Thin Crust Quotes

Magnus? Magnus Bane?” “That would be me.” The man blocking the doorway was as tall and thin as a rail, his hair a crown of dense back spikes. Clary guessed from the curse of his sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His eyes were crusted with a raccoon mask of charcoal glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue. He raked a ring-laden hand through his spiked hair and regarded them thoughtfully. “Children of the Nephilim,” he said. “Well, well. I don’t recall inviting you. I must have been drunk.

The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?

There's very little in my world that a foot massage and a thin-crust, everything-on-it pizza won't set right.

. . . humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is lead in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, (which are but the mute articulation of his feelings,) not those other things are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water-and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden-it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written.

Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends with the snake, and set up our computers among the wild apple trees. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution - a melding into the godhead, into love - is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to acknowledge that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy. Or, barring that, to turn out a good thin-crust pizza and a strong glass of beer.

The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.

All civilisation has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), `you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.' And what does IT live on?' Weak tea with cream in it.' A new difficulty came into Alice's head. `Supposing it couldn't find any?' she suggested. Then it would die, of course.' But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked thoughtfully. It always happens,' said the Gnat.

Currently where you are is on a huge globe with a relatively thin crust of stone, containing fire in its bowels, rotating on its own slightly tilted axis at 1,000 miles per hour in an easterly direction while simultaneously traveling in orbit around an enormous ball of burning hydrogen, 93,000,000 miles away at 66,000 miles per hour. That’s 66,000 miles per hour, or nineteen miles per second, which is much faster that you’ve maybe ever imagined, and means that you will be traveling nearly 60,000,000 miles this coming year. Beauty is, you don’t have to imagine it, you can feel it instead. And if you want to know what it’s like, simply stop. Be still, and in that stillness, whatever you are feeling in your belly: that’s it. this is what it feels like to go 66,000 miles per hour while spinning at one thousand.

Before coming to the United States, I knew what others know: that the cruelty of its borders was only a thin crust, and that on the other side a possible life was waiting. I understood, some time after, that once you stay here long enough, you begin to remember the place where you originally came from the way a backyard might look from a high window in the deep of winter: a skeleton of the world, a tract of abandonment, objects dead and obsolete. And once you're here, you'r ready to give everything, or almost everything, to stay and play a part in the great theatre of belonging.

It was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.

That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Like many other Catholics, Esmond had a crust of Catholic complacency over a thin layer of doubt, which spanned a deep morass of sheer terror.

Places I love come back to me like music, Hush me and heal me when I am very tired; I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired; And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley As for a kiss ungiven and long desired. I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton, A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees, The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze, And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust With the winer sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees. Violet now, in veil on veil of evening, The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far; A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are; The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers And heaven is lighting star after star. Places I love come back to me like music– Mid-ocean, midnight, the eaves buzz drowsily; In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea, And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed , insistent, At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.

I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust—thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise.

Will that be all?” I asked the pimply faced teen who ogled my exposed legs as if in heat. My pen tapped impatiently on the notepad while I waited for him to look up. Slowly his dull grey eyes roved over my body and a limp smile drew up his thin, crusted lips making him look more weasel than human. “Yep. That’d be it,” his cheerful, adolescent voice cracked. “Great,” I mumbled, walking back behind the counter.

For dinner, we had thin-crust pizza at a place called Panjo's. Daddy said that it was his favourite and that he ate there a lot. He said the last time he'd been there, he'd come with a woman from work, on a date. He said he'd liked her quite a bit until she took out a cigarette. The he realised she was stupid. I thought she was stupid, too, not because she smoked, but because she'd gone on a date with Daddy.

If you can have one square of triple-thin-crust pizza and happily close the top of the box and put it in your refrigerator until the next day and not wake up periodically throughout the night asking yourself whether or not you made a huge mistake, then maybe this is not the book for you. BITCHES GOTTA EAT.

The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree.I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during former years may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have at all times overmastered other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was young, budding twigs; and this connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear the other branches; so with the species which lived during long-past geological periods, very few have left living and modified descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.

What we have now is but a bare remnant, an age of vast information, but spread thin like a superficial crust passing as knowledge. Ignorance will always be the easier path

You may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.

We can go back to the Dark Ages! The crust of learning and good manners and tolerance is so thin! It would just take a few thousand big shells and gas bombs to wipe out all the eager young men, and all the libraries and historical archives and patent offices, all the laboratories and art galleries, all the castles and Periclean temples and Gothic cathedrals, all the cooperative stores and motor factories—every storehouse of learning. No inherent reason why Sissy's grandchildren—if anybody's grandchildren will survive at all—shouldn't be living in caves and heaving rocks at catamounts.

The farther in they went, the closer the cliffs pressed to either side. They followed the moonlit ribbon of stream back toward its source. Icicles bearded its stony banks, but Jon could still hear the sound of rushing water beneath the thin hard crust.

The rock I'd seen in my life looked dull because in all ignorance I'd never thought to knock it open. People have cracked ordinary New England pegmatite - big, coarse granite - and laid bare clusters of red garnets, or topaz crystals, chrysoberyl, spodumene, emerald. They held in their hands crystals that had hung in a hole in the dark for a billion years unseen. I was all for it. I would lay about me right and left with a hammer, and bash the landscape to bits. I would crack the earth's crust like a piñata and spread to the light the vivid prizes in chunks within. Rock collecting was opening the mountains. It was like diving through my own interior blank blackness to remember the startling pieces of a dream: there was a blue lake, a witch, a lighthouse, a yellow path. It was like poking about in a grimy alley and finding an old, old coin. Nothing was at it seemed. The earth was like a shut eye. Mother's not dead, dear - she's only sleeping. Pry open the thin lid and find a crystalline intelligence inside, a rayed and sidereal beauty. Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetical flowers. They lengthened and spread, adding plane to plane in awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even the stones - maybe only the stones - understood.

3.5 billion years ago, when the Moon was much closer, volcanic eruptions commonplace (because of the thinness of the crust), meteor impacts routine and the air thick with acidic vapours. Remarkably, it was in such an unpromising environment that life first got going.

Among the many appalling things about the past, it is hard to know which was the worst, since there are all too many candidates, from around the world, for that designation. That something like the Holocaust could have happened, after thousands of years of civilization, and in one of the most advanced societies, is almost as incomprehensible intellectually as it is devastating morally and in terms of showing what depths of depravity are possible in all human beings. It is a painful reminder of a description of civilization as “a thin crust over a volcano.

The surface of the earth crusted. A thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red contry and white in the gray contry." (1) This describes the form of the book how the earth has been swallowed by the sun and allows you to assume that the farms are destroded.

When one is much alone one’s vision becomes more extensive; from the tide-wrack rubbish-heap of small bones and dry, crumpled wings, relics of lesser lives, rise images the brighter for being unconfined by the physical eye. From some feathered mummy, stained and thin, soars the spinning lapwing in the white March morning; in the surface crust of rotting weed, where the foot explodes a whirring puff of flies, the withered fins and scales hold still, intrinsically, the sway and dart of glittering shoals among the tide-swung sea-tangle; smothered by the mad parabolic energy of leaping sand-hoppers the broken antlers of a stag re-form and move again high in the bare, stony corries and the October moonlight.

