Steam Fish Quotes

We blame you for floods for the flush of blood for men who are also wolves and even though you could pull the tide in by its hair we tell people that we walked all over you we blame you for the night for the dark for the ghosts you cold unimaginable thing following us home, we use you to see each others frail naked bodies beneath your blue light, we let you watch; you swollen against the glass breath a halo of steam as we move against one another wet and desperate like fish under a waterlogged sky.

If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA’s state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts… That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused. That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven. That some people’s moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze. That the people to be the most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid. That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish. That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene. That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused. That it is permissible to want. That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That this isn’t necessarily perverse. That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.

The idea of love walked along the water and her gaze was full of absence and her eyes spat lighting. The impressionable evening received by turns the imprints of grasses, clouds, bodies, and wore crazy astronomical designs. The idea of love walked straight ahead without seeing anything; she was wearing tiny isosceles mirrors whose perfect assemblage was amazing. They were so many images of fish tails, when, by their angelic nature, they answer the promise one might make of always finding each other again. Finding each other again even in the depths of a forest, where the thread of a star is an articulation more silent than life, the dawn a liquor stronger than blood. Who is lost, who truly wanders off when a cup of coffee is steaming in the fog and waiters dressed in snow circulate patiently on the surface of floors whose desired height can be indicated with one's hands? Who? A solitary man whom the idea of love has just left and who tucks in his spirit like an imaginary bed. The man falls all the same and in the next room, under the moon-white verandah, a woman rises whom the idea of love has abandoned. The gravel weeps outside, a rain of glass is falling in which we recognize small chains, tears in which we have time to see ourselves, mirror tears, shards of windows, singular crystals like the ones we witness in our hand on awakening, leaves and the faded petals of those roses that once embelished certain distillery bottles. It's just that the idea of love, it seems angry with love. This is how it began.

Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor,--for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,--sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!

In praise of mu husband's hair A woman is alone in labor, for it is an unfortunate fact that there is nobody who can have the baby for you. However, this account would be inadequate if I did not speak to the scent of my husband's hair. Besides the cut flowers he sacrifices his lunches to afford, the purchase of bags of licorice, the plumping of pillows, steaming of fish, searching out of chic maternity dresses, taking over of work, listening to complaints and simply worrying, there was my husband's hair. His hair has always amazed stylists in beauty salons. At his every first appointment they gather their colleagues around Michael's head. He owns glossy and springy hair, of an animal vitality and resilience that seems to me so like his personality. The Black Irish on Michael's mother's side of the family have changeable hair--his great-grandmother's hair went from black to gold in old age. Michael's went from golden-brown of childhood to a deepening chestnut that gleams Modoc black from his father under certain lights. When pushing each baby I throw my arm over Michael and lean my full weight. When the desperate part is over, the effort, I turn my face into the hair above his ear. It is as though I am entering a small and temporary refuge. How much I want to be little and unnecessary, to stay there, to leave my struggling body at the entrance. Leaves on a tree all winter that now, in your hand, crushed, give off a dry, true odor. The brass underside of a door knocker in your fingers and its faint metallic polish. Fresh potter's clay hardening on the wrist of a child. The slow blackening of Lent, timeless and lighted with hunger. All of these things enter into my mind when drawing into my entire face the scent of my husband's hair. When I am most alone and drowning and I think I cannot go on, it is breathing into his hair that draws me to the surface and restores my small courage.

So instead I stare at the steaming liquid dripping into a coffeepot and start thinking of steaming volcanoes. And dinosaurs standing around drinking coffee, staring up at the giant meteor soaring through the air, commenting on how pretty it is.

they ate their steaming fish and chips, drenched in vinegar and glittering with salt, out of paper bags.

It was better to die, like Eugénie and Digby, in the prime of life with all one's faculties about one. But he wasn't like that, she thought, glancing at the press cuttings. 'A man of singularly handsome presence... shot, fished, and played golf.' No, not like that in the least. He had been a curious man; weak; sensitive; liking titles; liking pictures; and often depressed, she guessed , by his wife's exuberance. She pushed the cuttings away and took up her book. It was odd how different the same person seemed to two different people, she thought. There was Martin, liking Eugénie; and she, liking Digby. She began to read. She had always wanted to know about Christianity - how it began; what it meant, originally. God is love, The kingdom of Heaven is within us, sayings like that she thought, turning over the pages, what did they mean? The actual words were very beautiful. But who said them - when? Then the spout of the tea-kettle puffed steam at her and she moved it away. The wind was rattling the windows in the back room; it was bending the little bushes; they still had no leaves on them. It was what a man said under a fig tree, on a hill, she thought. And then another man wrote it down. But suppose that what that man says is just as false as what this man - she touched the press cuttings with her spoon - says about Digby? And here I am, she thought, looking at the china in the Dutch cabinet, in this drawing-room, getting a little spark from what someone said all those years ago - here it comes (the china was changing from blue to livid) skipping over all those mountains, all those seas. She found her place and began to read.

The Challons' cook and kitchen staff had outdone themselves with a variety of dishes featuring spring vegetables and local fish and game. Although the cook back home at Eversby Priory was excellent, the food at Heron's Point was a cut above. There were colorful vegetables cut into tiny julienne strips, tender artichoke hearts roasted with butter, steaming crayfish in a sauce of white burgundy and truffles, and delicate filets of sole coated with crisp breadcrumbs. Pheasant covered with strips of boiled potatoes that had been whipped with cream and butter into savory melting fluff. Beef roasts with peppery crackled hides were brought out on massive platters, along with golden-crusted miniature game pies, and macaroni baked with Gruyère cheese in clever little tart dishes.

Charlie slowly crumpled to the floor, Allison soon joining him. “Dinner is served!” Stanley trumpeted, as he reached into the steaming mass of offal and fished around for the teens’ livers. “Aha!” he crowed, as he lifted one liver in each hand over his head. Stanley brought his right hand down and took a large bite from the first liver, spreading blood and gore over his face. He chewed for a moment and swallowed, and then bit off a large hunk of the other one. “All I need are some fava beans and a nice Chianti!” he said as he slurped.

By day, John buried himself in preparations. By night, processions of dishes once again marched through his mind: poached fish covered in cucumber scales and steaming pies filled with hashes of venison and beef and topped with golden pastry crusts. Quaking puddings and frosted cakes and cups brimming with syllabubs.

There was a jug of creamy milk for the children (Mr Beaver stuck to beer) and a great lump of deep yellow butter in the middle of the table from which everyone took as much as he wanted to go with his potatoes, and all the children thought- and I agree with them- that there's nothing to beat good freshwater fish if you eat it when it has been alive half an hour ago and has come out of the pan half a minute ago. And when they had finished the fish Mrs. Beaver brought unexpectedly out of the oven a great and gloriously sticky marmalade roll, steaming hot, and at the same time moved the kettle onto the fire, so that when they had finished the marmalade roll the tea was made and ready to be poured out.

Margherita was not allowed to play in the 'portego,' for one never knew when a customer would come, and the room must always be clean and tidy and respectable. It was only ever used by the family on special occasions, and so Margherita's eyes widened when she saw that her mother had spread the table with a spotless white cloth and the best pewter bowls and mugs. A small bunch of 'margherita' daisies was in a fat blue jug, and three sweet oranges sat in an earthenware bowl. Coarse brown bread stood ready on a wooden board, next to a bowl of soft white cheese floating in golden oil and thyme sprigs. Soup made with fish and clams and fennel and scattered with sprigs of fresh parsley steamed in a big clay pot.

As she moved swiftly and noiselessly through the vast palace cellar, odd noises weltered toward her. Voices and echoes of water rippled through the air as if, in some magic chamber, whales and dolphins cavorted among young maidens in great tanks of water. When she reached it, all the fish turned into laundry, stirred and beaten in steaming cauldrons by glum, limp-haired women as wet as mackerels.

Going to the wet market had always been one of my favorite errands. You could buy almost anything there: piles of red and green chilies, live chicks and quail, green lotus seed pods that resembled shower sprinklers. There were fresh sides of pork, salted duck eggs, and baskets of glossy river fish. You could eat breakfast, too, at little stalls serving steaming bowls of noodles and crispy fritters.

Steam little potatoes in the oven by placing them in a single layer in a roasting dish, seasoning with salt, and adding any aromatics—a sprig of rosemary and a few garlic cloves will do. Add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, and tightly seal it up with aluminum foil. Cook until the potatoes present no resistance when pierced with a knife, and then serve with flaky salt and butter or garlicky aïoli alongside hard-cooked eggs or grilled fish.

FOOD Adobo (uh-doh-boh)---Considered the Philippines's national dish, it's any food cooked with soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and black peppercorns (though there are many regional and personal variations) Almondigas (ahl-mohn-dee-gahs)---Filipino soup with meatballs and thin rice noodles Baon (bah-ohn)---Food, snacks and other provisions brought on to work, school, or on a trip; food brought from home; money or allowance brought to school or work; lunch money (definition from Tagalog.com) Embutido (ehm-puh-tee-doh)---Filipino meatloaf Ginataang (gih-nih-tahng)---Any dish cooked with coconut milk, sweet or savory Kakanin (kah-kah-nin)---Sweet sticky cakes made from glutinous rice or root crops like cassava (There's a huge variety, many of them regional) Kesong puti (keh-sohng poo-tih)---A kind of salty cheese Lengua de gato (lehng-gwah deh gah-toh)---Filipino butter cookies Lumpia (loom-pyah)---Filipino spring rolls (many variations) Lumpiang sariwa (loom-pyahng sah-ree-wah)---Fresh Filipino spring rolls (not fried) Mamón (mah-MOHN)---Filipino sponge/chiffon cake Matamis na bao (mah-tah-mees nah bah-oh)---Coconut jam Meryenda (mehr-yehn-dah)---Snack/snack time Pandesal (pahn deh sahl)---Lightly sweetened Filipino rolls topped with breadcrumbs (also written pan de sal) Patis (pah-tees)---Fish sauce Salabat (sah-lah-baht)---Filipino ginger tea Suman (soo-mahn)---Glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves, and steamed (though there are regional variations) Ube (oo-beh)---Purple yam

I love the way the rain melts the colors together, like a chalk drawing on the sidewalk. There is a moment, just after sunset, when the shops turn on their lights and steam starts to fog up the windows of the cafés. In French, this twilight time implies a hint of danger. It's called entre chien et loup, between the dog and the wolf. It was just beginning to get dark as we walked through the small garden of Palais Royal. We watched as carefully dressed children in toggled peacoats and striped woolen mittens finished the same game of improvised soccer we had seen in the Place Sainte Marthe. Behind the Palais Royal the wide avenues around the Louvre gave way to narrow streets, small boutiques, and bistros. It started to drizzle. Gwendal turned a corner, and tucked in between two storefronts, barely wider than a set of double doors, I found myself staring down a corridor of fairy lights. A series of arches stretched into the distance, topped with panes of glass, like a greenhouse, that echoed the plip-plop of the rain. It was as if we'd stepped through the witch's wardrobe, the phantom tollbooth, what have you, into another era. The Passage Vivienne was nineteenth-century Paris's answer to a shopping mall, a small interior street lined with boutiques and tearooms where ladies could browse at their leisure without wetting the bustles of their long dresses or the plumes of their new hats. It was certainly a far cry from the shopping malls of my youth, with their piped-in Muzak and neon food courts. Plaster reliefs of Greek goddesses in diaphanous tunics lined the walls. Three-pronged brass lamps hung from the ceiling on long chains. About halfway down, there was an antique store selling nothing but old kitchenware- ridged ceramic bowls for hot chocolate, burnished copper molds in the shape of fish, and a pewter mold for madeleines, so worn around the edges it might have belonged to Proust himself. At the end of the gallery, underneath a clock held aloft by two busty angels, was a bookstore. There were gold stencils on the glass door. Maison fondée en 1826.

But are we strong enough?” wondered Blackwood. “How strong is strong? They won’t be prepared for us, at least. They haven’t the imagination. Those clean young rocket men with their antiseptic bloomers and fish-bowl helmets, with their new religion. About their necks, on gold chains, scalpels. Upon their heads, a diadem of microscopes. In their holy fingers, steaming incense urns which in reality are only germicidal ovens for steaming out superstition. The names of Poe, Bierce, Hawthorne, Blackwood—blasphemy to their clean lips.

