Some favorites:
“The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.” —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang’s my arm.
—Robert Burns, “Address to a Haggis” [Recited once at top of my lungs to a group in Scotland; thunderous applause from the waitstaff.
“When from a long distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised for a long time, like souls, ready to remind us...” —Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
“I’m Frank Thompson, all the way from ‘down east.’ I’ve been through the mill, ground, and bolted, and come out a regular-built down-east johnny-cake, when it’s hot, damned good; but when it’s cold, damned sour and indigestible — and you’ll find me so.” —Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“Well loved he garleek, oynons, and eek lekes. And for to drinken strong wyn, reed as blood.” —Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
“And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.” —John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Three nickels will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat. An old Jewish saying, according to Thomas Pellechia in his lovely little book on garlic, wine and olive oil.
“Huge lemons, cut in slices, would sink like setting suns into the dusky sea, softly illuminating it with their radiating membranes, and its clear, smooth surface aquiver from the rising bitter essence.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
“…and every Saturday we’d get a case of beer and fry up some fish. We’d fry it in meal and egg batter, you know, and when it was all brown and crisp — not hard, though — we’d break open that cold beer…” Marie’s eyes went soft as the memory of just such a meal sometime, somewhere transfixed her. —Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
I've got many more, but like these in particular because most came from a PBS special which has some great images; go to
http://www.pbs.org/opb/meaningoffood/fo ... ature/p12/