Now here he was, tailored iron-gray suit, thin maroon tie, a maroon handkerchief peeking out from his breast pocket. His oxblood wing tips gleamed. He looked like a supervillain or, worse, an upper-crust English spy, an openly promiscuous and functionally alcoholic heterosexual with an on-and-off-again messiah complex. It was the shoes, the way they were tied.

Just as a signpost warns of rockfalls near a cliff-edge, the standing stones were meant to mark a spot of danger. A spot where … what? Where the crust of time was thin? Where a gate of some sort stood ajar? Not that the makers of the circles would have known what it was they were marking. To them, the spot would have been one of terrible mystery and powerful magic; a spot where people disappeared without warning. Or appeared, perhaps, out of thin air.

Miss Foley had first noticed, some years ago, that her house was crowded with bright shadows of herself. Best, then, to ignore the cold sheets of December ice in the hall, above the bureaus, in the bath. Best skate the thin ice, lightly. Paused, the weight of your attention might crack the shell. Plunged through the crust, you might drown in depths so cold, so remote, that all the Past lay carved in tombstone marbles there. Ice water would syringe your veins.

Magnus? Magnus Bane?” “That would be me.” The young man blocking the doorway was as tall and thin as a rail, his hair a crown of dense black spikes. He was Asian, with an elegantly high-cheekboned, handsome face, broad-shouldered despite his slim frame. He was certainly dressed for a party, in tight jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His eyes were crusted with a raccoon mask of charcoal glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue.

He got into the tub and ran a little cold water. Then he lowered his thin, hairy body into the just-right warmth and stared at the interstices between the tiles. Sadness--he had experienced that emotion ten thousand times. As exhalation is to inhalation, he thought of it as the return from each thrust of happiness. Lazily soaping himself, he gave examples. When he was five and Irwin eight, their father had breezed into town with a snowstorm and come to see them where they lived with their grandparents in the small Connecticut city. Their father had been a vagabond salesman and was considered a bum by people who should know. But he had come into the closed, heated house with all the gimcrack and untouchable junk behind glass and he had smelled of cold air and had had snow in his curly black hair. He had raved about the world he lived in, while the old people, his father and mother, had clucked sadly in the shadows. And then he had wakened the boys in the night and forced them out into the yard to worship the swirling wet flakes, to dance around with their hands joined, shrieking at the snow-laden branches. Later, they had gone in to sleep with hearts slowly returning to bearable beatings. Great flowering things had opened and closed in Norman's head, and the resonance of the wild man's voice had squeezed a sweet, tart juice through his heart. But then he had wakened to a gray day with his father gone and the world walking gingerly over the somber crust of dead-looking snow. It had taken him some time to get back to his usual equanimity. He slid down in the warm, foamy water until just his face and his knobby white knees were exposed. Once he had read Wuthering Heights over a weekend and gone to school susceptible to any heroine, only to have the girl who sat in front of him, whom he had admired for some months, emit a loud fart which had murdered him in a small way and kept him from speaking a word to anyone the whole week following. He had laughed at a very funny joke about a Negro when Irwin told it at a party, and then the following day had seen some white men lightly kicking a Negro man in the pants, and temporarily he had questioned laughter altogether. He had gone to several universities with the vague exaltation of Old Man Axelrod and had found only curves and credits. He had become drunk on the idea of God and found only theology. He had risen several times on the subtle and powerful wings of lust, expectant of magnificence, achieving only discharge. A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind. His solitude now was the result of his metabolism, that constant breathing in of joy and exhalation of sadness. He had come to take shallower breaths, and the two had become mercifully mixed into melancholy contentment. He wondered how pain would breach that low-level strength. "I'm a small man of definite limitations," he declared to himself, and relaxed in the admission.

We’re going to consider a perfectly circular pizza which has a uniform coverage of the same topping and is without a crust; also, its base is extremely thin (so you can’t cheat by cutting horizontally through it). To sum up, then, the pizza can be described as perfectly circular, homogenous, infinitely thin and (because it’s two-dimensional) terrible value for money. It can also be frictionless and in a vacuum if you like, but that would make it substantially harder to eat. Although possibly much easier to digest.

Miss Foley had first noticed, some years ago, that her house was crowded with bright shadows of herself. Best, then, to ignore the cold sheets of December ice in the hall, above the bureaus, in the bath. Best skate the thin ice, lightly. Paused, the weight of your attention might crack the shell. Plunged through the crust, you might drown in depths so cold, so remote, that all the Past lay carved in tombstone marbles there. Ice water would syringe your veins. Transfixed at the mirror sill, you would stand forever, unable to lift your gaze from the proofs of Time.

And then she set to work, washing fresh blueberries that sat on the counter, before grabbing a big colander. Sam headed into the backyard, whose lawn backed acres of woods. Blackberries and raspberries grew wild and thick in the brambles that sat at the edge of the woods. Sam carefully navigated her way through the thorny vines, her thin running shirt catching and snagging on a thorn. "Darn it," she mumbled. Blackberries are red when they're green, she could hear her grandfather telling her when they used to pick the fruit. But today, a brilliant summer day, the blackberries were deep purple, almost black, and each one resembled a mini beehive. Sam plucked and popped a fresh blackberry, already warm from the sun, into her mouth, savoring the natural sweetness, and picked until her colander was half full before easing her way through the woods to find a raspberry bush thick with fruit. She navigated her way out of the brambles and headed back to the kitchen, where she preheated the oven and began to wash the blackberries and raspberries. Sam pulled cold, unsalted butter from the fridge and began to cube it, some flour and sugar from the cupboard, a large bowl, and then she located her grandmother's old pastry blender. Sam made the crust and then rolled it into a ball, lightly flouring it and wrapping it in plastic before placing it in the refrigerator. Then she started in on the filling, mixing the berries, sugar, flour, and fresh orange juice.