So of the Flanders Moss. It, too, in mist seems to roll on for miles; its heathy surface turns to long waves that paly against the foot of the low range of hills, and beat upon Craigforth as if it were an island in the sea. Through wreathes of steam, the sullen Forth winds in and out between the peat hags, and when a slant of wind leaves it clear for an instant it looks mysterious and dark, as might a stream of quicksilver running down from a mine. When a fish leaps, the sound re-echoes like a bell, as it falls back into the water, and rings spread out till they are lost beneath the banks.

Doggerel by a Senior Citizen (for Robert Lederer) Our earth in 1969 Is not the planet I call mine, The world, I mean, that gives me strength To hold off chaos at arm’s length. My Eden landscapes and their climes Are constructs from Edwardian times, When bath-rooms took up lots of space, And, before eating, one said Grace. The automobile, the aeroplane, Are useful gadgets, but profane: The enginry of which I dream Is moved by water or by steam. Reason requires that I approve The light-bulb which I cannot love: To me more reverence-commanding A fish-tail burner on the landing. My family ghosts I fought and routed, Their values, though, I never doubted: I thought the Protestant Work-Ethic Both practical and sympathetic. When couples played or sang duets, It was immoral to have debts: I shall continue till I die To pay in cash for what I buy. The Book of Common Prayer we knew Was that of 1662: Though with-it sermons may be well, Liturgical reforms are hell. Sex was of course —it always is— The most enticing of mysteries, But news-stands did not then supply Manichean pornography. Then Speech was mannerly, an Art, Like learning not to belch or fart: I cannot settle which is worse, The Anti-Novel or Free Verse. Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith, Who dig the symbol and the myth: I count myself a man of letters Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters. Dare any call Permissiveness An educational success? Saner those class-rooms which I sat in, Compelled to study Greek and Latin. Though I suspect the term is crap, There is a Generation Gap, Who is to blame? Those, old or young, Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue. But Love, at least, is not a state Either en vogue or out-of-date, And I’ve true friends, I will allow, To talk and eat with here and now. Me alienated? Bosh! It’s just As a sworn citizen who must Skirmish with it that I feel Most at home with what is Real.

It’s actually entertaining.” “You say that like you’re surprised.” He looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler, and I realized I’d really put him on the spot. What could he say to that? Based on our numerous conversations, I was under the impression communication wasn’t your strong suit? “Never mind,” I said, taking the steam kettle off the stove and filling it with water. I was a British-breakfast-tea-in-the-morning girl, and I made it using a real teapot and everything. “I’m not fishing for compliments.” Okay, I was a little. “I just…I just didn’t expect it to be so funny,” Jason said. “You wanted a serious column about hot dogs?

A great flood of aromas swamped the noise, thick as soup and foaming with flavors: powdery sugars and crystallized fruit, dank slabs of beef and boiling cabbage, sweating onions and steaming beets. Fronts of fresh-baked bread rolled forward then sweeter cakes. Behind the whiffs of roasting capons and braising bacon came the great smoke-blackened ham which hung in the hearth. Fish was poaching somewhere in a savory liquor at once sweet and tart, its aromas braided in twirling spirals... The silphium, thought John. A moment later it was lost in the tangle of scents that rose from the other pots, pans and great steaming urns. The rich stew of smells and tastes reaching into his memory to haul up dishes and platters.

Dinners at Stony Cross Park were famously lavish, and this one was no exception. Eight courses of fish, game, poultry, and beef were served, accompanied by fresh flower arrangements that were brought to the table with each new remove. They began with turtle soup, broiled salmon with capers, perch and mullet in cream, and succulent Jon Dory fish dressed with a delicate shrimp sauce. The next course consisted of peppered venison, herb-garnished ham, gently fried sweetbreads floating in steaming gravy, and crisp-skinned roast fowl. And so on and so forth, until the guests were stuffed and lethargic, their faces flushed from the constant replenishing of their wineglasses by attentive footmen. The dinner was concluded with a succession of platters filled with almond cheesecakes, lemon puddings, and rice souffles.

Fresh seafood stock made from shrimp and crab... It's hot and spicy- and at the same time, mellow and savory! Visions of lush mountains, cool springs and the vast ocean instantly come to mind! She brought out the very best flavors of each and every ingredient she used! "I started with the fresh fish and veggies you had on hand... ... and then simmered them in a stock I made from seafood trimmings until they were tender. Then I added fresh shrimp and let it simmer... seasoning it with a special blend I made from spices, herbs like thyme and bay leaves, and a base of Worcestershire sauce. I snuck in a dash of soy sauce, too, to tie the Japanese ingredients together with the European spices I used. Overall, I think I managed to make a curry sauce that is mellow enough for children to enjoy and yet flavorful enough for adults to love!" "Yum! Good stuff!" "What a surprise! To take the ingredients we use here every day and to create something out of left field like this!" "You got that right! This is a really delicious dish, no two ways about it. But what's got me confused... ... is why it seems to have hit him way harder than any of us! What on earth is going on?!" This... this dish. It... it tastes just like home! It looks like curry, but it ain't! It's gumbo!" Gumbo is a family dish famously served in the American South along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. A thick and spicy stew, it's generally served over steamed rice. At first glance, it closely resembles Japan's take on curry... but the gumbo recipe doesn't call for curry powder. Its defining characteristic is that it uses okra as its thickener. *A possible origin for the word "gumbo" is the Bantu word for okra-Ngombu.*

The Admiral had been much impressed by Japan’s surprise torpedo attack on the fleet at Port Arthur. Assuming that such wily tactics would have a sequel, he suspected that Japanese ships flying false colors might slip through neutral European waters to deliver another frightful blow to the Russian navy. No man to be tricked, the Admiral ordered extra lookouts posted from the moment his ships left home port. Steaming at night through the North Sea in this trigger-happy state, Russian captains suddenly found themselves surrounded by a flotilla of small boats. Without asking questions, Russian guns sent shells crashing into the frail hulls of British fishing boats in the waters of Dogger Bank. After the first salvos, the Russians realized their mistake. Such was the Admiral’s fear, however, that, rather than stopping to pick up survivors, he steamed off into the night.

When the Nautilus returned to the surface of the ocean, I could take in Reao Island over its whole flat, wooded expanse. Obviously its madreporic rocks had been made fertile by tornadoes and thunderstorms. One day, carried off by a hurricane from neighboring shores, some seed fell onto these limestone beds, mixing with decomposed particles of fish and marine plants to form vegetable humus. Propelled by the waves, a coconut arrived on this new coast. Its germ took root. Its tree grew tall, catching steam off the water. A brook was born. Little by little, vegetation spread. Tiny animals – worms, insects – rode ashore on tree trunks snatched from islands to windward. Turtles came to lay their eggs. Birds nested in the young trees. In this way animal life developed, and drawn by the greenery and fertile soil, man appeared. And that’s how these islands were formed, the immense achievement of microscopic animals.

Now alongside Scovell, John eased preserved peaches out of galliot pots of syrup and picked husked walnuts from puncheons of salt. He clarified butter and poured it into rye-paste coffins. From the Master Cook, John learned to set creams with calves' feet, then isinglass, then hartshorn, pouring decoctions into egg-molds to set and be placed in nests of shredded lemon peel. To make cabbage cream he let the thick liquid clot, lifted off the top layer, folded it then repeated the process until the cabbage was sprinkled with rose water and dusted with sugar, ginger and nutmeg. He carved apples into animals and birds. The birds themselves he roasted, minced and folded into beaten egg whites in a foaming forcemeat of fowls. John boiled, coddled, simmered and warmed. He roasted, seared, fried and braised. He poached stock-fish and minced the meats of smoked herrings while Scovell's pans steamed with ancient sauces: black chawdron and bukkenade, sweet and sour egredouce, camelade and peppery gauncil. For the feasts above he cut castellations into pie-coffins and filled them with meats dyed in the colors of Sir William's titled guests. He fashioned palaces from wafers of spiced batter and paste royale, glazing their walls with panes of sugar. For the Bishop of Carrboro they concocted a cathedral. 'Sprinkle salt on the syrup,' Scovell told him, bent over the chafing dish in his chamber. A golden liquor swirled in the pan. 'Very slowly.' 'It will taint the sugar,' John objected. But Scovell shook his head. A day later they lifted off the cold clear crust and John split off a sharp-edged shard. 'Salt,' he said as it slid over his tongue. But little by little the crisp flake sweetened on his tongue. Sugary juices trickled down his throat. He turned to the Master Cook with a puzzled look. 'Brine floats,' Scovell said. 'Syrup sinks.' The Master Cook smiled. 'Patience, remember? Now, to the glaze...

I peered at the bowl, which was piled high with shrimp and vegetables, little cubes of what looked like meat or fish. The broth was a beautiful golden color, with little circles of orange oil floating on the surface, near the edge of the bowl. My heart rate slowed, oblivion averted. "More chances at wishes. But also, this looks damn good." I realized I was still holding the spoon with the dumpling, the steam not wafting out like a volcano anymore. So I closed my eyes and readied myself for another bite. This time the heat took a step back and allowed everything else to come forward. The savory richness of pork, a bite of ginger and scallions, the broth. Oh, man, the broth. I hadn't ever tasted anything quite like this before. I chewed the dumpling, which was starchy but also managed to melt away, letting its texture dominate. For a moment, I wanted to reach for something beyond the flavor, but failed. Would I recognize the taste of magic, if magic even had a taste? Then I let the flavor itself take over.

I first came to Hokkaido for two reasons: miso ramen and uni, the island's most famous foods and two items on my short list for Last Supper constituents. The only thing they share in common, besides a home, is the intense fits of joy they deliver: the former made from an unholy mix of pork-bone broth, thick miso paste, and wok-crisped pork belly (with the optional addition of a slab of melting Hokkaido butter), the latter arguably the sexiest food on earth, yolk-orange tongues of raw sea urchin roe with a habit-forming blend of fat and umami, sweetness and brine. Fall for uni at your own peril; like heroin and high-stakes poker, it's an expensive addiction that's tough to kick. But my dead-simple plan- to binge on both and catch the first flight back to Tokyo- has been upended by a steam locomotive and Whole Foods foliage, and suddenly Hokkaido seems much bigger than an urchin and a bowl of soup. No one told me about the rolling farmlands, the Fuji-like volcanoes, the stunning national parks, one stacked on top of the other. Nobody said there would be wine. And cheese. And bread.

But I drew the line, one evening, at Jerry O'Keefe's, the fish-shop where people crammed in late for hot plates of peas and chips and yellow-battered fish, in a kind of boiler house of steaming fat, after the last cinema show or the old theatre. 'But why?' she said. 'Why? It looks fun in there.' I said I did not think it the place for her, and she said: 'You talk like a parson or something. You talk just like old Miss Crouch.' 'I'm not taking you,' I said. 'Why? If it's good enough for these people it's good enough for us, isn't it?' 'No.' 'That's because you're really an awful snob,' she said. 'You're too uppish to be seen in there.' 'It's not myself,' I said. 'It's you.' 'Are you going to take me or aren't you?' she said. 'No,' I said. 'I'm not.' She turned and walked down the street. I stood for a moment alone, stubbornly, watching her swinging away into darkness out of the steamy, glowing gas-light. Then I had a moment of sickness when I felt she was walking out of my life, that I had given her impossible offence and that I should never see her again. 'Wait,' I said, 'wait. Don't go like that. I'll take you.

Rice is sacred to the Japanese people," he says. "We eat it at every meal, yet we never get tired of it." He points out that the word for rice in Japanese, gohan, is the same as the word for meal. When he finally lifts the lid of the first rice cooker, releasing a dramatic gasp of starchy steam, the entire restaurant looks ready to wave their white napkins in exuberant applause. The rice is served with a single anchovy painstakingly smoked over a charcoal fire. Below the rice, a nest of lightly grilled matsutake mushrooms; on top, an orange slice of compressed fish roe. Together, an intense wave of umami to fortify the tender grains of rice. Next comes okoge, the crispy rice from the bottom of the pan, served with crunchy flakes of sea salt and oil made from the outside kernel of the rice, spiked with spicy sansho pepper. For the finale, an island of crisp rice with wild herbs and broth from the cooked rice, a moving rendition of chazuke, Japanese rice-and-tea soup. It's a husk-to-heart exposé on rice, striking in both its simplicity and its soul-warming deliciousness- the standard by which all rice I ever eat will be judged.

