, just by smelling what had been prepared, like a skilled cook, Sita gave her suggestions. ‘Add more salt.’ ‘Replace mustard with pepper.’ ‘Mix ginger with tamarind.’ ‘Less cloves, more coconut milk.’ These suggestions were promptly executed, and before long Lanka was full of the most delightful aromas and flavours, so delightful that sons and brothers and husbands and fathers wanted to stay back and relish more food. They wanted to burp, then sleep, then wake up and eat again. They wanted to chew areca nuts wrapped in betel leaves and enjoy the company of their wives on swings. No war, no fighting, just conversations over food. Ravana noticed the lethargy in his men, their reluctance to fight. They were not afraid. They were not drunk. They were just too happy to go to war. Furious, he ordered the kitchens to be closed. ‘Starve the soldiers. Hungry men are angry men. In anger they will kill the monkeys. The only food they can eat is monkey flesh.

They have a piano in town," Cade said. He'd stood outside Clark's barn any number of times, listening to the intertwining of notes, contemplating making such a joyful noise. The player hadn't been expert, but he'd never heard anything like it before. Apparently this was news to Lily. She looked up at Cade with something akin to excitement burning in the pale blue of her eyes. "Really? Why didn't anyone tell me?" Then she shut up and her gaze drifted to the pasture beyond the trees. Her husband had known. He could see that suspicion forming on her face. "I suppose that's what they do in town on Saturday nights," she murmured. "Jim told me it was too rowdy to stay after dark." "The other women stay," Cade said without inflection. Lily had never been close to her sisters, but she had grown up in a household of females and missed the feminine discussions and laughter and shared secrets. Juanita couldn't fill that need entirely; she had been too damaged by her past. Lily didn't know much about the town ladies, but there was no reason she couldn't meet them somehow, if she put her mind to it. "I wish I could hear the piano," Lily said. Actually, she wished she had a right to play the piano, but that was beyond her ability to speak. "I'll take you in if you wish to go." Lily surprised herself by saying, "I would like that, thank you. I don't think Juanita would mind watching Serena, and my father can look after Roy. Do they have other instruments besides the piano?" Cade stroked the flute as he gazed on the woman sitting boldly in the grass before him. He had never met anyone quite like her before. She was white and female, which should put her completely out of bounds for any conversation at all. But she was his boss, and as such, there had to be a certain amount of communication. She wore trousers like a man, and to a certain extent she spoke like a man, but he couldn't treat her with the same deference as Ralph Langton or with the scorn he felt for the ignorant farmhands he worked with. If she had been a whore, he could have had certain expectations, but she was a lady. How the hell should he treat a lady who wore pants? "Fiddles, sometimes," he responded while he struggled with the problem. "Is there dancing?" she asked anxiously. It was then that Cade realized that this woman didn't see categories as other people did. She saw people through the eyes of a child, as they related to her. It was rather amusing to realize that he had been avoiding her to keep from offending her ladylike sensibilities, when she was more likely offended by his avoidance than his presence. That's what he got for assuming all white women were alike. "They dance," he agreed. Cade

She didn't want a husband. She certainly didn't want a husband who never spoke to her, much less consulted her wishes. She didn't want any man who would take over her life and tell her what she could or could not do and expect more from her than she was prepared to give. She'd had enough of that. But

Oh, Cade," Lily whispered, running her hands through his hair and down his shoulders, massaging the tight muscles of his arms as he leaned over her. "You still do not understand, do you? I love you, and I want you to be happy, and you cannot be happy while your mother's land goes to ruin. I can help you, if you will let me, and I will be happy just to be with you. It is not the land that is so important to me, it is you. I know this place will be safe with Travis here and you to guide him when necessary. I can learn to make friends anywhere. I cannot find another husband I would want more than you." Hope finally dawned on Cade's face. "You would go to Bexar with me, live in the hacienda, make that your home?" "Well, it's only fair that Davy be given the same inheritance as Roy," Lily shrugged, trying to hide her delight at Cade's reaction. But

She watched as Cade opened the wardrobe and pulled out a white shirt of the finest linen weave, even finer than the one she had made for him. She had seen him wear only three shirts in the entire time she had known him, and suddenly he was wearing his best dress shirt through mud and donning rich clothes that made him seem a stranger. He pulled on a pair of skintight trousers that appeared to be satin, and Lily's breath caught in her chest at the sight. Her gaze strayed to his narrow hips and the crotch of his trousers. He was her husband and she knew him intimately, but his new clothing made her interest seem almost obscene. He covered himself with a short jacket embellished with silver braid and added a cravat that hung in loose folds over his elegant shirt. His thick, straight hair brushed the cravat, but in all other respects he looked like a Spanish gentleman. The sharp Roman nose and high cheekbones now resembled aristocracy more than it revealed his Indian heritage. There