I’ll tell you what’s true,’ said Weston presently. ‘What?’ ‘A little child that creeps upstairs when nobody’s looking and very slowly turns the handle to take one peep into the room where its grandmother’s dead body is laid out–and then runs away and has bad dreams. An enormous grandmother, you understand.’ ‘What do you mean by saying that’s truer?’ ‘I mean that child knows something about the universe which all science and all religion is trying to hide.’ Ransom said nothing. ‘Lots of things,’ said Weston presently. ‘Children are afraid to go through a churchyard at night, and the grown-ups tell them not to be silly: but the children know better than the grown-ups. People in Central Africa doing beastly things with masks on in the middle of the night–and missionaries and civil servants say it’s all superstition. Well, the blacks know more about the universe than the white people. Dirty priests in back streets in Dublin frightening half-witted children to death with stories about it. You’d say they are unenlightened. They’re not: except that they think there is a way of escape. There isn’t. That is the real universe, always has been, always will be. That’s what it all means.’ ‘I’m not quite clear–’ began Ransom, when Weston interrupted him. ‘That’s why it’s so important to live as long as you can. All the good things are now–a thin little rind of what we call life, put on for show, and then–the real universe for ever and ever. To thicken the rind by one centimetre–to live one week, one day, one half hour longer–that’s the only thing that matters. Of course you don’t know it: but every man who is waiting to be hanged knows it. You say “What difference does a short reprieve make?” What difference!!’ ‘But nobody need go there,’ said Ransom. ‘I know that’s what you believe,’ said Weston. ‘But you’re wrong. It’s only a small parcel of civilised people who think that. Humanity as a whole knows better. It knows–Homer knew–that all the dead have sunk down into the inner darkness: under the rind. All witless, all twittering, gibbering, decaying. Bogeymen. Every savage knows that all ghosts hate the living who are still enjoying the rind: just as old women hate girls who still have their good looks. It’s quite right to be afraid of the ghosts. You’re going to be one all the same.’ ‘You don’t believe in God,’ said Ransom. ‘Well, now, that’s another point,’ said Weston. ‘I’ve been to church as well as you when I was a boy. There’s more sense in parts of the Bible than you religious people know. Doesn’t it say He’s the God of the living, not of the dead? That’s just it. Perhaps your God does exist–but it makes no difference whether He does or not. No, of course you wouldn’t see it; but one day you will. I don’t think you’ve got the idea of the rind–the thin outer skin which we call life–really clear. Picture the universe as an infinite glove with this very thin crust on the outside. But remember its thickness is a thickness of time. It’s about seventy years thick in the best places. We are born on the surface of it and all our lives we are sinking through it. When we’ve got all the way through then we are what’s called Dead: we’ve got into the dark part inside, the real globe. If your God exists, He’s not in the globe–He’s outside, like a moon. As we pass into the interior we pass out of His ken. He doesn’t follow us in. You would express it by saying He’s not in time–which you think comforting! In other words He stays put: out in the light and air, outside. But we are in time. We “move with the times”. That is, from His point of view, we move away, into what He regards as nonentity, where He never follows. That is all there is to us, all there ever was. He may be there in what you call “Life”, or He may not. What difference does it make? We’re not going to be there for long!

Blitzen!” Junior suddenly appeared. He crutched toward me with his rocket-powered walker and a lot of friends. “Get him, boys!” “Ha! Eat light, Junior!” I unleashed the power of the mini bed. Sadly, instead of a turn-you-to-stone laser beam, a weak glow enveloped Junior like a soft blanket. The charge had run out. A thin crust formed around him. It was nowhere near as dramatic as instant petrification, but it was startling enough to make the other dwarves pause. And that made me think about how I looked to them. A dwarf who handcrafts a weapon that I know what it’s like to be petrified. It stinks. So I had every intention of cutting Alviss free on his next pass-by and then dipping him in the river to restore him. But before I could, the stalactite attached to the rope broke. Alviss’s momentum carried him over the cliff edge. He landed with a splash in the water below. “Oops.” I peered down, then waved my hand dismissively. “Ah, he’ll be fine.” “Blitzen!” Junior suddenly appeared. He crutched toward me with his rocket-powered walker and a lot of friends. “Get him, boys!” “Ha! Eat light, Junior!” I unleashed the power of the mini bed. Sadly, instead of a turn-you-to-stone laser beam, a weak glow enveloped Junior like a soft blanket. The charge had run out. A thin crust formed around him. It was nowhere near as dramatic as instant petrification, but it was startling enough to make the other dwarves pause. And that made me think about how I looked to them. A dwarf who handcrafts a weapon that petrifies other dwarves? Not cool. “Listen!” I yelled. “My argument is with Junior, not you. When he decrustifies, tell him I want to talk.” I put the mini bed on the ground and showed them my empty hands while slowly backing away. It would have been a very powerful moment if I hadn’t backed off the cliff into the river. As I thrashed through the churning water toward shore, three things occurred to me. One, Junior would never, ever forgive me. Two, my cashmere hoodie was ruined. And three . . . Mimir owed me a lot more than a quarter.

From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.

Why did you come to the United States? Perhaps no one knows the real answer. I know that migrants, when they are still on their way here, learn the Immigrant’s Prayer. A friend who had been aboard La Bestia for a few days, working on a documentary, read it to me once. I didn’t learn the entire thing, but I remember these lines: “Partir es morir un poco / Llegar nunca es llegar”—“To leave is to die a little / To arrive is never to arrive.” I’ve had to ask so many children: Why did you come? Sometimes I ask myself the same question. I don’t have an answer yet. Before coming to the United States, I knew what others know: that the cruelty of its borders was only a thin crust, and that on the other side a possible life was waiting. I understood, some time after, that once you stay here long enough, you begin to remember the place where you originally came from the way a backyard might look from a high window in the deep of winter: a skeleton of the world, a tract of abandonment, objects dead and obsolete. And once you’re here, you’re ready to give everything, or almost everything, to stay and play a part in the great theater of belonging. In the United States, to stay is an end in itself and not a means: to stay is the founding myth of this society. To stay in the United States, you will unlearn the universal metric system so you can buy a pound and a half of cooked ham, accept that thirty-two degrees, and not zero, is where the line falls that divides cold and freezing. You might even begin to celebrate the pilgrims who removed the alien Indians, and the veterans who maybe killed other aliens, and the day of a president who will eventually declare a war on all the other so-called aliens. No matter the cost. No matter the cost of the rent, and milk, and cigarettes. The humiliations, the daily battles. You will give everything. You will convince yourself that it is only a matter of time before you can be yourself again, in America, despite the added layers of its otherness already so well adhered to your skin. But perhaps you will never want to be your former self again. There are too many things that ground you to this new life. Why did you come here? I asked one little girl once. Because I wanted to arrive.

The crust [of the earth] is very thin. Estimates of its thickness range from a minimum of about twenty to a maximum of about forty miles. The crust is made of comparatively rigid, crystalline rock, but it is fractured in many places, and does not have great strength. Immediately under the crust is a layer that is thought to be extremely weak, because it is, presumably, too hot to crystallize. Moreover, it is thought that pressure at that depth renders the rock extremely plastic, so that it will yield easily to pressures. The rock at that depth is supposed to have high viscosity; that is, it is fluid but very stiff, as tar may be. It is known that a viscous material will yield easily to a comparatively slight pressure exerted over a long period of time, even though it may act as a solid when subjected to a sudden pressure, such as an earthquake wave. If a gentle push is exerted horizontally on the earth's crust, to shove it in a given direction, and if the push is maintained steadily for a long time, it is highly probable that the crust willl be displaced over this plastic and viscous lower layer. The crust, in this case, will move as a single unit, the whole crust at the same time. This idea has nothing whatever to do with the much discussed theory of drifting continents, according to which the continents drifted separately, in different directions. [...] Let us visualize briefly the consequences of a displacement of the whole crustal shell of the earth. First, there will be the changes in latitude. Places on the earth's surface will change their distances from the equator. Some will be shifted nearer the equator, and others farther away. Points on opposite sides of the earth will move in opposite directions. For example, if New York should be moved 2,000 miles south, the Indian Ocean, diametrically opposite, would have to be shifted 2,000 miles north. [...] Naturally, climatic changes will be more or less proportionate to changes in latitude, and, because areas on opposite sides of the globe will be moving in opposite directions, some areas will be getting colder while others get hotter; some will be undergoing radical changes of climate, some mild changes of climate, and some no changes at all. Along with the climatic changes, there will be many other consequences of a displacement of the crust. Because of the slight flattening of the earth, there will be stretching and compressional effects to crack and fold the crust, possibly contributing to the formation of mountain ranges. there will be changes in sea level, and many other consequences.