We remembered the delicate fig-shaped island,stranded between the American Empire and peaceful Canada, as it had been years ago, with its welcoming red white-and-blue flag-shaped flower bed,splashing fountains, European casino, and horse paths leading through woods where Indians had bent trees into giant bows. Now grass grew inpatches down to the littered beach where children fished with pop topstied to string. Paint flaked from once-bright gazebos. Drinking fountains rose from mud puddles laid with broken brick stepping stones. Along the road the granite face of the Civil War Hero had been spray-painted black. Mrs. Huntington Perry had donated her prize orchids to the Botanical Garden in the time before the riots, when civic money still ran high, but since her death ion the eroding tax base had forced cutbacks that had laid off one skilled gardener a year, so that plants that had survived transplantation from equatorial regions to bloom again in that false paradise now withered, weeds sprang up amid scrupulous identification tags, and fake sunlight flowed for only a few hours per day. The only thing that remained was the steam vapor, beading the sloping greenhouse windows and filling our nostrils with the moisture and aroma of a rotting world

It was George the Mailman’s last day on the job after 35 years of carrying the mail through all kinds of weather to the same neighborhood. When he arrived at the first house on his route, he was greeted by the whole family who congratulated him and sent him on his way with a tidy gift envelope. At the second house, they presented him with a box of fine cigars. The folks at the third house handed him a selection of terrific fishing lures. At the fourth house, he was met at the door by a strikingly beautiful blonde woman in a revealing negligee. She took him by the hand, gently led him through the door, which she closed behind him, and took him up the stairs to the bedroom where she blew his mind with the most passionate love he had ever experienced. When he had enough, they went downstairs and she fixed him a giant breakfast: eggs, potatoes, ham, sausage, blueberry waffles, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. When he was truly satisfied, she poured him a cup of steaming coffee. As she was pouring, he noticed a dollar bill sticking out from under the cup’s bottom edge. "All this was just too wonderful for words," he said, "But what’s the dollar for?" "Well," she said, "Last night, I told my husband that today would be your last day, and that we should do something special for you. I asked him what to give you. He said, “Screw him. Give him a dollar.” The breakfast was my idea.

(1 = best, 11 = worst) 1. Raw fruits and vegetables (preferably organic) such as apples, grapes, melons, bananas, avocados, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, kale, tomatoes, etc.; raw honey, stevia (a natural sweetener) 2. Lightly-steamed, low-starch vegetables (all vegetables other than white potatoes, acorn and butternut squash, and pumpkin); pure maple syrup, agave nectar *Note that corn and legumes are starches, not vegetables. 3. Organic raw nuts and seeds (almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, macadamia nuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, etc.) 4. Raw stone-pressed or cold-pressed plant oils (especially olive oil, though hemp seed and flax seed oils are also acceptable) 5. Cooked starchy vegetables (sweet potatoes, butternut and acorn squash, pumpkin, etc.) 6. Raw unpasteurized dairy products (particularly from goats and sheep) 7. Whole grains (brown rice, millet, whole wheat, buckwheat, etc.) 8. Pasteurized dairy and animal flesh (preferably limited to organic fish and minimal organic meat and poultry products) 9. All non-whole grain flour products (white bread, white rice, white pasta, white pizza dough, flour tortillas, etc.); sugar (white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, etc.) 10. Cooked animal fats/hydrogenated oils (lard, cooked oils, etc.), mainstream meats, poultry; soy products 11. Chemicals, artificial coloring and sweeteners (aspartame, saccharine, unnatural additives of all kinds)

I turned the shower off and, instead of toweling and dressing before the steam on the door mirror cleared, like I normally would, I waited. It was an accident, my beauty revealed to me. I was daydreaming, thinking about the day before, of Trevor and me behind the Chevy, and had stood in the tub with the water off for too long. By the time I stepped out, the boy before the mirror stunned me. Who was he? I touched the face, its sallow cheeks. I felt my neck, the braid of muscles sloped to collarbones that jutted into stark ridges. The scraped-out ribs sunken as the skin tried to fill its irregular gaps, the sad little heart rippling underneath like a trapped fish. The eyes that wouldn’t match, one too open, the other dazed, slightly lidded, cautious of whatever light was given it. It was everything I hid from, everything that made me want to be a sun, the only thing I knew that had no shadow. And yet, I stayed. I let the mirror hold those flaws—because for once, drying, they were not wrong to me but something that was wanted, that was sought and found among a landscape as enormous as the one I had been lost in all this time. Because the thing about beauty is that it’s only beautiful outside of itself. Seen through a mirror, I viewed my body as another, a boy a few feet away, his expression unmoved, daring the skin to remain as it was, as if the sun, setting, was not already elsewhere, was not in Ohio.

If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA’s state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts…That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused. That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven. That some people’s moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze. That the people to be the most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid. That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish. That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene. That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused. That it is permissible to want. That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That this isn’t necessarily perverse. That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.

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.

When everyone is seated, Galen uses a pot holder to remove the lid from the huge speckled pan in the center of the table. And I almost upchuck. Fish. Crabs. And...is that squid hair? Before I can think of a polite version of the truth-I'd rather eat my own pinky finger than seafood-Galen plops the biggest piece of fish on my plate, then scoops a mixture of crabmeat and scallops on top of it. As the steam wafts its way to my nose, my chances of staying polite dwindle. The only think I can think of is to make it look like I'm hiccupping instead of gagging. What did I smell earlier that almost had me salivating? It couldn't have been this. I fork the fillet and twist, but it feels like twisting my own gut. Mush it, dice it, mix it all up. No matter what I do, how it looks, I can't bring it near my mouth. A promise is a promise, dream or no dream. Even if real fish didn't save me in Granny's pond, the fake ones my imagination conjured up sure comforted me until help arrived. And now I'm expected to eat their cousins? No can do. I set the fork down and sip some water. I sense Galen is watching. Out of my peripheral, I see the others shoveling the chum into their faces. But not Galen. He sits still, head tilted, waiting for me to take a bite first. Of all the times to be a gentleman! What happened to the guy who sprawled me over his lap like a three-year-old just a few minutes ago? Still, I can't do it. And they don't even have a dog for me to feed under the table, which used to be my go-to plan at Chloe's grandmother's house. One time Chloe even started a food fight to get me out of it. I glance around the table, but Rayna's the only person I'd aim this slop at. Plus, I'd risk getting the stuff on me, which is almost as bad as in me. Galen nudges me with his elbow. "Aren't you hungry? You're not feeling bad again, are you?" This gets the others' attention. The commotion of eating stops. Everyone stares. Rayna, irritated that her gluttony has been interrupted. Toraf smirking like I've done something funny. Galen's mom wearing the same concerned look he is. Can I lie? Should I lie? What if I'm invited over again, and they fix seafood because I lied about it just this once? Telling Galen my head hurts doesn't get me out of future seafood buffets. And telling him I'm not hungry would be pointless since my stomach keeps gurgling like an emptying drain. No, I can't lie. Not if I ever want to come back here. Which I do. I sigh and set the fork down. "I hate seafood," I tell him. Toraf's sudden cough startles me. The sound of him choking reminds me of a cat struggling with a hair ball. I train my eyes on Galen, who has stiffened to a near statue. Jeez, is this all his mom knows how to make? Or have I just shunned the Forza family's prize-winning recipe for grouper? "You...you mean you don't like this kind of fish, Emma?" Galen says diplomatically. I desperately want to nod, to say, "Yes, that's it, not this kind of fish"-but that doesn't get me out of eating the crabmeat-and-scallop mountain on my plate. I shake my head. "No. Not just this kind of fish. I hate it all. I can't eat any of it. Can hardly stand to smell it." Way to go for the jugular there, stupid! Couldn't I just say I don't care for it? Did I have to say I hate it? Hate even the smell of it? And why am I blushing? It's not a crime to gag on seafood. And for God's sakes, I won't eat anything that still has its eyeballs.

It starts with a thwack, the sharp crack of hard plastic against a hot metal surface. When the ladle rolls over, it deposits a pale-yellow puddle of batter onto the griddle. A gentle sizzle, as the back of the ladle sparkles a mixture of eggs, flour, water, and milk across the silver surface. A crepe takes shape. Next comes cabbage, chopped thin- but not too thin- and stacked six inches high, lightly packed so hot air can flow freely and wilt the mountain down to a molehill. Crowning the cabbage comes a flurry of tastes and textures: ivory bean sprouts, golden pebbles of fried tempura batter, a few shakes of salt, and, for an extra umami punch, a drift of dried bonito powder. Finally, three strips of streaky pork belly, just enough to umbrella the cabbage in fat, plus a bit more batter to hold the whole thing together. With two metal spatulas and a gentle rocking of the wrists, the mass is inverted. The pork fat melts on contact, and the cabbage shrinks in the steam trapped under the crepe. Then things get serious. Thin wheat soba noodles, still dripping with hot water, hit the teppan, dancing like garden hoses across its hot surface, absorbing the heat of the griddle until they crisp into a bird's nest to house the cabbage and crepe. An egg with two orange yolks sizzles beside the soba, waiting for its place on top of this magnificent heap. Everything comes together: cabbage and crepe at the base, bean sprouts and pork belly in the center, soba and fried egg parked on top, a geologic construction of carbs and crunch, protein and chew, all framed with the black and white of thickened Worcestershire and a zigzag of mayonnaise. This is okonomiyaki, the second most famous thing that ever happened to Hiroshima.

Kamimura has been whispering all week of a sacred twenty-four-hour ramen spot located on a two-lane highway in Kurume where truckers go for the taste of true ramen. The shop is massive by ramen standards, big enough to fit a few trucks along with those drivers, and in the midafternoon a loose assortment of castaways and road warriors sit slurping their noodles. Near the entrance a thick, sweaty cauldron boils so aggressively that a haze of pork fat hangs over the kitchen like waterfall mist. While few are audacious enough to claim ramen is healthy, tonkotsu enthusiasts love to point out that the collagen in pork bones is great for the skin. "Look at their faces!" says Kamimura. "They're almost seventy years old and not a wrinkle! That's the collagen. Where there is tonkotsu, there is rarely a wrinkle." He's right: the woman wears a faded purple bandana and sad, sunken eyes, but even then she doesn't look a day over fifty. She's stirring a massive cauldron of broth, and I ask her how long it's been simmering for. "Sixty years," she says flatly. This isn't hyperbole, not exactly. Kurume treats tonkotsu like a French country baker treats a sourdough starter- feeding it, regenerating, keeping some small fraction of the original soup alive in perpetuity. Old bones out, new bones in, but the base never changes. The mother of all ramen. Maruboshi Ramen opened in 1958, and you can taste every one of those years in the simple bowl they serve. There is no fancy tare, no double broth, no secret spice or unexpected toppings: just pork bones, noodles, and three generations of constant simmering. The flavor is pig in its purest form, a milky broth with no aromatics or condiments to mitigate the purity of its porcine essence.

The cuisine of Northern Iran, overlooked and underrated, is unlike most Persian food in that it's unfussy and lighthearted as the people from that region. The fertile seaside villages of Mazandaran and Rasht, where Soli grew up before moving to the congested capital, were lush with orchards and rice fields. His father had cultivated citrus trees and the family was raised on the fruits and grains they harvested. Alone in the kitchen, without Zod's supervision, he found himself turning to the wholesome food of his childhood, not only for the comfort the simple compositions offered, but because it was what he knew so well as he set about preparing a homecoming feast for Zod's only son. He pulled two kilos of fava beans from the freezer. Gathered last May, shucked and peeled on a quiet afternoon, they defrosted in a colander for a layered frittata his mother used to make with fistfuls of dill and sprinkled with sea salt. One flat of pale green figs and a bushel of new harvest walnuts were tied to the back of his scooter, along with two crates of pomegranates- half to squeeze for fresh morning juice and the other to split and seed for rice-and-meatball soup. Three fat chickens pecked in the yard, unaware of their destiny as he sharpened his cleaver. Tomorrow they would braise in a rich, tangy stew with sour red plums, their hearts and livers skewered and grilled, then wrapped in sheets of lavash with bouquets of tarragon and mint. Basmati rice soaked in salted water to be steamed with green garlic and mounds of finely chopped parsley and cilantro, then served with a whole roasted, eight kilo white fish stuffed with barberries, pistachios, and lime. On the farthest burner, whole bitter oranges bobbed in blossom syrup, to accompany rice pudding, next to a simmering pot of figs studded with cardamom pods for preserves.