I am rarely left speechless by a patient’s opening gambit, but as with Elaine, there are always a few that do leave me at a complete loss. My personal favourites are: When I eat a lot of rice cakes, it makes my wee smell of rice cakes; I masturbate 10 to 15 times per day – what should I do? I ate four Easter eggs this morning and now I feel sick; My husband can’t satisfy me sexually; When I was in church this morning, I was overcome by the power of the Lord; I think my vagina is haunted.

She’d thought of her own family, of how happy she had thought they were. In some ways, they were completely different from the Tyrones. Her family didn’t suffer from addiction or alcoholism. No one had a fatal disease. Instead of two sons, there were two daughters. Her father had not been a drunk, but he had been a liar and a cheat. He had acted the role of good husband and father but was actually a different person entirely.

From their earliest years Cambodian children learned that ambition and personal aspiration should not, could not, be a part of their character. Be satisfied with the life you have, the monks told them, no matter how poor or menial. Education “simply took children from the rice fields and then gave them back to the rice fields.” Girls were instructed to expect even less. They were not permitted to attend even the temple classes. Instead, their mothers taught them subservience and docility. Nothing embodied that idea more than the Chbab Srey, a piece of traditional literature that described a woman’s place in the home, written in the form of a mother talking to her daughter. One passage said: “Dear, no matter what your husband did wrong, I tell you to be patient, don’t say anything ... don’t curse, don’t be the enemy. No matter how poor or stupid, you don’t look down on him. ... No matter what the husband says, angry and cursing, using strong words without end, complaining and cursing because he is not pleased, you should be patient with him and calm down your anger.” The Chbab Srey was required reading in the schools until 2007,

The whole world's effort of working hard goes to waste. Just as the bull [that turns the wheels on the oil mill] gets a piece of oil-cake (as a reward), the wife gives the husband a piece of handvo (savory lentil and rice cake), and so the work continues. All day long, one is producing like the bull in the oil mill.

Next Day Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All, I take a box And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens. The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James, Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise If that is wisdom. Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves And the boy takes it to my station wagon, What I’ve become Troubles me even if I shut my eyes. When I was young and miserable and pretty And poor, I’d wish What all girls wish: to have a husband, A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me. For so many years I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me, The eyes of strangers! And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile Imaginings within my imagining, I too have taken The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog And we start home. Now I am good. The last mistaken, Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm Some soap and water-- It was so long ago, back in some Gay Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss My lovely daughter Away at school, my sons away at school, My husband away at work--I wish for them. The dog, the maid, And I go through the sure unvarying days At home in them. As I look at my life, I am afraid Only that it will change, as I am changing: I am afraid, this morning, of my face. It looks at me From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate, The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look Of gray discovery Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old. And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral I went to yesterday. My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers, Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body Were my face and body. As I think of her I hear her telling me How young I seem; I am exceptional; I think of all I have. But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I’m anybody, I stand beside my grave Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

Was it possible this one would be a son too? She hoped so, but not because she favored men. Her husband modeled the seriousness, the stoicism, that she hoped her sons would inherit, but she had nothing to teach a daughter. She could teach her to dream—say, to be a painter, as she herself had been trained—and then teach her to let it go. Teach her to cloister herself in dark hallways, admiring how the light fell through the rice-paper doors while knowing that there was no point in putting it on canvas.

Dr. Joff Silberg and Dr. Carrie Masiello are a husband-and-wife team of professors at Rice University. He is a synthetic biologist. She is a geologist. But somehow they managed to move past that and find love. Dr. Masiello studies biochar, which is made when plant matter gets baked at a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. The creation of biochar sequesters carbon that would otherwise end up back in the atmosphere, and it is frequently added to soil to increase plant growth. We don’t know precisely why it helps plant growth, but it may be that it alters the composition of microbes in the soil. Dr. Masiello wanted bacteria that could report back to her on what conditions were like for microbes living in soil with and without biochar. She asked Dr. Silberg to make her a synthetic microbe for Valentine’s Day. Yes, really. Dr. Silberg created bacteria that release gases that aren’t commonly found in soil. So by putting the synthetic microbes in soil, then monitoring the gas release, we can “eavesdrop” on microbe behavior instead of grinding them up for analysis.