What a gentle, pleasing flavor! It's as if I've taken a bite of powdery snow! Using that special explosion oven, she baked thin sheets of piecrust at a high temperature until they were nice and crispy... layering them together to create a mille-feuille! One bite and they crumble into delicate flakes... which then meld with the elegantly smooth and sweetly rich meringue created by the blades of her chain carving knife! "Excellently done! With every bite I take... ... my mouth fills with flavorful joy. It's so good I can't help but writhe in my seat!" What?! Out of nowhere... my tongue was assaulted with an explosion of thick, full-bodied sweetness? "Ah! There are flakes of chocolate in between the mille-feuille layers?" "I call those my CLUSTER CHOCO CHIPS. I mixed almond powder and mint leaves into chocolate and then chilled it until it was good and hard." Crushing that chocolate with a sledgehammer, I deployed the fragments into the piecrust, set to explode with just enough firepower! Protected by the layers of crust, the chocolate didn't melt during baking and was instead tempered... resulting in chocolate chips that have the crunch and richness of baking chocolate! The more you eat, the more you trip, setting off a chain of explosions... ... as if triggering a cluster bomb! "These are the specs of what I have dubbed... ... my CLUSTER BOMB CAKE!

Domenico, my pen pal and the master of ceremonies, emerges from the kitchen in a cobalt suit bearing a plate of bite-sized snacks: ricotta caramel, smoked hake, baby artichoke with shaved bottarga. The first course lands on the table with a wink from Domenico: raw shrimp, raw sheep, and a shower of wild herbs and flowers- an edible landscape of the island. I raise my fork tentatively, expecting the intensity of a mountain flock, but the sheep is amazingly delicate- somehow lighter than the tiny shrimp beside it. The intensity arrives with the next dish, the calf's liver we bought at the market, transformed from a dense purple lobe into an orb of pâté, coated in crushed hazelnuts, surrounded by fruit from the market this morning. The boneless sea anemones come cloaked in crispy semolina and bobbing atop a sticky potato-parsley puree. Bread is fundamental to the island, and S'Apposentu's frequent carb deliveries prove the point: a hulking basket overflowing with half a dozen housemade varieties from thin, crispy breadsticks to a dense sourdough loaf encased in a dark, gently bitter crust. The last savory course, one of Roberto's signature dishes, is the most stunning of all: ravioli stuffed with suckling pig and bathed in a pecorino fondue. This is modernist cooking at its most magnificent: two fundamental flavors of the island (spit-roasted pig and sheep's-milk cheese) cooked down and refined into a few explosive bites. The kind of dish you build a career on.

The sparkles that came from the firecracker are coffee crumbles!" Originating in Ireland, Crumbles are a baked dessert generally consisting of fruits topped with a crumbly crust. The crumbly mix can be made with rolled oats, crushed almonds and even crushed coffee beans! "How refreshingly tart! I can taste a faint hint of grated tangerine zest. Its fruity flavor pairs exceedingly well with the mildly sweet, clean flavor of the cake. And the hidden piece of the puzzle that ties them both together... ... is this cream that's coating the outer layer of bark!" "Man, you catch on fast! That's right. That's another variation on the cream I used as a filling for the center of the cake. I used that dark cream and thinned it into a brown cream that would melt at room temperature." "Oho! How clever. The crumbles, while sweet and delicious, tend to have a very dry and, well... crumbly texture. Not so with this cake." The brown cream brought just the right amount of moisture to the crumbles... enough to prevent them from being dry but not so much that they lose their crispy crunch. Plus, it firmly ties the flavors of the crumbles and the cake itself into one harmonious whole! Now I see. "That must be the other reason why you chose not to use any dairy or added sugars in the cake! Either would have overwhelmed the coffee crumbles! But you wanted to emphasize their delicate flavors... the light flash and sparkle of their tartness and bitterness!" "Refreshing at first, with a full body... capped off with a flash of invigorating bitterness!" "This is a gem of a dish that will captivate everyone, young and old!

Spring was a long time unfolding. During the last weeks of Lent the weather was clear and frosty. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night it went down to seven below; there was such a crust that carts could go over it where there was no road. There was still snow at Easter. Then suddenly, on Easter Monday, a warm wind began to blow, dark clouds gathered, and for three days and nights warm, heavy rain poured down. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick grey mist gathered, as if concealing the mysteries of the changes taking place in nature. Under the mist waters flowed, ice blocks cracked and moved off, the muddy, foaming streams ran quicker, and on the eve of Krasnaya Gorka the mist scattered, the dark clouds broke up into fleecy white ones, the sky cleared, and real spring unfolded. In the morning the bright sun rose and quickly ate up the thin ice covering the water, and the warm air was all atremble, filled with the vapours of the reviving earth. The old grass and the sprouting needles of new grass greened, the buds on the guelder-rose, the currants and the sticky, spiritous birches swelled, and on the willow, all sprinkled with golden catkins, the flitting, newly hatched bee buzzed. Invisible larks poured trills over the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble, the peewit wept over the hollows and marshes still filled with brown water; high up the cranes and geese flew with their spring honking. Cattle, patchy, moulted in all but a few places, lowed in the meadows, bow-legged lambs played around their bleating, shedding mothers, fleet-footed children ran over the drying paths covered with the prints of bare feet, the merry voices of women with their linen chattered by the pond, and from the yards came the knock of the peasants’ axes, repairing ploughs and harrows. The real spring had come.

As they stand in the muck of the Cypress Swamp, black and thinly crusted, each Step breaking through to release a Smell of Generations of Deaths, something in it, some principle of untaught Mechanicks, tugging at their ankles, voiceless, importunate,— a moment arrives, when one of them smacks his Pate for something other than a Mosquitoe. “Ev’rywhere they’ve sent us,— the Cape, St. Helena, America,— what’s the Element common to all?” “Long Voyages by Sea,” replies Mason, blinking in Exhaustion by now chronick. “Was there anything else?” “Slaves. Ev’ry day at the Cape, we lived with Slavery in our faces,— more of it at St. Helena,— and now here we are again, in another Colony, this time having drawn them a Line between their Slave-Keepers, and their Wage-Payers, as if doom’d to re-encounter thro’ the World this public Secret, this shameful Core. . . . Pretending it to be ever somewhere else, with the Turks, the Russians, the Companies, down there, down where it smells like warm Brine and Gunpowder fumes, they’re murdering and dispossessing thousands untallied, the innocent of the World, passing daily into the Hands of Slave-owners and Torturers, but oh, never in Holland, nor in England, that Garden of Fools . . . ? Christ, Mason.” “Christ, what? What did I do?” “Huz. Didn’t we take the King’s money, as here we’re taking it again? whilst Slaves waited upon us, and we neither one objected, as little as we have here, in certain houses south of the Line,— Where does it end? No matter where in it we go, shall we find all the World Tyrants and Slaves? America was the one place we should not have found them.” “Yet we’re not Slaves, after all,— we’re Hirelings.” “I don’t trust this King, Mason. I don’t think anybody else does, either. Tha saw Lord Ferrers take the Drop at Tyburn. They execute their own. What may they be willing to do to huz?