A small figure in crimson stood before the bench, sleeves rolled to the elbow, muttering. Dumai cleared her throat. “Master Kiprun?” The alchemist whipped around. He wore round amber panes over his eyes, clipped to his nose, huge and misty with steam. “I did ask for duck feathers,” he said, in a tone of sincere annoyance. Dumai could only blink. His cheeks were flushed, threads of hair were stuck to his forehead, and he brandished a grey feather. “You brought me goose feathers. Goose,” he barked, making her jump. “You do know the difference between a duck and a goose, don’t you? One quacks and the other honks, not to mention the neck. The neck alone—” “Master Kiprun,” Kanifa interjected, “this is Noziken pa Dumai, Crown Princess of Seiiki.” The alchemist sleeved the fog from his eyeglasses. “Ah. Yes.” He interlocked his fingers. Each bore a ring of a different metal: gold, iron, copper. “Princess Dumai. I am Master Kiprun, who shines—well, flickers really—for the Munificent Empress. And you?” he said to Kanifa. “Who are you, the Prince of Seiiki?” “No.” Kanifa cleared his throat. “I’m just a guard, a friend to Princess Dumai. Not a noble.” “Is it not noble to be a guard?” Master Kiprun wafted a brown hand, webbed with scars from burns, like his arms. “No matter. I never understand these things. Yes, your message caught my interest, Princess Dumai of the Faraway Isle. You don’t look much like a princess,” he said, cocking his head. “Aren’t you suppose to wear a crown, or something?” Dumai reunited with her tongue. “Well,” she said, indicating her headpiece, “this is—” “Madam, that is a fish.” After a moment, Dumai decided not to kick against the current. “It is a fish,” she agreed, taking a step toward him. “My fish and I flew here to seek your help, Master Kiprun.” “Yes, I did fear as much. Last time, it was a king who disturbed my work. He found me in the mountains, just to annoy me.” The alchemist snorted. “Once, it was the poor who sought my services, asking me to turn grass to gold. They were, at least, polite, if wildly optimistic. Now I am summoned hither and thither, disturbed by everyone from Golümtan to Ginura.

Gray burst into the galley. “Miss Turner is not eating.” The cramped, boxed-in nature of the space, the oppressive heat-it seemed an appropriate place to take this irrational surge of resentment. If only his emotion could dissipate through the ventilation slats as quickly as steam. “And good morning to you, too.” Gabriel wiped his hands on his apron without glancing up. “She’s not eating,” Gray repeated evenly. “She’s wasting away.” He didn’t even realize his knuckled cracked. He flexed his fingers impatiently. “Wasting away?” Gabriel’s face split in a grin as he picked up a mallet and attacked a hunk of salted pork. “Now what makes you say that?” “Her dress no longer fits properly. The neckline of her bodice is too loose.” Gabriel stopped pounding and looked up, meeting Gray’s eyes for the first time since he’d entered the galley. The mocking arch of the old man’s eyebrows had Gray clenching his teeth. They stared at each other for a second. Then Gray blew out his breath and looked away, and Gabriel broke into peals of laughter. “Never thought I’d live to see the day,” the old cook finally said, “when you would complain that a beautiful lady’s bodice was too loose.” “It’s not that she’s a beautiful lady-“ Gabriel looked up sharply. “It’s not merely that she’s a beautiful lady,” Gray amended. “She’s a passenger, and I have a duty to look out for her welfare.” “Wouldn’t that be the captain’s duty?” Gray narrowed his eyes. “And I know my duty well enough,” Gabriel continued. “It’s not as though I’m denying her food, now is it? I’m thinking Miss Turner just isn’t accustomed to the rough living aboard a ship. Used to finer fare, that one.” Gray scowled at the hunk of cured pork under Gabriel’s mallet and the shriveled, sprouted potatoes rolling back and forth with each tilt of the ship. “Is this the noon meal?” “This, and biscuit.” “I’ll order the men to trawl for a fish.” “Wouldn’t that be the captain’s duty?” Gabriel’s tone was sly. Gray wasn’t sure whether the plume of steam swirling through the galley originated for the stove or his ears. He didn’t care for Gabriel’s flippant tone. Neither did he care for the possibility of Miss Turner’s lush curves disappearing when he’d never had any chance to appreciate them. Frustrated beyond all reason, Gray turned to leave, wrenching open the galley door with such force, the hinges creaked in protest. He took a deep breath to compose himself, resolving not to slam the door shut behind him. Gabriel stopped pounding. “Sit down, Gray. Rest your bones.” With another rough sigh, Gray complied. He backed up two paces, slung himself onto a stool, and watched as the cook grabbed a tin cup from a hook on the wall and filled it, drawing a dipper of liquid from a small leather bucket. Then Gabriel set the cup on the table before him. Milk. Gabriel stared it. “For God’s sake, Gabriel. I’m not six years old anymore.” The old man raised his eyebrows. “Well, seeing as how you haven’t outgrown a visit to the kitchen when you’re in a sulk, I thought maybe you’d have a taste for milk yet, too. You did buy the goats.

3 INCIDENT IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL Not long afterwards, a Belgian ferry, the Oudenbourg, was steaming its way from Ostende to Ramsgate. In the straits of Dover the duty officer noticed that half a mile south of its usual course there was something going on in the water. He could not be sure that there was no-one drowning there and so he ordered a change of course down to where the perturbance was taking place. Two hundred passengers on the windward side of the ship were shown a very strange spectacle: in some places a vertical jet of water shot out from the surface, and in some of those vertical jets there could be seen something like a black body thrown up with it; the surface of the sea for one or two hundred yards all around was tossing and seething wildly while, from the depths, a loud rattling and humming could be heard. "It was as if there was a small volcano erupting under the sea." As the Oudenbourg slowly approached the place an enormous wave rose about ten yards ahead of it and a terrible noise thundered out like an explosion. The entire ship was lifted violently and the deck was showered with a rain of water that was nearly boiling hot; and landing on the deck with the water was a strong black body which writhed and let out a sharp loud scream; it was a newt that had been injured and burnt. The captain ordered the ship full steam astern so that the ship would not steam straight into the middle of this turbulent Hell; but the water all around had also begun to erupt and the surface of the sea was strewn with pieces of dismembered newts. The ship was finally able to turn around and it fled northwards as fast as possible. Then there was a terrible explosion about six hundred yards to the stern and a gigantic column of water and steam, perhaps a hundred yards high, shot out of the sea. The Oudenbourg set course for Harwich and sent out a radio warning in all directions: "Attention all shipping, attention all shipping! Severe danger on Ostende-Ramsgate lane. Underwater explosion. Cause unknown. All shipping advised avoid area!" All this time the sea was thundering and boiling, almost as if military manoeuvres had been taking place under the water; but apart from the erupting water and steam there was nothing to see. From both Dover and Calais, destroyers and torpedo boats set out at full steam and squadrons of military aircraft flew to the site of the disturbance; but by the time they got there all they found was that the surface was discoloured with something like a yellow mud and covered with startled fish and newts that had been torn to pieces. At first it was thought that a mine in the channel must have exploded; but once the shores on both sides of the Straits of Dover had been ringed off with a chain of soldiers and the English prime-minister had, for the fourth time in the history of the world, interrupted his Saturday evening and hurried back to London, there were those who thought the incident must be of extremely serious international importance. The papers carried some highly alarming rumours, but, oddly enough, this time remained far from the truth; nobody had any idea that Europe, and the whole world with it, stood for a few days on the brink of a major war. It was only several years later that a member of the then British cabinet, Sir Thomas Mulberry, failed to be re-elected in a general election and published his memoirs setting out just what had actually happened; but by then, though, nobody was interested.

Braised Striped Bass Pavillon YIELD: 4 SERVINGS I HAD NEVER SEEN or tasted striped bass before I worked at Le Pavilion. It is similar, however, to the loup de mer of the Mediterranean, one of the most prized fish of that region and a standard menu item in restaurants along the Côte d’Azur. With flesh that is slightly softer and moister than its European cousin, striped bass was a specialty of Le Pavilion. The braised wild striped bass would be presented to the patrons whole and carved at tableside. The following is a simple, elegant, and mouth-watering adaptation of the recipe from Le Pavilion. The fish, gutted with head on, is braised with white wine, shallots, and mushrooms in the oven, then coated with the cooking juices enriched with butter. This dish is excellent served with tiny steamed potatoes or sautéed cucumbers. 1 striped bass, gutted, with head on (about 3 pounds) 2 cups thinly sliced mushrooms ¼ cup chopped shallots ½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste 1 tablespoon good olive oil 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves 2 bay leaves 1 cup dry, fruity white wine (Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon minced fresh chives Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the fish in a gratin dish or stainless steel baking dish that is narrow enough to prevent the garnishes and the wine from spreading out too much. Sprinkle with the mushrooms, shallots, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper, olive oil, thyme, bay leaves, and wine. Cover tightly with a piece of aluminum foil so the fish will cook in its own steam. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through. Check by inserting the point of a small knife into the flesh. It should be tender, and the flesh should separate from the central bone when pierced with the knife. Reduce the heat to 150 degrees. Using a large hamburger spatula, transfer the whole fish to an ovenproof serving platter, and set aside in the warm oven while you complete the recipe. Pour the fish’s cooking juices and vegetable solids into a small saucepan, and discard the bay leaves. You should have ¾ to 1 cup of liquid; cook down the liquid or add water to adjust the yield to this amount. Bring to a boil on top of the stove, and add the butter spoonful by spoonful, incorporating each piece into the mixture with a whisk before you add another. Remove the saucepan from the heat, and add the lemon juice, chives, and additional salt and pepper to taste. At serving time, pull or scrape off the skin on top of the fish with a small paring knife. Coat the fish with the sauce, and sprinkle the chives on top. Bring to the table, and carve for the guests.

When I went to Passard's restaurant, the meal began with slices of raw scallop topped with caviar; that reminded me of how shocking it was when Django fed us raw fish all those years ago. Then there was a marvelous Saint-Pierre. Passard had peeled away the skin and prepared the fish with hundreds of bay leaves before covering it back up and steaming the fish until it had absorbed all the flavors of the herb. The man loves herbs and uses them in the most fascinating ways. That also reminded me of Django. There was a fat sweetbread skewered with a sprig of rosemary until it was nothing more than an herbal cloud. And the salad was the tiniest herbs, all different. Beautiful simplicity." Stella was tasting the flavors in her mind as he described them.

Inside an H Mart complex, there will be some kind of food court, an appliance shop, and a pharmacy. Usually, there's a beauty counter where you can buy Korean makeup and skin-care products with snail mucin or caviar oil, or a face mask that vaguely boasts "placenta." (Whose placenta? Who knows?) There will usually be a pseudo-French bakery with weak coffee, bubble tea, and an array of glowing pastries that always look much better than they taste. My local H Mart these days is in Elkins Park, a town northeast of Philadelphia. My routine is to drive in for lunch on the weekends, stock up on groceries for the week, and cook something for dinner with whatever fresh bounty inspires me. The H Mart in Elkins Park has two stories; the grocery is on the first floor and the food court is above it. Upstairs, there is an array of stalls serving different kinds of food. One is dedicated to sushi, one is strictly Chinese. Another is for traditional Korean jjigaes, bubbling soups served in traditional earthenware pots called ttukbaegis, which act as mini cauldrons to ensure that your soup is still bubbling a good ten minutes past arrival. There's a stall for Korean street food that serves up Korean ramen (basically just Shin Cup noodles with an egg cracked in); giant steamed dumplings full of pork and glass noodles housed in a thick, cakelike dough; and tteokbokki, chewy, bite-sized cylindrical rice cakes boiled in a stock with fish cakes, red pepper, and gochujang, a sweet-and-spicy paste that's one of the three mother sauces used in pretty much all Korean dishes. Last, there's my personal favorite: Korean-Chinese fusion, which serves tangsuyuk---a glossy, sweet-and-sour orange pork---seafood noodle soup, fried rice, and black bean noodles.

For me, she got out Tupperware containers and refried some jeon. I watched over her shoulder as the grease bubbled under the egg-battered pancakes. Oysters, small fish fillets, sausage patties, all battered in flour and egg, fried and dipped in soy sauce. She served them alongside a steaming pot of kimchi jjigae. She opened a plastic single of seaweed and set it near my bowl of rice just like my mother used to.

