“No doubt thou was at first designed
To suit the palates o’ mankind;
Yet as I ponder now I find,
Thy fame is gone:
Wee dainty dish thou art behind
With every one.”
– William Wright (known as Bill o’th’ Hoyles, from the poem Ode to a Herring)
Category: Asides
Yiddish Proverb
“Better one friend with a dish of food than a hundred with a sigh.”
– Yiddish Proverb
Virgina Woolfe Quote
“One cannot think well, love well, or sleep well if one has not dined well.”
– Virgina Woolfe
Jalal al-Din Rumi Quote
“If wheat springs from my dust when I am dead…
And from the grain that grows there you bake your bread.
What drunkenness will rise and overthrow,
with frenzied love, the baker and his dough,
it’s a tipsy song his ovens sing!”
– Jalal al-Din Rumi
Ikkyu Quote
“Lots of arms, just like Kannon the goddess;
Sacrificed for me, garnished with citrus.
Revere it so!
The taste of the sea, just heavenly!
Sorry Buddha, this is one precept I can’t keep.”
– Ikkyu (Zen master, on the subject of octopus)