Elvis Pie Named for the famous crooner’s love of peanut butter and bananas, this decadent dessert is as filling as it is delicious. Serve in small slices, and top with shredded coconut for even more fun.   Difficulty Level: 1 Preparation Time: 30 minutes Yields: 12 servings   Ingredients          8 oz. chocolate cookies          4 Tblsp butter, melted          4 oz. semisweet chocolate chips          2 bananas, sliced thinly          1 cup heavy cream          8 oz. cream cheese          1 cup creamy peanut butter          1 cup powdered sugar          14 oz. sweetened condensed milk          1 tsp vanilla extract          1 tsp lemon juice   1.        In a food processor, grind cookies into fine crumbs. 2.       Combine melted butter and cookie crumbs in a small bowl, and stir with a fork to mix well. 3.       Press mixture into the bottom and 1” up the sides of 9” pie tin. 4.      In a small saucepan over low heat, melt the chocolate chips, stirring often to prevent burning. 5.       Pour melted chocolate over bottom of cookie crust and spread to the edges using a spatula. 6.       Layer banana slices over the melted chocolate. 7.       Place pan in the refrigerator to chill. 8.      Meanwhile, beat heavy cream until stiff peaks form. 9.       Chill in refrigerator until ready to use. 10.    Beat together the cream cheese and peanut butter until light and fluffy. 11.     Stir in powdered sugar until fully incorporated. 12.    Mix in the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract, and lemon juice until filling is smooth. 13.    Fold the whipped cream into the filling mixture. 14.   Pour the filling into the prepared pie pan, smoothing top. 15.    Refrigerate for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight. 16.    Serve chilled.

out of the ground at nearly two times the global average. Throughout the Basin and Range, heat pours out of the crust at rates that average 50 percent higher than typical for the rest of the Earth. This tells us that hot mantle lies close to the surface below the Basin and Range. Since hot rock is inclined to rise buoyantly, it seems likely that the mantle under the Basin and Range is bulging and spreading like a growing mushroom. This hot, rising mantle both stretches the crust and sustains the high elevations. Taking advantage of the thinned and broken crust above, mantle-derived magmas have jetted upward to stain the Basin and Range landscape with innumerable lava flows and volcanic cones. So, an immense—and ongoing—outpouring of mantle heat appears to have made the Basin and Range and kept it standing high. But what made the heat? For that we turn to the Farallon Plate. IN CHAPTER 7 we saw how the subduction of the Farallon Plate

Pizzerias in big cities benefit from Italian natives or descendants thereof, people who understand that real pizza comes from Naples where the crusts are thin and the toppings simple. Samantha’s favorite was Lazio’s, a hole-in-the-wall in Tribeca where the cooks yelled in Italian as they baked the crusts in brick ovens. Like most things in her life these days, Lazio’s was far away. So was the pizza. The only place in Brady to get one to go was a sub shop in a cheap strip mall. Pizza Hut, along with most other national chains, had not penetrated deep into the small towns of Appalachia.

The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.”  ― Charles Darwin     “I

I harken to the call of my heart, embracing the depth that flows liquid ambered and animal soft within my cells. The dark abyss of denial has always been a poor mans trade for the guiding light of emotional wisdom. This crust of mortal skin is baptised with tear streaked holy waters. I rise to my heart with an uncommon courage and wade soul deep. Tissue thin ripples of redemption drift across the pain towards my future self, bathing me in hope. I rise and step closer to all that I AM. Kristin Granger

I harken to the call of my heart, embracing the depth that flows liquid ambered and animal soft within my cells. The dark abyss of denial has always been a poor mans trade for the guiding light of emotional wisdom. This crust of mortal skin is baptised with tear streaked holy waters. I rise to my heart with an uncommon courage and wade soul deep. Tissue thin ripples of redemption drift across the pain towards my future self, bathing me in hope. I rise and step closer to all that I AM.

I have vivid memories of going to Pizza Hut and enjoying a thin crust pizza and a jug of Pepsi, and, getting high stacks of buttermilk pancakes with syrup.

Your life is a patchwork of projected concepts; a thin conceptual crust around an unfathomable core of the amorphous substance of existence.

But when you look at that white patch,” he said, “I want you to imagine something else. Imagine most of Yellowstone Park itself is that white patch. There’s a real thin crust covering hell itself, which is trying to boil over. That wants to boil over. And someday, it will. It’s known as the Yellowstone Caldera. In fact, darlin’, when it blows it’ll take two million people with it. It’s blown a few times through history, and we’re sixty thousand years overdue.

There’s a little canyon in the park where so much methane gas is produced naturally out of the ground that any living thing that wanders into it will die within minutes. The floor of the canyon is covered in elk and bison bones, and maybe even some old Indian bones.” He’d softened his voice and she found it oddly rhythmic. She felt a chill ripple through her. “But when you look at that white patch,” he said, “I want you to imagine something else. Imagine most of Yellowstone Park itself is that white patch. There’s a real thin crust covering hell itself, which is trying to boil over. That wants to boil over. And someday, it will. It’s known as the Yellowstone Caldera. In fact, darlin’, when it blows it’ll take two million people with it. It’s blown a few times through history, and we’re sixty thousand years overdue.

Onion Soup Gratinée YIELD: 4 SERVINGS ONE OF MY greatest treats when working in Paris was to go with my fellow chefs and commis to les Halles, the big market of Paris that spreads through many streets of the Châtelet neighborhood. The excitement in the streets and cafés started a little before 3:00 A.M. and ended around 7:00 or 8:00 A.M. Our nocturnal forays would, more often than not, finish at Le Pied de Cochon (The Pig’s Foot), the quintessential night brasserie of les Halles. There, large, vociferous butchers in bloody aprons would rub shoulders with tuxedoed and elegantly evening-gowned Parisians stopping by for late-night Champagne and a meal after the opera or the theater. The restaurant was famous for its onion-cheese gratinée; it was one of the best in Paris, and hundreds of bowls of it were served every night. For this recipe, you will need four onion soup bowls, each with a capacity of about 12 ounces and, preferably, with a lip or rim around the edge that the cheese topping will stick to as it melts to form a beautiful crust on top of the soup. 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 3 onions (about 12 ounces), cut into thin slices About 7 cups good-quality chicken stock, or a mixture of chicken and beef stock About ½ teaspoon salt, more or less, depending on the saltiness of the stock ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 16 slices of baguette, each cut about ⅜ inch thick About 3 cups grated Swiss cheese, preferably Gruyère, Comté, or Emmenthaler (about 10 ounces) Melt the butter in a saucepan, and sauté the sliced onions in the butter over medium to high heat for about 8 minutes, or until lightly browned. Add the stock, salt, and pepper, and boil gently for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Arrange the bread slices in a single layer on a tray, and bake them for 8 to 10 minutes, or until they are nicely browned. Divide the toast among the bowls, and sprinkle ¼ cup of cheese into each bowl. When the stock and onions have cooked for 15 minutes, pour the soup into the bowls, filling each to the top. Sprinkle on the remainder of the cheese, dividing it among the bowls and taking care not to push it down into the liquid. Press the cheese around the rim or lip of the bowls, so it adheres there as it cooks and the crust does not fall into the liquid. Arrange the soup bowls on a baking sheet, and bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until a glorious brown, rich crust has developed on top. Serve hot right out of the oven.