Eddie heaped a plate with hors d’oeuvres, appetizers, and amuse-bouches, and began shoveling them all into his mouth like an engineer piling coal into a steam engine. He did not find the Ulaanbaatar food exquisite. He thought the fish tasted like chicken and the chicken tasted like fish, but as long as he was getting both chicken and fish, he didn’t much mind the order in which the flavors arrived.

Among all the public worthies whom the approach of Majesty called into action, as the return of spring does the busy bees, none were more alert and alive to the dignity and importance of their office than the worshipful municipality of Leith. Some unknown power, which deemed itself appalling to the whole Magistracy of the ancient and loyal town, ordained that the King should land on the odiferous shores of the fishing village of Newhaven. But Bailie Macfie, as he sat at the head of the Council board with his valient peers, the intrepid Bailie Reoch and Bailie Newton, snapped his fingers at the huge bugbear, and it fled wailing away, discomfited like the spirit of Loda from the spear of Fingal, and was visible no more.

In the tin-covered porch Mr Chawla had constructed at the rear of the house she had set up her outdoor kitchen, spilling over into a grassy patch of ground. Here rows of pickle jars matured in the sun like an army balanced upon the stone wall; roots lay, tortured and contorted, upon a cot as they dried; and tiny wild fruit, scorned by all but the birds, lay cut open, displaying purple-stained hearts. Ginger was buried underground so as to keep it fresh; lemon and pumpkin dried on the roof; all manner of things fermented in tightly sealed tins; chilli peppers and curry leaves hung from the branches of a tree, and so did buffalo curd, dripping from a cloth on its way to becoming paneer. Newly strong with muscles, wiry and tough despite her slenderness, Kulfi sliced and pounded, ground and smashed, cut and chopped in a chaos of ingredients and dishes. ‘Cumin, quail, mustard seeds, pomelo rind,’ she muttered as she cooked. ‘Fennel, coriander, sour mango. Pandanus flour, lichen and perfumed kewra. Colocassia leaves, custard apple, winter melon, bitter gourd. Khas root, sandalwood, ash gourd, fenugreek greens. Snake-gourd, banana flowers, spider leaf, lotus root …’ She was producing meals so intricate, they were cooked sometimes with a hundred ingredients, balanced precariously within a complicated and delicate mesh of spices – marvellous triumphs of the complex and delicate art of seasoning. A single grain of one thing, a bud of another, a moist fingertip dipped lightly into a small vial and then into the bubbling pot; a thimble full, a matchbox full, a coconut shell full of dark crimson and deep violet, of dusty yellow spice, the entire concoction simmered sometimes for a day or two on coals that emitted only a glimmer of faint heat or that roared like a furnace as she fanned them with a palm leaf. The meats were beaten to silk, so spiced and fragrant they clouded the senses; the sauces were full of strange hints and dark undercurrents, leaving you on firm ground one moment, dragging you under the next. There were dishes with an aftertaste that exploded upon you and left you gasping a whole half-hour after you’d eaten them. Some that were delicate, with a haunting flavour that teased like the memory of something you’d once known but could no longer put your finger on. Pickled limes stuffed with cardamom and cumin, crepuscular creatures simmered upon the wood of a scented tree, small river fish baked in green coconuts, rice steamed with nasturtium flowers in the pale hollow of a bamboo stem, mushrooms red – and yellow-gilled, polka-dotted and striped. Desire filled Sampath as he waited for his meals. Spice-laden clouds billowed forth and the clashing cymbals of pots and pans declared the glory of the meal to come, scaring the birds from the trees about him.

J. Edgerton/ The Spirit of Christmas Page 11 Mr. Angel smiled warmly at the vision of the two boys playing in the snow. “All God’s creatures . . . one and all . . . large and small! But some more important than others, in their magnificence. And I’ve found you both . . . at last”. Jonas took off racing through the snow, the cup in his hand. “Come on James!” James scrambled after him, the snow crunching pleasantly beneath his tiny feet. “Jonas wait for me!” The taller Nicholas stopped before a Cinder Vendor. “Two warm Ciders please, with extra spices.” The Cider Vendor raised an eyebrow as he took in the smudged face of the boy and his shabby clothes. “Very well, young Sir. Have you money? I’m not a charity you know!” Jonas quickly fished out coins and showed him the silver. “Oh yes Sir. I know of charities Sir and you’re better off not being one. They’re a cheat!” The Cider Vendor began filling two cups with steaming apple cider. The sweet smell of it made the boy’s mouth water. The burly Cider Vendor handed him the first cup of sweet, steaming, mouth puckering cider. “Many are, young master!” He replied. “I grew up in the system meself and it was a poor boy’s torment. That’ll be 2 cents!” The littlest Nicholas raced up and slid to a halt in the snow beside him. Jonas handed James the cup of cider. Then he paid the vendor with coins from the tin cup. “That’s highway robbery . . . but very well!” The Cider Vendor squinted through one eye, his thick eyebrow nearly obscuring it. “It’s very good cider, with extra spices.” James face lit up with joy as he took a sip. “M-mmm! It is good cider! J. Edgerton/ The Spirit of Christmas Page 12 The Vendor handed Jonas the second cup of steaming cider. “I’ve not had any complaints. I work hard to make my cider. It’s worth the money.” His lips smacking, Jonas sipped in the warm cider. “I’m sure it is Sir.” The angelic faced little one smiled up at him. “It’s yummy!” The Cider Vendor smiled down at him and tipped his hat to him “Yes it tis! Yummy!” Then he chuckled cheerfully with another satisfied customer, no matter how small. “Ummm, good!” Jonas agreed with them. The Cider Vendor took a sip of his own brew himself, his mouth puckering. “It’ll put the spirit of life back in you on a cold day like this, that Cider.” Two men in tall top hats and fine suits halted in front of the Cider Vendor. “Sir, we are collecting for the poor and wondered if a fine fellow such as yourself might have something to contribute.” Jonas glanced up at them in a wizened way. “We’ve a couple coins to contribute but it better get to the poor, understand?” “Of course, my fine fellow! “The taller of the two sharply dressed gentlemen spoke. Smiling a satisfied smile, Jonas dropped two silver coins into the gentleman’s hands. The tall gentleman took them and tipped his hat, smiling down at them both. “Very generous!” He glanced stone faced at the vendor, who immediately forked over several dollars. “A very Merry Christmas to you both!” They trod off through the snow in their finery, to the welcome crunch of the snow drifts beneath their feet. Mr. Angel paused at the Cheese vendor next to them, where a raggedy young girl was staring wide eyed at the rows and rows of cheeses above her.

Actually—forget it. Bring it with you.” Brandon picked up the bowl and slouched towards the door. Helen shuffled behind him, silently encouraging him forward. That was what her life had become since the expeditions began: a daily routine of encouraging speed, encouraging talk, encouraging her son to do something more than just sit around waiting for these damn fishing trips. Nothing else seemed to interest him now. As she pushed her key into the car’s ignition, a sudden realization dawned on Helen. She stopped, leaned into the steering wheel, and sighed. “You’ve forgotten your sports bag. Again,” she said, springing from the car. No point telling him to get it; she’d be waiting a week. Helen took the stairs two at a time, stress propelling her like a steam engine. She entered his walk-in closet with trepidation. That was the other thing that’d slipped. He was a tidy kid before—not perfect, but no slob. Now his room resembled a carelessly thrown-together garage sale.

Dilemmas of the Angels: Flight" Before the angel there was something else— not this coffee shop next to a drug rehabilitation center filled with war veterans of the past, men and women strapped to their chairs, birds straining to rise from piles of feathers, bones, and blood. Drenched in sweat and a little shaky from too much caffeine, she takes flight, a shining white-winged trumpeter swan crossing open water, steam rising from the feathers' barbs. Below her, a cormorant, unfolding its black wings, explodes from the surface, and even fish, leaping from the oily sheen, glide for a moment, gills pumping in the poisonous atmosphere. Such longing. How large the muscles in our shoulders must be to lift our wings even a single time.

As cadets, we constantly hammered, scraped and wire brushed rusting steel, before applying red lead paint. Most of the paint we used was Navy surplus or a concoction made up of fish oil, lampblack and china dryer. We found that by mixing all different color paints, we would wind up with a paint we called “Sh-t Grindle Brown.” Inventiveness was key as we repaired, replaced, and painted the State of Maine from stem to stern. This work, being in addition to our studies, consumed all of our time. How we managed to fit all of this into the time we had, is still a mystery. The conversion of the ship was labor intensive and expensive, but the U.S. Maritime Commission contributed to the Academy’s financial needs where possible. The mounting expenses remained a challenge but we didn’t give up. We never did finish the entire conversion prior to our first cruise, but one thing we managed to do was paint over the name “USS Comfort” and hand letter in her new name “State of Maine.” If you looked carefully, you could still see her previous name outlined by a welded bead, but this was a minor detail that would eventually be taken care of. Perhaps because of my experience with the letters on the front of “Richardson Hall,” the task of lettering her name and her new homeport on the stern became mine. Much of the ship’s superstructure was still covered with a sticky preservative made up of paint and crank case oil, which never really dried and indelibly got onto our working uniforms. However, from a distance, you couldn’t tell the difference and it looked all right, but more importantly it prevented further rusting. One bulkhead at a time, using a mixture of gasoline and paint remover, we scraped the gunk off and repainted it. The engineers had been busy rebuilding the pumps and generators, as well as repacking steam pipes with asbestos wrapping. We finally got the ship to where we could sail her to Portland under her own power. The twin Babcock and Wilcox heater-type boilers had to be repaired and re-bricked there. After this, we would continue on to the dry dock in Boston for additional work and the hull inspection that was required below the water line.

It had been a long time since she had been served such exquisite food. The lukewarm offerings at the London soirees and parties couldn't begin to compare to this feast. In the past few months the Peyton household been able to afford much more than bread, bacon, and soup, with the occasional helping of fried sole or stewed mutton. For once she was glad not to have been seated next to a sparkling conversationalist, as it allowed her long periods of silence during which she could eat as much as she liked. And with the servants constantly offering new and dazzling dishes for the guests to sample, no one seemed to notice the unladylike gusto of her appetite. Hungrily she consumed a bowl of soup made with champagne and Camembert, followed by delicate veal strips coated in herb-dressed sauce, and tender vegetable marrow in cream... fish baked in clever little paper cases, which let out a burst of fragrant steam when opened... tiny buttered potatoes served on beds of watercress... and, most delightful of all, fruit relish served in hollowed-out orange rinds.

We flopped like landed fish down the shallow submerged steps, splashing and sinking into the warm, scented waters beneath the fantastical glass and mural ceiling. And it was the closest I’d been to happiness in months. The closest since Mael. I closed my eyes and sank into the soothing warmth, feeling my muscles melt like they had when he’d kissed me that morning in the vale. I’d almost forgotten what that had felt like. The steam rose off the surface of the water until I couldn’t see old Gruoch where she sat on her bench. Even Elka, drifting motionless on the other side of the pool, was just a shadow. I could have stayed there forever, my hair floating out all around me, wrapped in mist and dreaming and the scent of flowers. I barely felt the tears sliding down my cheeks.

Amanda lost count of the various delicacies that were offered to her. There were four kinds of soup, including turtle and lobster, and several roast turkeys dressed with sausages and herbs. A never-ending parade of servants brought platters of veal in béchamel sauce, capons, sweetbreads, roast quail and hare, venison, swans' eggs, and a dazzling array of vegetable casseroles. Puddings made of exotic fish and game were presented in steaming silver bowls, followed by trays of luxury fruits and salads, and crystal plates laden with truffles in wine. There were even tender stalks of asparagus, well out of season and therefore highly prized at Christmastime.

Mark came home late one frozen Sunday carrying a bag of small, silver fish. They were smelts, locally known as icefish. He’d brought them at the store in the next town south, across from which a little village had sprung up on the ice of the lake, a collection of shacks with holes drilled in and around them. I’d seen the men going from the shore to the shacks on snowmobiles, six-packs of beer strapped on behind them like a half dozen miniature passengers. “Sit and rest,” Mark said. “I’m cooking.” He sautéed minced onion in our homemade butter, added a little handful of crushed, dried sage, and when the onion was translucent, he sprinkled n flour to make a roux, which he loosened with beer, in honor of the fishermen. He added cubed carrot, celery root, potato, and some stock, and then the fish, cut into pieces, and when they were all cooked through he poured in a whole morning milking’s worth of Delia’s yellow cream. Icefish chowder, rich and warm, eaten while sitting in Mark’s lap, my feet so close to the woodstove that steam came off my damp socks.