She decided to make salmon baked in a touch of olive oil, topped with pine nuts, and served over spinach flash-fried in the salmon-and-olive-oil drippings. She added brown rice that she had slow-boiled with the herb hawthorn. Just as she finished, Cordelia arrived with a woman she had found standing in the sidewalk out front. "My husband has high blood pressure," she explained, negotiating the stairs down into Portia's apartment with care. "He's never happy with anything I make for supper, so I should tell you that you probably don't have anything that will work for me." Cordelia took a look at the meal, raised an eyebrow at Portia, and then turned to the woman. "This is the perfect meal for your husband's high blood pressure. Fish oil, nuts, hawthorn, whole grains." Next, a pumpkin pie went to a woman who couldn't sleep. "Pie?" she asked in a doubtful tone. "Pumpkin," Portia clarified, "is good for insomnia." An apricot crumble spiced with cloves and topped with oats and brown sugar went to a woman drawn with stress. Then a man walked through the door, shoulders slumped. Cordelia and Olivia eyed him for a second. "I know the feeling," Olivia said, and fetched him a half gallon of the celery and cabbage soup Portia had found herself preparing earlier. The man peered into the container, grew a tad queasier, and said, "No thanks." "Do you or don't you have a hangover?" Olivia demanded, then drew a breath. "Really," she added more kindly. "Eat this and you'll feel better." He came back the next day for more. "Cabbage is no cure for drinking too much," Cordelia told him. He just shrugged and slapped down his money for two quarts of soup instead of one.

So, tell me more about you?” he asked as he handed her the shrimp fried rice. “Let’s see. I’m cute and an amazing dresser, but you already know that. What else do you want to know?” “What do you do with your free time when you’re not involved in an elaborate marriage plot?” “I mean, I’m always involved in an elaborate marriage plot. You’re my fourth husband this month.

Actions that Indians and Americans agreed were wrong: • While walking, a man saw a dog sleeping on the road. He walked up to it and kicked it. • A father said to his son, “If you do well on the exam, I will buy you a pen.” The son did well on the exam, but the father did not give him anything. Actions that Americans said were wrong but Indians said were acceptable: • A young married woman went alone to see a movie without informing her husband. When she returned home her husband said, “If you do it again, I will beat you black and blue.” She did it again; he beat her black and blue. (Judge the husband.) • A man had a married son and a married daughter. After his death his son claimed most of the property. His daughter got little. (Judge the son.) Actions that Indians said were wrong but Americans said were acceptable: • In a family, a twenty-five-year-old son addresses his father by his first name. • A woman cooked rice and wanted to eat with her husband and his elder brother. Then she ate with them. (Judge the woman.) • A widow in your community eats fish two or three times a week. • After defecation a woman did not change her clothes before cooking.

she has learned that her husband likes his food on the salty side, that his favorite thing about lamb curry is the potatoes, and that he likes to finish his dinner with a small final helping of rice and dal.

If it’s a girl,” she continued, “let’s not allow her too much education.” “I agree,” Matsuda answered. “Too much schooling is no good anyway.” “Of course, we’ll have to send her for the compulsory years.” “No, they’re the worst. Let’s hire tutors.” “Far too expensive. I’ll never agree to that,” Fumiko replied. “No, she can just go to the local school. When she graduates from junior high, I’ll keep her at home and treat her like a maid. By this time of the morning, she’ll be up cooking our breakfast. I’ll be lying in bed like this, taking it easy with you.” “That sounds nice.” “So it appeals to you. In that case, I’ll make her cook breakfast when she’s in grammar school.” “Will a first-grader be able to cook?” “She won’t have any choice. And she’d better get the rice just right.” “The poor little thing!” “But it’s best to be strict with girls — better for them.” “True.” “I’m not going to have a girl who thinks too much. Let’s raise her so she’ll never talk back. I don’t mean just so she can restrain herself — I want her incapable of talking back — a girl who has no opinions of her own. A girl who does what she’s told, automatically, like an idiot. Even her face must be an idiot’s face.” “A girl like a doll.” “Yes. When she’s small, I’ll train her to serve other people, like a good little wife — like the girls in ancient China. As soon as she gets out of school, I’ll marry her off.” “I’ll go and visit her. I’ll take her some of that sugar we got as a present, behind your back.” “Will you indeed.” “But you never use it to cook with. There’s too much, anyway.” “How do you know?” “You told me.” “Did I? Well, take it, then.” “I’ll go and see her every Sunday.” “Her husband won’t like that.” “That’s all right. He’ll understand. I’ll find her a kind husband.” “He won’t stay that way. I’ll encourage him to be cruel and mean. You must encourage him, too — to have affairs and drink. If you meet any beautiful women, you mustn’t keep them for yourself. Send them over, lots of them, to him, just like the sugar. She won’t get any sympathy when she comes over to complain. I’ll show her my body. ‘Look!’ I’ll tell her: ‘Look at what your father does to me. I can bear it, and so should you!