........But people don't on the whole fart raucously in Mozart [concerts]. So I suppose a few vestiges of the thin crust of civilization which prevents our descent into utter barbarism are just about holding." ~Vigilance, by Julian Barnes

We walk on this thin crust above this raging space of life and matter in all its vibrancy and fury, and we know nothing of it.

Four hours later, Gus, Carmen, and Oliver shared a celebratory bottle to toast the best meal they had ever cooked on the fly: plates of paella-inspired risotto with clams, salt-crusted trout with fennel, thinly sliced Wagyu beef with thyme butter, and a trio of cream puffs flavored with ginger, green tea, and chocolate-chili, among other dishes.

Majid and Henry sat on the floor, staring at each other in the dazed amazement that only survivors know, where every detail is newly crisp and each fresh moment is like a crust of ice on a pond, a thin tangible layer between life and death.

I ordered a salad with smoked salmon. I know that doesn't sound like a particularly decadent repast, but it is. That's because the French long ago mastered the art of serving salad so it doesn't feel like a punishment for something. There are always a few caramel-crusted potatoes on your salade niçoise, or a plump chicken liver or two bedded down in a nest of lamb's lettuce. A lot of this has to do with what is called a tartine- a large thin slice of country bread (Poilâne if you're lucky) topped with anything from melted goat cheese to shrimp and avocado. My lunch arrived, a well-worn wooden planche heaped with pillowy green lettuce, folded in a creamy, cloudy, mustardy vinaigrette. Balanced on top where three half slices of pain Poilâne, spread with the merest millimeter of butter, topped with coral folds of salmon.

Their close grazing, in concert with that of sheep, reduced the short sward to a thin crust of roots over sand. Where the grazing was worst, sand blew into drifts and moved across the land.

that was the moment that I realized that my friendships were like the thin crust on a frozen lake, a barrier blocking the way to anything deeper.

The jostling of ghosts and soon-to-be-ghosts, yourself included. We think about this, you and I, in private and without telling each other. With morbid secrecy I study your old hand with my younger eye, knowing that soon it will be a lifeless one; it rests on the kitchen table, then fiddles with your penknife; your knuckles and finger joints are a collection of small boulders now, almost bursting through the tissue thin, speckled skin. Your whole body has become geological. Stones and flinty bones. Crags. Hills. Furrows. Fissures. Your nails ridged and calciferous. The frosted forest of your mouth. Breath a mist. Skin starting to resemble a dried lake crust. And ebbing slowly as a pebble, molecule by molecule ... I am now the spy. Spying. Thinking it. And then your hand lies quite still for a moment, and sadness overwhelms me

To understand how the first tree appeared on Earth, we must look back more than 3 billion years to Earth’s cooling off and changing from a molten sphere to one that had a solid crust. As it cooled, a thin layer of granite formed over the fiery interior; the hot inner mass contracted; ridges were thrust upward to form mountains; molten lava surged up through cracks, and boiling water rose to the surface. As hot springs that even now gush up out of the Earth show, this process is still going on; geysers and active volcanoes testify to the searing heat that prevails far inside the earth. Scientists believe the water in our oceans today was first released by volcanic action as a gas, which formed the primeval atmosphere. When this vapor reached extremely high altitudes, it condensed into water and fell Earthward. For a long time, however, because the atmospheric temperature was so hot, it resumed its gaseous form before reaching the planet, but eventually, the surface cooled enough so that water began accumulating in liquid form. And then, for literally millions and millions of years, it must have rained continuously, the water sweeping minerals down from the rocks and filling the depressions in the Earth’s face. For

We shared deep passions. John Hughes movies, the New Romantics, the Chicago Bears. We both loved chicken-flavor Ramen and hated the shrimp flavor. We liked thin-crust pizza over deep dish, and wine over beer, and gin over vodka.

Like a river that seems frozen solid, but flows freely below its thin crust of surface ice, the old eugenics has gone underground but continues to kill those caught in its current.

It was a monumental 'croquembouche,' a classically French, intricately crafted tower of individual profiteroles, each thinly crusted with hard-crack sugar, filled with pastry cream, bound together with luscious, glistening strands of caramel and chocolate into a conical, colorful Christmas-tree shape that rose proudly high over the heads of the delighted newlyweds. 'Chef de Patisserie' Pettibone had covered his 'piece montee' with a lustrous white-chocolate marzipan roses and dusted ever so lightly in twenty-four-karat gold.

They sit for a long time, hidden away in the small crater. Holding each other like refugees from a storm… Beneath Ora’s body are the cool stone and the whole mountain, enormous and solid and infinite. She thinks: How thin is the crust of the earth

Snow is a changing, fragile substance, which accumulates in layers: a deep puffy storm, followed by an inch of rain. Wind crust followed by cold light flakes. Avalanches are a combination of three factors: a sliding surface, a slope steep enough to slide, and a trigger. Here in Utah—and in other high, dry parts of the Rockies—more often than not, there’s a deep unbonded layer in that snowpack that could always slide, given a trigger. It seems to happen the same way almost every season. The first thin snowfall covers the mountains in a crystalized layer of sugar and anticipation. Then it stops, like climatic clockwork, for a few weeks. That layer of unbonded snow is exposed to the air, which sucks out moisture, creating slippery, faceted snow crystals called depth hoar. It forms a perfect sliding surface. When the snow starts in earnest, that surface, which avalanche forecasters call a persistent weak layer, is at the very bottom, slick and unbonded, ready to slide. That’s one of the constant hazards of skiing, you always know it’s down there. Just how big it could break is a question of what comes in on top of it.

That was the worst of it. The sky didn’t care. The Earth went on turning through an endlessness of dark and silence, and what happened in the thin scum seething over its crust didn’t matter.

I Tonight my father steps drunk into the snare, is lifted in his fur coat like a small bear who upside down feels only the weight of its tongue. Alone in moonlight he circles for hours on the palms of his hands, finds by touch, the green bottle of wine upright in snow. Already his eyes are small pockets of ice a paw has pushed through. And these are the tracks he follows into the first few moments of sleep, into a life now hanging by one heel among the birches. This is the world gone white at the edges of maps where even wolves disappear in silence, where my father's bewildered ear twists its own deaf center, calling home. II By morning he is still alive, this noose a last foothold turning his body slowly in a light snow. He wakes like a man whose skin has swallowed the cold, thin air wintering in the heart of a stone. Here, he dreams of dragging a sled of pelts across a field. But always his one caught leg keeps falling behind like en exhausted animal too heavy to move on the crust. There is sweat and a stiff wind carving a trail in his back, snow falling harder in every direction but time. III At last he thinks of a woman undressing below him in the snow. Her skin is blue, her legs crossed and long. When he reaches down darkness falls all the way from his chest. Inside one finger he has written his name in blood. Now he must bed down for good in the thought of this one woman cold and naked who begins to stir openly in her perfect camouflage like absence entering the eye of this storm.

