“England, the land of seventeen religions and three sauces.”
I also like the way that Julia Child refers to Wonder bread as, “Kleenex.”
In Chinese, a worthless person is called a, “rice bucket.”
A famous French author similarly called such people; “Mere passageways for food.”
Charles de Gaulle was being interviewed about the difficulties of reconstructing post-war France. He retorted something like, “How do you expect me to govern a country that has two hundred and fifty different kinds of cheese!”
An old French saying:
"People who brag about their ancestors are like potatoes,
the best part is underground."
So, let’s hear your favorite culinary quotes.
“Laughter is brightest where food is best.” - Irish Proverb
“What you eat and drink is 50 percent of life.” - Gérard Depardieu
Question to chef, Jamie Oliver: “Why is it called Sheila’s Bake? Who was Sheila?”
Jamie Oliver: “She was a girl I used to know but that has absolutely nothing to do with this recipe.”
“I only use fresh stale bread” - Jamie Oliver
“I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.” - Mae West
“You don’t sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting needles.” - Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
“Never eat more than you can lift.” - Miss Piggy
“Don’t be a fuddy-duddy with your hollandaise. Be bold, dunk your pretzels in it!” - Miss Piggy
“I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded. Dead.” - Woody Allen
“My wife dresses to kill…she cooks the same way.” - Henry Youngman
“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four…unless there are three other people.” - Orson Welles
“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” - Sophia Loren
From recipe for ‘Myhee Kebab’, Indian Domestic Economy & Cookery (19th c)
"take some onions and fry in ghee; cut the green ginger thin; clean the raisins well, take a little ground curry stuff and some tyre; mix all these well together with the meat and boghar the whole thing.’
Now what in God’s clean earth does ‘boghar’ mean??:dubious:
Marge Simpson: In England Bocchulism is Steak and Kidney Pie.
Homer Simpson: Doughnuts. Is there anything they can’t do?
Terry Pratchett (Men at Arms): Sham Harga had run a succesful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits.
If only it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate - Diogenes the Cynic (200 BC)
Great food is like great sex - the more you have the more you want. - Gael Greene
To eat is human, to digest divine. - Mark Twain
Seeing is deceiving. It’s eating that’s believing. - James Thurber
Sauerkraut and bacon drive all care away. - Pennsylvania German proverb
Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue. - Plato, Laws 360 BC
Horsemeat is delicious when you are in the condition to appreciate it … and as to rat meat, it approaches in delicacy the taste of roast pig. - Auguste Escoffier
I got all these from a book called *Consuming Passions{/I] by Jonathon Green (1985), ISBN 0-7221-4089-4.
Actually, from what I’ve heard, the now (in)famous “Let them eat cake!” quotation of Marie Antoinette’s is entirely out of context.
During the reign of the Louis XVI, famine was pretty widespread. In order to ameliorate concerns of the court while they toured the countryside, false fronts would be placed along the royal entourage’s route. In front of these pretty looking cardboard sham houses would be placed a few well fed peasants for the passing royals to peek at from their carriage windows.
At one stop, some audacious upstart broke ranks and dashed up to the carriage shouting, “Our lady, the people, they have no bread to eat!” Thinking that the bakers had merely produced an insufficient quantity of loaves that day, Marie Antoinette innocently replied; [Well], “Let them eat cake [instead].” Sadly, she lost her head just as quickly as the outraged peasantry did.
From Ask Yahoo (sorry):
We’re not entirely sure who said “Let them eat cake,” but we can tell you that it wasn’t Marie Antoinette. This flippant phrase about consuming pastry is commonly attributed to the frivolous queen in the days leading up to the French Revolution. Supposedly, she spoke these words upon hearing how the peasantry had no bread to eat. But biographers and historians have found no evidence that Marie uttered these words or anything like them.
Our old pal Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope explains the quotation was first written by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Confessions. Actually, Rousseau wrote “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” which essentially means “let them eat a type of egg-based bread” (not quite cake, but still a bit extravagant). Rousseau claimed that “a great princess” told the peasants to eat cake/brioche when she heard they had no bread.
But Rousseau wrote this in early 1766, when Marie Antoinette was only 10 years old, still living in her native Austria and not yet married to King Louis XVI. So it’s highly unlikely that Marie uttered the pompous phrase. Perhaps Rousseau invented them to illustrate the divide between royalty and the poor – which is certainly how the phrase has been used ever since.
However, “Let them eat brioche” isn’t quite as cold a sentiment as you might imagine. At the time, French law required bakers to sell fancy breads at the same low price as the plain breads if they ran out of the latter. The goal was to prevent bakers from making very little cheap bread and then profiting off the fancy, expensive bread. Whoever really said “Let them eat brioche” may have meant that the bakery laws should be enforced so the poor could eat the fancy bread if there wasn’t enough plain bread to go around.
A recent biographer claims that “Let them eat cake” was actually spoken by Marie-Therese, wife of France’s Louis XIV, 100 years before Marie Antoinette, but we couldn’t find anything online to corroborate this. Ultimately, we will probably never know who uttered this infamous phrase.
I’ve just developed a desire for some carrot cake.
“Your butcher will be much more interested in serving you well if you show interest in learning about his meat.”
–Julia Child
“Save the liver!”
–John Belushi