While campaigning, Michelle—whose great-great-grandfather had been born into slavery on a South Carolina rice plantation—would hear well-meaning Black women suggesting that losing an election might be better than losing a husband, the implication being that if I was elected, I was sure to be shot.

What history touches the woman in the rice paddy driving her water buffalo ahead of her plow while her husband is off somewhere, most likely a conscript, carrying a weapon?

It's barely 8:00 a.m., but my train mates waste little time in breaking out the picnic material. But this isn't standard Japanese picnic fare: not a grain of rice or a pickled plum in sight. Instead, they fill the varnished wooden tables with thick slices of crusty bread, wedges of weeping cheese, batons of hard salamis, and slices of cured ham. To drink, bottles of local white wine, covered in condensation, and high-alcohol microbews rich in hops and local iconography. From the coastline we begin our slow, dramatic ascent into the mountains of Hokkaido. The colors bleed from broccoli to banana to butternut to beet as we climb, inching ever closer to the heart of autumn. My neighbors, an increasingly jovial group of thirtysomethings with a few words of English to spare, pass me a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I begin to feel the fog dissipate. We stop at a small train station in the foothills outside of Ginzan, and my entire car suddenly empties. A husband-and-wife team has set up a small stand on the train platform, selling warm apple hand pies made with layers of flaky pastry and apples from their orchard just outside of town. I buy one, take a bite, then immediately buy three more. Back on the train, young uniformed women flood the cars with samples of Hokkaido ice cream. The group behind me breaks out in song, a ballad, I'm later told, dedicated to the beauty of the season. Everywhere we go, from the golden fields of empty cornstalks to the dense forest thickets to the rushing rivers that carve up this land like the fat of a Wagyu steak, groups of camouflaged photographers lie in wait, tripods and shutter releases ready, hoping to capture the perfect photo of the SL Niseko steaming its way through the hills of Hokkaido.

Most of her recipes came from her father, but Noor learned how to make the luscious potato cake from Nelson's mother. The recipe her mother-in-law had whispered into Noor's ear was the authentic one used by Nelson's great-grandmother. In its own unpresumptuous way, the Spanish Tortilla is an honest love omelet, and every bite must be suffused with fragrant olive oil- in this case, too much of a good thing is not a sin. Even when Noor was an amateur and the potatoes were sometimes raw, Nelson would say, "Oh my God! That was the best tortilla of my whole life!" Which of course wasn't true, but he was acknowledging the effort of peeling and slicing immense quantities of potatoes. What she loved most about Spanish food was its lusty simplicity, so unlike the gastronomical somersaults of French cuisine or the complexity of the Persian food she grew up with. When she was little she could eat pyramids of saffron rice and rich meat stews, but she now associated the colors and perfumes of her husband's native cuisine with their courtship, with paddleboats and honeymoons and champagne in silver buckets, with flamenco and candlelight and little fried sardines with sea salt by the water. Her postcards were menus, smudged and wine-stained, saved from their meals, addressed to herself and read carefully like romance manuals.

Answer: The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey. “Book 7—A middle-aged spinster takes a house in the country for the summer, a man is shot to death in the clubroom, and her niece and nephew seem to know more than they admit. Answer: The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehart. “Book 8—Three children try to solve a neighborhood murder while their mystery writer mom races to meet a deadline. Answer: Home Sweet Homicide, by Craig Rice. “Book 9—Can the new mistress of Manderly ever escape the shadow of her husband’s first wife? Answer: Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier.” Max moved out from behind the coffee bar, reached up to grip Emma’s elbow.

When the rice was done, my mother searched a cabinet filled with her special-occasion dishes, the kind she used only when she had company, and pulled out a white porcelain plate with two giant cherries sketched in themiddle. The cherries overlapped in a way that made them look like one large heart and as my mother heaped the rice on top of them, they seemed like a coded message from a woman who was beyond taking ordinary moments with her husband for granted.