Regular-Cal Food Guidelines The following Serving Size Simplifier should be used as a portion quantity guideline for each meal. Its intuitive approach is customized to your body size and will help you put calorie counting to rest for good. It was originally inspired by the amazing work done by my friends at Precision Nutrition. •Fibrous veggies: 2 to 4 handfuls •Clean protein: 1 palm-size portion for women, 1 to 2 palm-size portions for men •Starchy carbs and fruits: 1 handful for women, 1 to 2 handfuls for men •Fit fats: ½ shot glass (1½ tablespoons) for oils and butter (easier to measure/eyeball since these are generally poured); for nuts and seeds, 1 thumb-size serving for women, 2 thumb-size servings for men Each element needs not be present at each meal, but do your best to keep them all in mind throughout the day. For instance, normally a green juice would consist of only leafy greens and other vegetables. However, you can power it up with a shot of flax oil or fish oil. Adding in these fats will not only stabilize your blood sugar but also improve your absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins found in the greens. With that said, I would strongly recommend that each time you eat (other than the odd apple here and there), you include protein and fiber in your meal. Doing so will prevent your blood sugar from rising and keep you full longer, both of which will help you lose fat instead of storing it. For dinner, you might have a fillet of salmon (protein) cooked in butter (oil and fats) with a side of steamed greens (fibrous vegetables) and a small amount of quinoa (starchy carbs). Nuts and seeds would not be present in this meal—again, no big deal. You can always have a few almonds throughout the day. For solid meals (not smoothies or juices), these guidelines should yield a plate that is:

Fire+ Water= Blizzard Dragon or Cloud Dragon Fire + Plant= Spicy Dragon or Firebird Dragon Fire + Electric= Laser Dragon or Hot Metal Dragon Fire + Metal= Medieval Dragon or Steam punk Dragon Fire + Dark= Vampire Dragon or Dark Fire Dragon Water Dragon Hybrids Water + Earth = Mud Dragon Water + Fire = Cloud Dragon or Blizzard Dragon Water + Plant = Nenufar Dragon Water + Plant = Coral Dragon Water + Electric = Lantern Fish Dragon or Storm Dragon

Oh how I dream of My Sweet Barbados, Little island in the sun, And the beautiful sights of Crop Over when everyone is having fun. Oh how I miss the taste of mellow cou-cou and steamed flying fish, My Island’s National Dish. To roam those gold sandy beaches and to feel crystal through my toes, How I feel about “My Barbados” Nobody knows.

we see here that Jesus comes and teaches people from the boat. But did you notice that it doesn’t mention what he said? There is no teaching expressed here. That tells us that the story itself is the teaching. As 21st century people, you know that when you take a four gigabyte file and turn it to a 100 megabyte file, you have compressed a great amount of information.   That is what we have here. This is sacred wisdom containing universal truth and one of our great mistakes is that we only take it on the surface. Do you know that for hundreds of years, for centuries, all the teachers talked about different levels of understanding holy scripture and yet, somewhere around the 1800s, scholars locked in to merely the surface, so it is just about Peter and the guys out fishing.  Yet, this is only a picture to touch us at an emotional level that can understand better than our mind. Jesus is going passed our mind to a place where we can understand in another way.   Let me give you an example of a picture that stirs the emotions. You notice that the fishermen were washing their nets and a bit later, we find Peter saying, “We’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.” Have you ever tried something with all your efforts and gotten nowhere? Have you ever run out of steam or lost hope? Have you ever given up on something because you’ve given it all you had and nothing came of it?   Jesus is addressing us right there in that frustrated place, in that unhappy place, in that depressed place, whatever it is that caused it. Jesus is giving us a spiritual remedy to our sense of failure.

Four pounds of fish are enough to make a chowder for four or five people; half a dozen slices of salt pork in the bottom of the pot; hang it high, so that the pork may not burn; take it out when done very high brown; put in a layer of fish, cut in lengthwise slices, then a layer formed of crackers, small or sliced onions, and potatoes sliced as thin as a four pence, mixed with pieces of pork you have fried; then a layer of fish again, and so on. Six crackers are enough. Strew a little salt and pepper over each layer; over the whole pour a bowl-full of flour and water, enough to come up even with the surface of what you have in the pot. A sliced lemon adds to the flavor. A cup of tomato catsup is very excellent. Some people put in beer. A few clams are a pleasant addition. It should be covered so as not to let a particle of steam escape, if possible. Do not open it, except when nearly done, to taste if it be well seasoned. —Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, Boston, 1829

respect for this, people don’t have respect for that. No manners these days.  She watched as the steam shot out of the spout and Cake lifted it gently off the heat, pouring the dark liquid into a cup that read Sweat is just your fat crying. She smiled a little and took it.  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘no pressure or anything, but there’s an open competition coming up and—’ Her phone started buzzing in her rucksack on the chair just inside the door, cutting him off. She put her coffee down, a little glad they didn’t have to have this conversation again. ‘Hold that thought,’ she said, unzipping it and fishing around under the hydration bladder. She pulled it out, held up a finger to signify that she’d just be a minute, and then took the call, stepping back into the gym. Behind her, Cake slurped on his coffee. ‘Roper,’ she said, lifting it to her ear, drawing in a lungful of stale sweat. ‘What is it?’ ‘Got a body,’ he said bluntly, the heavy night of drinking apparent in his gruff voice. No doubt he’d been woken up by a call from DCI Smith a few minutes before. He was grunting like he was trying to pull on a pair of trousers. ‘Washed up in the Lea this morning. Fresh one. Hour or two in the water at the most, supposedly.’ She pressed her lips together, rolling it over in her mind. ‘A body? Bit above our pay grade, isn’t it?’ Roper grumbled. He’d been a detective for years, but a few bad cases had him working larceny and assaults mostly. A body was usually reserved for the more senior investigators. ‘Maybe we’re moving up. Maybe it’s because Henley’s finally come to his senses and seen that we’re shining examples of what detectives should be in this goddamn city.’ ‘What’s the real reason?’ He sighed and she could almost smell the beer and whiskey on his breath. ‘It’s a homeless kid. Arms all tracked out. Drowned by the look of it.’ ‘So why’s this being kicked up to us and not being logged as accidental or—’ ‘Kid’s hands were zip-tied together and his fingernails have been ripped off.

But when I landed in college, I noticed what looked like a gleaming. A goofy, doofy, curly-haired man with broad shoulders brushed by me in the hallway one day. He smelled like cinnamon. He had teddy-brown eyes and performed in the college’s improv group. He was the best one by far, made big gestures, made jokes from a place of kindness and whimsy, pulled ripples of laughter out of this cold, hard world. I used to sit in the audience and marvel. He seemed like an impossibility. It took years. Years of slowly befriending him through mutual friends. Years of calling into his late-night, freestyle-rap radio show, daring my tongue to try… to rhyme on the fly! I even joined the improv group. And eventually, one night I told him how I felt and instead of flinching away, as I had assumed he would, as the boys in the hallway had made it seem that he would, he kissed me. After graduating college, we moved in together, to a small one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with a red Formica table and a great front stoop. I finagled my way into a job helping produce a radio program all about science and wonder. He was continuing with comedy—stand-up and improv and writing—and working as a yellow-cab driver to support himself. We stayed up late into the night, sipping beers on the stoop, talking about our days, turning awkward moments and missteps into jokes. I felt like I had found the thing I had thought could never exist. Refuge. It smelled like cinnamon and its walls were made of bad puns and cheap rhymes, piling higher and higher against the chill of the world. My head became full of visions for the future. The TV shows we would write, the tree houses we would build, the way the grass would curl between our toes as we chased our kids through the yard. Until, seven years into it, I toppled the whole thing. Late one night on a beach five hundred miles away from him, possessed by moonlight and red wine and the smell of a bonfire, I reached out for the bouncing blond girl I had been trying not to eye all night. She was wet from swimming; she was prickled in goose bumps, hundreds of goose bumps, that I wanted to press flat with my tongue. She smiled as I placed my hand on her waist, as I touched my lips to her neck. The stars wrapped around us. Her steam became mine. When I told the curly-haired man what I had done, he told me it was over.

Cubes of Mita's Kuroushi Beef." "Oh, raw meat? At first glance, it looks raw, but it's actually been cooked. And when you bite it all the juice from the meat comes seeping out!" "Ohh... if it was raw, you wouldn't get such a succulent juice coming out of it. This has been cooked very skillfully." "One has soy sauce with Japanese mustard, and the other has soy sauce with wasabi on it. Two different sauces to enjoy." "We slowly roasted a prime tenderloin of the Mita Beef, and then cut away the meat on the outside... ... to take out the meat on the inside." "What an extravagant thing to do." "Hmm, this meat is top-notch, but Mamiya's skills have definitely improved. It's not easy to cook the meat so delicately..." "This one is wrapped in a bamboo sheath... I wonder what's inside. Oh, it's tilefish." "And underneath is..." "It's shredded snow peas with tilefish on top... ... wrapped in a bamboo sheath and steamed. Please pour some kuzu sauce on it... You can also place some wasabi on it if you want to." "The fish has been steamed to perfection. If he had steamed it any more, the flesh would have become tough, but if he had steamed it any less, it would still be a bit raw. It is just soft enough, and the juice is still left in it too..." "The snow peas have sucked up the flavor of the tilefish and have bloomed in flavor.

Let's do snacks." And snacks, we did. We consumed japchae, stir-fried sweet potato noodles with shredded veggies and beef, that were sweet and savory and wonderfully chewy. Ddukbokki, chewy cylinders of rice cake, soft and springy cakes of sweet ground fish, more veggies, and sweet and spicy gochujang sauce. Soondae, a sausage stuffed with noodles, barley, and pig blood, which I had to say gave me slight pause (and made my Jewish grandmother shriek with terror), but which had the most interesting mix of textures. We cleansed our palates with hobakjuk, a porridge made from glutinous rice and the sweetest steamed pumpkin I'd ever tasted, and finished up with hotteok, sweet, crunchy fried pancakes filled with cinnamon, honey, brown sugar, and peanuts.

A long table- longer than any we'd ever possessed at out manor- filled most of the space. It was laden with food and wine- so much food, some of it wafting tendrils of steam, that my mouth watered. At least it was familiar, and not some strange faerie delicacy: chicken, bread, peas, fish, asparagus, lamb... it could have been a feast at any mortal manor.

Outside the tent, it was cold, still, clear, and breathtakingly beautiful. Bright white sun danced on the ripples of Yellowstone Lake and electrified the dew in the grass. A bald eagle cruised along the surface of the water, talons dropped, fishing. Far across the water was the smudge of an island in the lake. Boils of steam rose from vents and dissipated in the clear morning air. She smelled woodsmoke from the fire and heard subdued voices from the kitchen camp.