About 12 medium-to-large leeks (approximately 3 pounds), green parts trimmed off, white part split, thoroughly rinsed, and sliced thinly into rounds (or 2 pounds of onions or scallions—try a mixture of sweet onions such as Vidalia, Walla Walla, or Texas Sweet with some big, strongly flavored yellow Spanish varieties). 2 cups mascarpone 1 teaspoon just-grated nutmeg 1 teaspoon just-cracked pepper 1½ teaspoons fine sea salt ½ cup grappa or vodka ⅔ cup grated Parmesan cheese 1 tablespoon unsalted butter Place the prepped leeks into a large mixing bowl; in a smaller bowl combine all the remaining ingredients except the Parmesan and the butter, and mix well. Scrape the mascarpone mixture into the bowl with the leeks and, using two forks, evenly coat the leeks with the mixture. Spoon the leeks into a buttered oval oven dish 12 to 14 inches long, spreading the mixture evenly, or into six individual buttered oval dishes. Scatter the Parmesan over all, and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until a deep golden crust forms; 10 minutes less for smaller gratins. Yield: 6 Servings Tagliatelle con Salsa di Noci Arrostite Fresh

Good fried chicken was remarkably hard to come by in New York, but this---tender, with just enough crust-only bits protruding, skin peeling easily away from the meat---this was good. The fries were thin and still hot, some with crunch, some with bite, lightly sprinkled with the salt blend they'd always used. The biscuits were fresh and flaky, and the salad's iceberg lettuce was dressed in Mimi's trademark sweet oil dressing---a closely guarded (but really very simple, and once very common) recipe.

I turned to the plates and scooped out the shepherd's pie. As I broke through the thin crust on the mashed potatoes, the most amazing aroma enveloped me. A similar version was one of Mom's favorites; it was one dish she never burned, never oversalted, and always made into a celebration. Jane and I used to fight over seconds. But tonight it was mine---and it was better than Mom's. I always added a bunch of oregano and cinnamon to the tomato base to give it extra richness. And for this pie I'd used more vegetables, mincing them super fine, and used a bit of grass-fed ground beef rather than relying exclusively on the lamb---the first naturally thickened the base, and the second softened the taste.

Tag arrived with the food. The Blue Door was known for using as much local food as possible. Tag had brought thin-crust gourmet pizzas with fresh mozzarella cheese, tomatoes they grew behind the restaurant, garlic from Gilroy, artichoke hearts from Castorville and olives from Paso Robles. I knew the vegetables in the chopped salad came from a local farmer’s market that sold produce grown in the Salinas Valley and the dressing was made with olive oil from a boutique grower in Carmel Valley. He’d brought a selection of fruit—raspberries from Watsonville, strawberries from Oxnard, grapes from Delano—and a selection of cheeses from a small producer in Point Reyes Station.

Before coming to the United States, I knew what others know: that the cruelty of its borders was only a thin crust, and that on the other side a possible life was waiting. I understood, some time after, that once you stay here long enough, you begin to remember the place where you orignally came from the way a backyard might look from a high window in the deep of winter: a skeleton of the world, a tract of abandonment, objects dead and obsolete.

It's an old New England style pie. You make a single baked crust. Then pour the crust full of berries to measure them and set aside. You put about a third as many more berries in a pan, with a quarter cup of water and boil a sauce up, with a half cup of sugar or a bit more, and a maybe a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg,” Jay told him. The cook nodded like he had been wondering about that last. “You add a bit of water if you need to thin the sauce, and then you dump in the raw berries and mix it up gently, so you don't bust up all the berries, and pour it in the shell to chill. The sauce blanches the berries just a bit, and they firm it up. My aunt would put a bit of gelatin in the sauce, but my mom didn't. That's all. It's pretty simple,” Jay said.

At the centre of the tent rests three thrones- two large and one small. They seem to be sculptures of ice, with flowers and leaves frozen inside them. The large thrones are unoccupied, but a blue-skinned girl sits on the small one, a crown of icicles on her head and a golden bridle around her mouth and throat. She looks to be only a year or two older than Oak and is dressed in a column of grey silk. Her gaze is on her fingers, which move restlessly against one another. Her nails are bitten short and crusted with a thin rime of blood.

I loved these little teasers before a meal, things I didn't have to order but just came to me like gifts from heaven. These amuse-bouches actually looked like little gifts; they were small pouches of dough that twisted at the top and came to a gleaming golden-brown ruffle. They actually looked kind of familiar. "These were on Chef Supreme!" I said. I took a quick picture. "I wonder if they've got a sauerkraut and potato filling, like the ones Chef Sadie made on the show." I bit into it. The wrapper crunched and then relaxed into a nice doughy chew, almost like a very thin pizza crust. Sure enough, the interior was plush and buttery with a smooth potato puree but also zingy with fermented cabbage, the sour shreds of leaf providing a perfect contrast to the richness of the potatoes and the crust. "Remember when I told you there was no such thing as too much potato?" A mustard seed popped between my teeth, spicy. I finished with the ruffle on top, brown and shatteringly crunchy. "It's still true.

I had my feast out on the kitchen table. Draped over beds of jasmine rice, thin pork chops seasoned with lemongrass showcased charred stripes from the grill. Cold summer rolls with translucent rice paper glimmered with riotous colors from the mint leaves, vermicelli, and shrimp filling. Emerald coriander leaves peeked out amid slices of barbecued pork, in golden, crusty baguette sandwiches called banh mi. I placed a few pieces of the pork onto a plate for the cat. I bit into the cold rolls first. The thin wrapper yielded to my teeth, giving way to the crunchy pickled vegetables and plump shrimp underneath. The mint leaf inside complemented the sweet sauce with crushed peanuts. The two small rolls vanished into my belly. I attacked the banh mi next. The crisp crust highlighted the varying textures of its filling: crisp from the pickled radish and carrots, textures sang on my tongue.

I thought about beautiful bodies like Vera’s, if she were whole: white bones that shine under the light in forgotten graves, thin bones that sound like little party bells when they hit against each other, frolicking in the fields, doing dances of death. He has nothing to do with the ethereal beauty of those naked bones: his are covered with layers of fat and boredom. Vera and I will be beautiful and light, nocturnal and earthy; beautiful, the crusts of earth enfolding us. Hollow, dancing skeletons. Vera and I—no flesh over our bones.

The first frost laid down a thin wafer-like crust of crystalline wonder on a waiting world. Instantly melting to the slightest touch, it heralded the seasons turning in a celebration of ‘what was’ in an anticipation of what ‘was to come’. For you see, God sends the frost of fall ahead of the snows of winter so that nature might be readied for the flowers of spring. And it is the anticipation of each that makes them fresh every time they arrive.

Four & Twenty is a seasonal bakeshop- it is Brooklyn, after all, where seasonal, local, and sustainable are the altars at which all foodies worship. The sisters aren't opposed to experimenting with off-season or foraged ingredients but prefer following the popular credo that just so happened to also be their grandma's philosophy: "It just feels better," Emily explains. "Local is so much better and tastier." While they constantly develop new recipes- honey rosemary shoofly, chocolate bourbon mint, strawberry kefir lime- there is one fan favorite that the Elsens make year round: the salted caramel apple pie. In a show of romanticism, Andrew and I decided to split a slice. Apple pie takes many forms: chunky fruit or dainty slices, oozing with juices, laden with spices, crumbly tops, and moist middles. Without even taking a bite, I knew this was going to be special. The thinly sliced apple rings- visible from the side but obscured from above by thick, sugar-dusted latticework- were densely stacked. Along with a commitment to seasonal fruit and local ingredients, the sisters are hell-bent on having an all-butter crust. "A good crust is a mark of someone who's paid a lot of attention and who cares about what they're making," Emily insists. They don't use Crisco or lard, no margarine or hot oil- just pure butter with a titch of apple cider vinegar to add a little tang, tenderness, and the right flake. Andrew let me take the first bite. The pie had a perfect amount of give. It was soft and juicy, but not soggy (the downfall of promising slices in lesser hands). Neither sweet nor tart, the salted caramel enrobed the fruit and added a note of savoriness. As promised, the crust was killer.