Getting It Right" Your ankles make me want to party, want to sit and beg and roll over under a pair of riding boots with your ankles hidden inside, sweating beneath the black tooled leather; they make me wish it was my birthday so I could blow out their candles, have them hung over my shoulders like two bags full of money. Your ankles are two monster-truck engines but smaller and lighter and sexier than a saucer with warm milk licking the outside edge; they make me want to sing, make me want to take them home and feed them pasta, I want to punish them for being bad and then hold them all night long and say I’m sorry, sugar, darling, it will never happen again, not in a million years. Your thighs make me quiet. Make me want to be hurled into the air like a cannonball and pulled down again like someone being pulled into a van. Your thighs are two boats burned out of redwood trees. I want to go sailing. Your thighs, the long breath of them under the blue denim of your high-end jeans, could starve me to death, could make me cry and cry. Your ass is a shopping mall at Christmas, a holy place, a hill I fell in love with once when I was falling in love with hills. Your ass is a string quartet, the northern lights tucked tightly into bed between a high-count-of-cotton sheets. Your back is the back of a river full of fish; I have my tackle and tackle box. You only have to say the word. Your back, a letter I have been writing for fifteen years, a smooth stone, a moan someone makes when his hair is pulled, your back like a warm tongue at rest, a tongue with a tab of acid on top; your spine is an alphabet, a ladder of celestial proportions. I am navigating the North and South of it. Your armpits are beehives, they make me want to spin wool, want to pour a glass of whiskey, your armpits dripping their honey, their heat, their inexhaustible love-making dark. I am bright yellow for them. I am always thinking about them, resting at your side or high in the air when I’m pulling off your shirt. Your arms of blue and ice with the blood running to make them believe in God. Your shoulders make me want to raise an arm and burn down the Capitol. They sing to each other underneath your turquoise slope-neck blouse. Each is a separate bowl of rice steaming and covered in soy sauce. Your neck is a skyscraper of erotic adult videos, a swan and a ballet and a throaty elevator made of light. Your neck is a scrim of wet silk that guides the dead into the hours of Heaven. It makes me want to die, your mouth, which is the mouth of everything worth saying. It’s abalone and coral reef. Your mouth, which opens like the legs of astronauts who disconnect their safety lines and ride their stars into the billion and one voting districts of the Milky Way. Darling, you’re my President; I want to get this right! Matthew Dickman, The New Yorker: Poems | August 29, 2011 Issue

Every little difference I made seemed a significant change in the world. I would finish a piece of work and then I would stand and look and admire the way it fitted in with everything else. Just sweeping the porch seemed to make the tree limbs spread and hover more gracefully above it. Where a falling limb had poked a hole through a screen, I took a fine wire and stitched on a patch, and then sat a while and looked out the window, feeling that my work had improved the view. Everywhere I looked, the prospect was new and interesting. Nowhere I had lived before had been so intimate with the world. A pair of phoebes were nesting under the eaves above the porch. Owls called at night, sometimes right over the roof. I would hear a fish jump and look up to see the circles widening on the water. Sometimes, just sitting and looking, I would see the fish when it jumped. Birds were nesting and singing all around-all kinds of birds, and I began to learn their names. Every tree seemed to be offering itself to the use of the birds. And there was the river itself, flowing or still, muddy or clear, quiet or windblown, steaming on the colder mornings of winter ot frozen over, always changing its mood, never exactly feeling the same way twice.

After the simplicity of the gnocchi, the fish course was astonishing. Pellegrino had spent the entire day preparing the two red mullets. He had partially removed the heads and cleaned the fish through those small openings, leaving the bodies intact. Then he massaged each fish to loosen the flesh and bones, which he painstakingly removed without breaking the skin. The mullet flesh was combined with chopped spider crab, cream-softened bread, finely minced shallots, and a whisper of garlic, thyme, nutmeg, and butter, and then carefully stuffed back into the skin. Pellegrino returned the heads to their natural position and patted each fish into its original shape. He surrounded the stuffed mullets with vegetables and herbs and sealed all of it in parchment to poach gently in its own flavorful steam.

GOOD TO KNOW Cod and other lean, firm-fleshed fish are good choices for steaming, since they stay moist after cooking. To steam in the oven, combine fillets in a baking dish with rice vinegar (or another flavorful liquid, such as lemon juice or wine), oil, and aromatics, then cover the dish tightly to trap in moisture as the fish cooks.

  Over a bowl of steaming feu, Chinese noodle soup, Mon kept talking. As always, the soup was served with a plate piled high with fresh greens—cilantro and mint, bean sprouts and lemon—that one added for taste. On the table sat an assortment of Lao and Thai condiments like fish paste, chili peppers, and hot sauce. I usually stayed away from these deadly bottles. Mon, on the other hand, dumped a healthy dose of each into her bowl. Just one

He carefully grilled the pike over an open charcoal brazier before steaming it together with the rice! Detailed touches like this give the fish a richer flavor and fragrance, which then soaks into the rice! The pike itself is extraordinary! The first touch on the tongue is a strong salty flavor, but hidden underneath is a deep umami undercurrent with a fluffy, savory fragrance that spreads through the mouth with every bite!

EASY FIRST FINGER FOODS FOR BABIES • steamed (or lightly boiled) whole vegetables, such as green beans, baby corn, and sugar-snap peas • steamed (or lightly boiled) florets of cauliflower and broccoli • steamed, roasted or stir-fried vegetable sticks, such as carrot, potato, egg plant, sweet potato, parsnip, pumpkin, and zucchini • raw sticks of cucumber (tip: keep some of these ready prepared in the fridge for babies who are teething—the coolness is soothing for their gums) • thick slices of avocado (not too ripe or it will be very squishy) • chicken (as a strip of meat or on a leg bone)—warm (i.e., freshly cooked) or cold • thin strips of beef, lamb or pork—warm (i.e., freshly cooked) or cold • fruit, such as pear, apple, banana, peach, nectarine, mango—either whole or as sticks • sticks of firm cheese, such as cheddar or Gloucester •breadsticks • rice cakes or toast “fingers”—on their own or with a homemade spread, such as hummus and tomato, or cottage cheese And, if you want to be a bit more adventurous, try making your own versions of: • meatballs or mini-burgers • lamb or chicken nuggets • fishcakes or fish fingers • falafels • lentil patties • rice balls (made with sushi rice, or basmati rice with dhal) Remember, you don’t need to use recipes specifically designed for babies, provided you’re careful to keep salt and sugar to a minimum.

Standing up, I promptly scream as what feels like a pound of wet sand falls out of my bikini bottoms. It must have worked itself in there while we were sitting in the sea. “Hahahaha!” Paige cracks up laughing. “It looks like you pooed yourself!” “Yes, thanks, Paige--” “It really does! It totally looks like you--” “Thanks, I think we all get the point!” I dash into the sea as fast as I can, more gobs of wet sand tumbling down my legs, looking and feeling almost exactly like--well, like poo. When I’m waist-deep, I pull the bottoms down and shake and scrape out a big handful of sand. Without any hesitation, I throw it directly at Paige. To my great satisfaction, it lands bang in her cleavage. “Hey! You have poo on your boobs!” I say happily. “Aah!” Taking this in the spirit in which it’s meant, Paige scoops it out and hurls it back at me. I jump back, giggling, as she crab walks deeper into the sea, stands up, and starts fishing handfuls of sand out of her own bottoms to throw at me. We’re both laughing now, not aiming to hurt or hit the other one in the face, just letting off steam, and it feels wonderful. The stress, the tension, the perpetual worrying about who I am fade away; I realize that negotiating with Paige on Kelly’s behalf has helped too. Remember this, I tell myself. Looking after other people. Visiting somewhere new. Splashing around in the sea, throwing wet sand at another girl’s boobs as you both scream with laughter. These are all really good ways to distract yourself from freaking out about things you can’t do anything about. Up above, on his tower, the lifeguard’s standing up and looking down at us, hands on his hips. Laughing too. “Vai bionda!” he’s calling. “Go blondie!” Paige hears it too, and understands--she’s called “bionda” here so much it might as well be her name. Turning around, she waves at him flirtatiously, which distracts her enough that I can bend down into the waves, grab a fresh handful of wet sand, and chuck it so it splatters all over her back. She screams, the lifeguard laughs harder, and people look in our direction, Paige hamming it up hugely, loving the attention. Boys start drifting over; she’s a magnet, and she adores it.

I went through all the motions of the meal, sending out the slaves with the food when the courses dictated. I sent the entertainment in- flutists, harpists, and singers. I sent the girls, the boys, all dressed in ever-amazing costumes, some like birds and animals, some like monsters, some like heroes, and some like nymphs. And oh, the food was magnificent! I had re-created all the old stories of the gods. Venus carved from a gourd, emerging from her shell. Fantastic Roman triremes made from hollowed cucumbers and holding tiny white carrot men fought battles across an ocean of cold beet juice. A platter of cheese and figs shaped into Cerberus and his double heads. And the dishes! Only the finest delicacies were served, with the pinnacle of each course flavored with the few dried sprigs of silphium I had been hoarding for a year- there was no fresh silphium to be had. Plate after plate of marinated mushrooms, Baian beans in mustard sauce, pork meatballs, honey melons, stuffed boiled eggs, fried veal slices, crunchy duck and flamingo tongues, pork pastries stuffed with figs, pear patinae, steamed lamb, soufflés of little fishes... even now my mouth salivates thinking back to that meal.

While I struggled with the menu, a handsome middle-aged guy from a nearby table came over to help. "You like sashimi? Cooked fish? Sushi?" he asked. His English was excellent. He was originally from Okinawa, he said, and a member of Rotary International. I know nothing about the Rotarians except that it's a service organization; helping befuddled foreigners order food in bars must fall within its definition of charitable service. Our service-oriented neighbor helped us order pressed sweetfish sushi, kisu fish tempura, and butter-sauteed scallops. Dredging up a vague Oishinbo memory, I also ordered broiled sweetfish, a seasonal delicacy said to taste vaguely of melon. While we started in on our sushi, our waitress- the kind of harried diner waitress who would call customers "hon" in an American restaurant- delivered a huge, beautiful steamed flounder with soy sauce, mirin, and chunks of creamy tofu. "From that guy," she said, indicating the Rotarian samaritan. We retaliated with a large bottle of beer for him and his friend (the friend came over to thank us, with much bowing). What would happen at your neighborhood bar if a couple of confused foreigners came in with a child and didn't even know how to order a drink? Would someone send them a free fish? I should add that it's not exactly common to bring children to an izakaya, but it's not frowned upon, either; also, not every izakaya is equally welcoming. Some, I have heard, are more clubby and are skeptical of nonregulars, whatever their nationality. But I didn't encounter any places like that. Oh, how was the food? So much of the seafood we eat in the U.S., even in Seattle, is previously frozen, slightly past its prime, or both. All of the seafood at our local izakaya was jump-up-and-bite-you fresh. This was most obvious in the flounder and the scallops. A mild fish, steamed, lightly seasoned, and served with tofu does not sound like a recipe for memorable eating, but it was. The butter-sauteed scallops, meanwhile, would have been at home at a New England seaside shack. They were served with a lettuce and tomato salad and a dollop of mayo. The shellfish were cooked and seasoned perfectly. I've never had a better scallop.

Soon, the oceans boiled, sending continent-size billows of steam floating across the globe, smelling of simmering fish, salt, and kelp.

Alone in the kitchen, without Zod's supervision, he found himself turning to the wholesome food of his childhood, not only for the comfort the simple compositions offered, but because it was what he knew so well as he set about preparing a homecoming feast for Zod's only son. He pulled two kilos of java beans from the freezer. Gathered last May, shucked and peeled on a quiet afternoon, they defrosted in a colander for a layered frittata his mother used to make with fistfuls of dill and sprinkled with sea salt. One flat of pale green figs and a bushel of new harvest walnuts were tied to the back of his scooter, along with two crates of pomegranates- half to squeeze for fresh morning juice and the other to split and seed for rice-and-meatball soup. Three fat chickens pecked in the yard, unaware of their destiny as he sharpened his cleaver. Tomorrow they would braise in a rich, tangy stew with sour red plums, their hearts and livers skewered and grilled, then wrapped in sheets of lavash with bouquets of tarragon and mint. Basmati rice soaked in salted water to be steamed with green garlic and mounds of finely chopped parsley and cilantro, then served with a whole roasted, eight kilo white fish stuffed with barberries, pistachios, and lime. On the farthest burner, whole bitter oranges bobbed in blossom syrup, to accompany rice pudding, next to a simmering pot of figs studded with cardamom pods for preserves.

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.

As Tomiko and I sank to our knees on floor pillows, her mother filled our sake cups with an amber-green liquid. Called toso, it was a traditional New Year's elixir made from sweet rice wine seasoned with a Chinese herbal-medicine mixture called tososan. Meant to ward off the evil spirits, the drink was honeyed, warm, and laced with cinnamon and peppery sansho. To display the contents of the lacquer boxes, Tomiko's mother had arranged the various layers in the center of the table. The top layer always contains the traditional sweet dishes and hors d'oeuvres, while the second layer holds steamed, boiled, and vinegared offerings. The third box consists of foods that have been grilled or fried. Since not everything fit into the lacquer boxes, Tomiko's mother had placed a long rectangular dish at everyone's place holding three different nibbles. The first one was a small bowl of herring eggs to represent fertility. Waxy yellow in color, they had a plastic pop and mild saline flavor. Next came a miniature stack of sugar- and soy-braised burdock root cut like penne pasta and tossed with a rich nutty cream made from pounded sesame seeds. Called tataki gobo (pounded burdock root), the dish is so named because the gobo (root) symbolizes the hope for a stable, deeply rooted life, while the homonym for tataki (pounded) also means "joy aplenty." The third item consisted of a tiny clump of intensely flavored soy-caramelized sardines that tasted like ocean candy. Called tazukuri, meaning "paddy-tilling," the sticky fish symbolized hopes for a good harvest, since in ancient times, farmers used chopped sardines along with ash for fertilizer.

But the accompanying steamed rice, pressed into the shape of a chrysanthemum, had a clean, delicate sweetness unlike any rice I had ever tasted. The tray also held a plastic bowl and sipped the savory liquid enriched with diced tofu and emerald wisps of wakame seaweed. In a shallow dish sat a small block of bean curd splashed with soy sauce and topped with pinkish curls of dried bonito that looked like pencil shavings. I cut into the silky white cube and tried to balance the craggy chunk on the slender pieces of wood. It tumbled off. After trying again, success was rewarded with the sweet taste of milky custard mingled with dark soy and smoky fish flakes. There were pickles too, crisp neon-yellow half-moons of sweet daikon radish and crunchy slices of eggplant. Although I had not expected culinary brilliance from a mall restaurant, dinner was exceeding expectations. The ingredients were plain, but exceptional in their purity and freshness.

We began with two buttery sweet edamame and one sugar syrup-soaked shrimp in a crunchy soft shell. A lightly simmered baby octopus practically melted in our mouths, while a tiny cup of clear, lemony soup provided cooling refreshment. The soup held three slices of okra and several slippery cool strands of junsai (water shield), a luxury food that grows in ponds and marshes throughout Asia, Australia, West Africa, and North America. In the late spring the tiny plant develops leafy shoots surrounded by a gelatinous sheath that floats on the water's surface, enabling the Japanese to scoop it up by hand from small boats. The edamame, okra, and water shield represented items from the mountains, while the shrimp and octopus exemplified the ocean. I could tell John was intrigued and amused by this artistic (perhaps puny?) array of exotica. Two pearly pieces of sea bream, several fat triangles of tuna, and sweet shelled raw baby shrimp composed the sashimi course, which arrived on a pale turquoise dish about the size of a bread plate. It was the raw fish portion of the meal, similar to the mukozuke in a tea kaiseki. To counter the beefy richness of the tuna, we wrapped the triangles in pungent shiso leaves , then dunked them in soy. After the sashimi, the waitress brought out the mushimono (steamed dish). In a coal-black ceramic bowl sat an ivory potato dumpling suspended in a clear wiggly broth of dashi thickened with kudzu starch, freckled with glistening orange salmon roe. The steamed dumplings, reminiscent of a white peach, was all at once velvety, sweet, starchy, and feathery and had a center "pit" of ground chicken. The whole dish, served warm and with a little wooden spoon, embodied the young, tender softness of spring.

One day we strolled down the Philosopher's Path, which proved as enchanting as I had hoped in the fragrant pink bloom of spring. Since ancient times, the Japanese have heralded the arrival of the cherry blossoms because they symbolize the ephemeral beauty of life. But it isn't just the three or four days of open flowers that stirs the senses. It is their arrival and departure. Looking at a bud about to burst open offers the pleasurable anticipation of rebirth, while the soft scattering of petals on the ground is often considered the most beautiful stage of all because it represents the death of the flowers. Another day I took John to one of my tea kaiseki classes to watch the making of a traditional picnic to celebrate the arrival of the cherry blossoms. While he sat on a stool near my cooking station, Stephen and I cooked rice in water flavored with kelp, sake, and light soy, then packed it into a wooden mold shaped like a chrysanthemum. After tapping out the compact white flower, we decorated it with two salted cherry blossoms. We wrapped chunks of salted Spanish mackerel in brined cherry leaves and steamed the packets until the fatty fish turned milky in parts. We also made cold seafood salad, pea custard, and chewy millet dumplings, which we grilled over a charcoal burner until brown and sticky enough to hold a coating of ivory Japanese poppy seeds.

The foil packet sighed as I pulled it open, hissing as it yielded its bounty. Clouds of steam puffed upward, releasing the tantalizing aroma into the air. The fish's reddish skin had a beautiful overlapping pattern that looked as if it had been painted by some wayward mermaid. My sharp scissors snipped the stitches in its belly, spilling the filling onto the plate. I scooped us both two helpings of the garlic fried rice and portioned the desirable parts of the fish, the head and the belly, for Celia, while I took the tail. The piece of fish on my fork bore the sign of perfect execution: moist, milky translucence, and a silky texture that sprang to the touch. Infused with the fragrant stuffing, the tender fish melted in my mouth, dissolving in a mélange of delicious flavors- the trio of boldness from the coriander, garlic, and red onion tempered by the sweet tanginess of the tomatoes. Success.

A formal ten-course Chinese dinner was a deliberate courtship of the senses. The appetizers of cold plate meats gave way to steaming fish maw soup, cold and hot introductions to titillate and delight before the showcase of entrees: beef, pork, chicken, fish, seafood, vegetables. The ensuing textures, aromas, and flavors seduced, fulfilling the promises of the first courses. The inclusion of noodle and rice dishes provided a sense of comfort. The final dessert course of sesame balls stuffed with red-bean paste sealed the engagement on the sweetest of notes.

PROTEIN one serving: ¼ egg, 2 thin strips of chicken, ½ meatball, 1 ounce fish, or 2 table-spoons purée. Good protein choices include meat, fish, poultry, eggs, tofu, or beans and lentils. grain one serving: ½ cup oatmeal or cooked rice, quinoa, pasta, or couscous; 2 slices baked oatmeal; or ½ slice toast, cut into sticks. fruit or vegetable one serving: 2 pieces, such as 2 slices of soft pear or steamed apple, 2 steamed carrot sticks, ¼ medium avocado, 2 small steamed broccoli florets, or 2 tablespoons purée. dairy one serving: ½ cup (4 ounces) full-fat yogurt; ¾ ounce full-fat cheese, shredded or cut into thin sticks. Cow’s milk is not recommended as a main drink for infants under 12 months. 4 to 6 months FIRST THING IN THE MORNING: Breastmilk on demand or 6–7 ounces formula BREAKFAST: 1–2 tablespoons cereal • 1–2 tablespoons fruit or vegetable MIDMORNING: Breastmilk on demand or 6–7 ounces formula LUNCH: 1–2 tablespoons cereal • 1–2 tablespoons fruit or vegetable OR breastmilk on demand or 6–7 ounces formula

The sakura shrimp fishing season has just started in Yui, so that's the first catch you're eating. If you believe what they say, that means you'll live a long and healthy life." Nagare removed the lid from the bowl, releasing a cloud of steam. Kana leaned over, closed her eyes, and took a deep sniff of the clear broth. "It smells wonderful!" "The only solid ingredient is diced tofu. Plus a garnish of pepper tree leaves." "Just tofu? But this aroma--- it's so complex." "The stock is from quick-grilled sweetfish bones. I had plenty of them left over from all that sushi." "So that's what I'm picking up," replied Kana, sniffing the steam again. "Who'd have thought those tiny little bones could add so much flavor?

The grilled dish is miso-marinated pomfret, and the small bowls are simmered Horikawa burdock with Akashi octopus, Shogoin turnip, and Donko shiitake mushrooms. Those small fish wrapped in perilla leaves are moroko, stewed in a sweet soy and mirin sauce. The deep-fried dishes are winter mackerel, done Tatsuta-age style by marinating it first, and ebi-imo taro, fried straight-up. Wrapped around the green negi onion is roast duck, around the thicker, white negi is Kurobuta pork. Try dipping those in the wasabi or the mustard. As for the steamed rice with Seko crab, that'll taste best with these mitsuba leaves sprinkled on top.

Starting in the top left: fugu from Mikawa Bay, fried karaage style, and boiled Kano crab. To the right of that are grilled skewers of duck meatball and Kujo green onion, and tilefish tempura. Shogoin daikon and millet cake, baked in a miso glaze; Horikawa burdock and hamo fish cakes in broth. Below that are sake-steamed hamaguri clams, stewed Kintoki carrots and Kujo green onion, and the grilled fish is miso-marinated pomfret.

Purées of plum or dusky berries float on glass pots of yoghurt; scallops and oysters quiver on the half-shell and platters of sashimi sit on jagged crystals of crushed ice. Slices of boiled bacon with a mustard glaze are arranged in a soldierly line; poached white fish is wantonly sprinkled with spring onions; a mixture of aubergines and minced pork and another of hot and leafy mustard greens bask in chafing dishes next to stainless-steel cauldrons of miso soup. There are wicker baskets of dumplings steaming and a whole table of ingredients--- rice, eggs, greens and soy sauce--- with which to build your own bibimbap.

halibut steamed in parchment paper halibut al cartoccio Four 6-ounce pieces halibut Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 fennel bulb, very thinly sliced 4 shallots, very thinly sliced 1 garlic clove, very thinly sliced ½ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling ¼ cup dry white wine 3 lemons, halved, plus more lemon juice for drizzling if needed 1 large or 2 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced ¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves ¼ cup celery leaves 2 tablespoons snipped fresh chives 2 tablespoons finely sliced fresh basil 1 teaspoon crushed coriander seeds 1 Preheat the oven to 400°F. 2 Cut 4 good-sized pieces of parchment paper or aluminum foil, each about 9 inches long, and shape into heart shapes by folding them in half and then, beginning at the bottom of the fold, cutting a half-heart shape, using most of the paper. When you open the folded paper, it should be in the shape of a heart and about 9 inches long. Lay the open hearts on the countertop. 3 Put a piece of halibut on one side of each heart and season to taste with salt and pepper. Put a tablespoon of butter on top of each piece of fish. Arrange the fennel, shallots, and garlic evenly over and around each piece of halibut. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of wine, and the juice of ½ lemon on each fish. 4 Fold the parchment over the fish and crimp any open sides by folding it back onto itself to seal the fish inside the packet. Transfer the packets to a baking sheet or shallow baking pan and bake for 12 minutes. 5 Meanwhile, toss the tomatoes with the parsley, celery leaves, chives, basil, and coriander seeds in a bowl. Season to taste and dress with the remaining ¼ cup of olive oil and the juice of 1 lemon. 6 Remove the baking sheet from the oven. Gently cut open each parchment package, taking care because the steam can be very hot, and set each portion on a serving plate. The fish can stay on the parchment or not. 7 Top each piece of fish with a quarter of the salad. Drizzle with more olive oil and lemon juice, if necessary. Delicate fish is often cooked in parchment in Italy, which allows it to steam gently in the paper. When you open the parchment, a dramatic whirl of hot, moist steam escapes—a true delight for the senses! For this recipe, I follow another Italian culinary custom and top the fish with dressed salad when I serve it. The hot fish brings out the flavors in the herbaceous salad.  serves 4

After charring the thousand dragon's tea to ash, I steeped it with a silkie chicken, dried cloud's ear mushrooms, scallions, and cured, salted fish. Making a few adjustments, I added in some pungent star anise, purple scallions, scorpion chilis, and black garlic. As if I were a witch, I concocted the most powerful brew--- a potent broth to steam the rice, a punch to the tongue and teeth.

I lose control because I pretend I'm no longer boring I was steamed fish In my defence... Big Business... What choices we give ourselves...

Most restaurants provide high chairs and offer at least a few menu options that work well during BLW. Here are some ideas: •Sweet potato fries •Steamed or mashed veggies •Meat or fish patties •Pasta •Scrambled eggs or omelets •Whole-grain toast •Pancakes •Tomato slices •Hummus •Pita bread

The sushi rice was topped with thin strips of omelet, grilled conger eel, steamed prawns, boiled shiitake mushrooms, ginkgo nuts, and large green soybeans. There was also a scattering of something reddish pink--- probably dried and shredded fish. Taking care not to touch the bowl again, Shuji used his chopsticks to scoop up some of the mushi-zushi and slip it into his mouth. It was so hot that he found himself wondering how it was even possible for food to retain such a high temperature. He opened his mouth wide as he chewed, releasing clouds of steam. The rice itself was packed with minced conger eel; he could feel its rich umami flavor racing across his tongue. Now he saw what a bit of warmth could bring to a bowl of sushi.