There are two ways to look at human history, I have concluded. One way is to focus on the wars and violence, the squalor, the pain and tragedy and death. From such a point of view, Easter seems a fairy-tale exception, a stunning contradiction in the name of God. That gives some solace, although I confess that when my friends died, grief was so overpowering that any hope in an after-life seemed somehow thin and insubstantial. There is another way to look at the world. If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality. Hope then flows like lava beneath the crust of daily life.

Look at the boy from Cambridge, Massachusetts, always too thin, now so tired he can barely move. He's uninjured, but that doesn't matter: he's still wounded. He holds the body of his sister, and if she's alive, it's only barely, survival measured by the thinnest of margins. His clothing is stained with her blood. His hands ache with splinters and with their own stillness, as if through motion he might have redeemed her and, by redeeming her, redeemed himself. Look at the girl from Palo Alto, California, so motionless that it's clear how close she is to the transition from person to past. She is crumpled and cast-aside, exhausted from her own efforts to become something more than a consequence. The wound in her shoulder has crusted over; the bleeding has stopped. That doesn't matter. There was more than enough damage done to take her to the edge, and over, into what waits beyond. She is ready to return to the Up-and-Under via the graveyard path. When she goes, she knows she will not go alone.

The pizza was thin and biscuity – different from the thick crusts she enjoyed in Bombay. Iqbal’s Aberdeen Angus steak looked almost alive, raw and juicy as he sliced it. Neither had room for dessert, and once they had wiped their plates clean, they ambled back to the Murphys’ in a happy stupor. ‘Right then, Fiza Sahiba. I’ll climb my lonely tower in desperate need of rescuing. See ya,’ Iqbal said, giving her a quick hug. ‘You smell of … steak,’ Fiza said. ‘Yes. I’m manly that way,’ Iqbal replied, walking towards the wooden staircase.

Abe's Ass-Kickin' Apple Pie (written in pencil on a much-stained sheet of paper with MARION CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE across the top) 8 cups apples 1⁄4 cup butter 1⁄2 cup brown sugar 1⁄4 cup granulated sugar 21⁄2 Tb flour 11⁄2 tsp cinnamon pinch salt 1 Tb lemon juice 1 tsp vanilla Cut apples into thin slices. Cook in large pan with 1⁄2 cup water. While cooking, add butter. Mix sugars, flour, cinnamon, and salt in bowl. After apples are tender, add sugar mix, lemon juice, and vanilla to apples. Allow mix to simmer 10–12 minutes. Remove from stove and allow apples to cool. Once cool, place in pie crust. Be sure to slit holes in top crust. Sprinkle top with sugar if desired or mix 1 egg with 2 tablespoons water and brush over top crust. Also can add raisins to apple mix or mayhap nuts. Cook in oven 425 degrees for approx fifty minutes.

She hung up. Camp Arifjan had served pizza as a choice at almost every meal, but the sauce tasted like turned ketchup and the dough had the consistency of toothpaste. Since she’d been home, she craved only thin-crust pizza and nobody did that better than Best of Everything. When

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

Luz studied the mountains ahead, watched the sunset coloring them as the things gone from them: lilac, plum, lavender, orchid, mulberry, violet. Pomegranate, one of the last to go. John Muir had written how when we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. Above those spoilt purple mountains materialized a glowing wedge of light, whiter than the sun, thin, blurred, and radiant. Snow, Luz thought, unable to stop herself. She’d seen snow only once, from a train skirting the Italian Alps, but she had never touched it and already she was zigging up there, ramming her fingers into the cool blue bank until they stung, crunching the puffs of sparkling crystals in her teeth, falling backward to make angels in the airy drifts. But there was nothing cool or blue or airy about this calcium-colored crust capping the range. It throbbed with heat, glowed radioactive with light. Luz said, “What is that?” just as the answer came to her. Ray said it. “The dune sea. The Amargosa.” “It’s that close?” They were barely beyond the city. Ray shook his head. “It’s that big.” This knocked Luz off balance: The dune was not atop the empurpled range before them but beyond it, beyond it by miles and miles. The white was not a rind of ice, not a snowcap, but sand piling up inland where the Mojave had been. They watched this sandsnow mirage, hypnotized by fertilizer dust and saline particulate and the pulverized bones of ancient sea creatures, though they did not know it. Did not know but felt this magnetic incandescence working the way the moon did, tugging at the iron in their blood. Knew only that it left them not breathless but with their breaths exactly synchronized. Ray reached for Luz, took her hand as though he’d never before touched her. They went on, silently transfixed by the immaculate flaxen range looming before them.

A regiment of servants brought out silver platters and trays of champagne, and the guests settled in their chairs to enjoy the repast. They were given individual servings of goose dressed with cream and herbs and covered with a steaming golden crust... bowls of melons and grapes, boiled quail eggs scattered lavishly on crisp green salad, baskets of hot muffins, toast and scones, flitches of fried smoked bacon... plates of thinly sliced beefsteak, the pink strips littered with fragrant shavings of truffle. Three wedding cakes were brought out, thickly iced and stuffed with fruit.

The oppressive heat and humidity of this place hadn’t changed since that first visit. As Lidia stepped inside after Rigelus, it once again pushed with damp fingers on her face, her neck. The hall stretched ahead, the one thousand sunken tubs in the stone floor shining with pale light that illuminated the bodies floating within. Masks and tubes and machines hummed and hissed; salt crusted the stones between the tanks, some sections piled thick with it. And before the machines, already bowing at the waist to Rigelus … A withered humanoid form, veiled and dressed in gray robes, the material gauzy enough to reveal the bony body beneath, stood at the massive desk at the entrance of the room. The Mistress of the Mystics. If she had a name, Lidia had never heard it uttered. Above her veiled head, a hologram of images spun, stars and planets whizzing by. Every constellation and galaxy the mystics now searched for Bryce Quinlan. How many corners of the universe remained? That wasn’t Lidia’s concern—not today. Not as Rigelus said, “I have need of Irithys.” The mistress lifted her head, but her body remained stooped with age, so thin the knobs of her spine jutted from beneath her gauzy robe. “The queen has been sullen, Your Brilliance. I fear she will not be amenable to your requests.

She closed her eyes, imagining her favorite pizza from Market Street Pizza. She could almost smell it. She heard Rara gasp, then she actually COULD smell it. Mom’s eyes flew open and the first thing she noticed was that her hunger bar was half empty—or was it half full? The second thing she noticed was a family size, thin crust pizza covered in jalapenos and pineapple, steaming on the table in front of her. “What?” In a daze, she lifted a piece up, the ooey gooey cheese leaving a string connected to the other pieces, and took a bite.  “It’s so good!” She almost felt like crying. “How did you DO that?