Sometimes the ways that people follow to get to this blog are intriguing and mysterious indeed. Here are some search terms that caught my attention…

No.	Search term or question	my comment
1	how to get rikkis’ clothes	you can’t
2	reading doesn’t hold my attention	it holds mine
3	throw whole book into a fire	never done that before, but I have heard of a few people who did
4	Bookmooch problems	you don’t say!
5	213	213 what? Room? Floor? Books? What?
6	Brett Ashley a bitch the sun also rises	Exactly!
7	abc meme underwear	There is a meme about underwear? Whereabout?
8	crochet a netbook	can you do that?
9	what to do next time	I don’t know either
10	Lentil Pie	You wouldn’t believe how many people search for lentil pie! Here it is.
11	bibliography in farmville by george orwell	This very much reminds me of bookstorebingo. “Farmville” indeed!
12	something written on wallpaper	like what?
13	rikki and his lovers	I don’t object to the lovers, but I do object to the “his”!

 

To see what other Thursday 13ers write about today, visit Thursday 13.

Today I am combining Thursday 13 with Paris in July and found thirteen quotes about Paris.

Image by Dimitri B from flickr.com

• If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast. ~Ernest Hemingway
• America is my country and Paris is my hometown. ~Gertrude Stein
• When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise. ~Henry Miller
• In Paris they simply stared at me when I spoke to them in French. I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language. ~Mark Twain
• Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris. ~Oscar Wilde
• The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.  ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
• [Paris] is dirty. It has pigeons and black yards. The people have white skin. ~Albert Camus
• To have one’s mother-in-law in the country when one lives in Paris, and vice versa, is one of those strokes of luck that one encounters only too rarely. ~Honoré de Balzac
• Nowhere is one more alone than in Paris … and yet surrounded by crowds. Nowhere is one more likely to incur greater ridicule. And no visit is more essential.  ~Marguerite Duras
• Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant. ~Honoré de Balzac
• To err is human. To loaf is Parisian. ~Victor Hugo
• …the whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music…it is worth anyone’s while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in Everything. ~James Thurber
• Paris is the only city where you can step out of a railway station —and see, the Seine with its bridges and bookstalls, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the beginning of the Champs Elysees—what other city offers as much as you leave a train? ~Margaret Anderson

 

To see what other Thursday 13ers write about today, visit Thursday 13.

 

I felt like looking around for quotes about tattoos today. My selection:

• I always look for a woman who has a tattoo.  I see a woman with a tattoo, and I’m thinking, okay, here’s a gal who’s capable of making a decision she’ll regret in the future.  ~Richard Jeni
• Beauty is skin deep.  A tattoo goes all the way to the bone.  ~Vince Hemingson
• The universality of tattooing is a curious subject for speculation.  ~James Cook, 1779
• Not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves.  ~Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
• A man without tattoos is invisible to the Gods. ~Iban Proverb
• It’s a good thing they hurt, otherwise every pussy in the world would have one. ~Jack Rudy
• The only difference between a tattooed person and a person who isn’t tattooed is that a tattooed person doesn’t care if you’re tattooed or not. ~Sign often seen in tattoo shops
• Reason #7 For Not Getting a Tattoo: People will know you are running your own life, instead of listening to them! ~ Sailor Jerry Collins, tattoo artist
• Every officer in the British army should be tattooed with his regimental crest. Not only does this encourage esprit de corps but also assists in the identification of casualties. ~Field Marshal Earl Roberts
• Tattooing is about personalizing the body, making it a true home and fit temple for the spirit that dwells inside it. ~Michelle Delio
• Getting a tattoo should hurt. It’s a rite of passage. ~Jenna Jameson
• A tattoo is an affirmation: that this body is yours to have and to enjoy while you’re here. Nobody else can control what you do with it. ~Don Ed Hardy

And the last word goes to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe…

• Painting and tattooing the body is a return to animalism.

 

To see what other Thursday 13ers write about today, visit Thursday 13.

 

Image of tattoo arts festival in Pattaya, Thailand by Binder.donedat at flickr

Today I am continuing my indulgence T13 with facts about chocolate.

1. There are three major types of cacao: Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario.
2. Cocoa beans were already used by the Mayans in the 7th century. They made a religious tonic drink they called “Xocoatl”.
3. In the 13th century cacao beans were a unit of currency in central America.
4. There even were counterfeit beans carved out of clay.
5. In 1819 the first chocolate bar in history was created by Francois Louis Cailler in Switzerland.
6. The countries with the biggest cacao production is Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia.
7. After roasting the cacao beans and removing their outer shell they are ground and heated up. By heating up the cacao fat (cacao butter) melts and turns the cacao into a cacao liquor.
8. Unsweetened chocolate only contains 0-2% sugars, whereas semi-sweet one contains between 45-65%.
9. However, even unsweetened chocolate has a lot of calories due to the large amount of fat  in it.
10. Chocolate increases the level of serotonine in the brain, so it might be helpful against depression and stress.
11. The main types of chocolate are: White chocolate, milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, bittersweet chocolate and unsweetened chocolate.
12. When baking do not use chocolate chips to replace other types of chocolate. They contain less cacao butter and therefore won’t melt well.
13. Chocolate absorbs other odors, so keep it in a dark, cool, dry place away from strong-smelling items. 

 

And now a little helpful tip to feel good about yourself in all sorts of ways:

Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you’ll get one thing done.

To see what other Thursday 13ers write about today, visit Thursday 13.

All images by Nestlé on flickr.

Today I am looking at quotes about breakfast. I am not a big breakfast lover, so you should not be surprised that most of the quotes give it a somewhat negative spin. 

Still, enjoy!

• A kiss and a drink of water make but a wersh breakfast. ~Scottish proverb
• O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you’ve brought breakfast in bed you’ll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal. ~Milan Kundera
• My wife and I tried two or three times in the last forty years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.  ~Winston Churchill
• There is a vast difference between the savage and the civilised man, but it is never apparent to their wives until after breakfast. ~Helen Rowland
• In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. ~Oscar Wilde
• Laugh before breakfast, you’ll cry before supper. ~English proverb
• Breakfast is a notoriously difficult meal to serve with a flourish. ~Clement Freud
• People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table. ~Max Beerbohm
• Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first. ~Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)

• I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast. ~W. C. Fields

• The difference between ‘involvement’ and ‘commitment’ is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was ‘involved’ – the pig was ‘committed’. ~Unknown

• All the older people who are thriving have stayed physically active — there are exceptions, and everyone knows someone who smoked two packs a day and had a few social beers with breakfast every morning who lived to be 85, but you have to assume that this won’t be you, … ~Anne Lamott

• DEJEUNER, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced. ~Ambrose Bierce

To see what other Thursday 13ers write about today, visit Thursday 13.

Image of breakfast table by Pinot & Dita at flickr.com 

Her name probably popped into my head because of that book I started some time ago but never finished because it just couldn’t hold my attention – “Becoming George Sand”. Besides, two days ago it was International Women’s Day and George Sand was a woman after my own heart, non-conformist and with views rather unusual for her time.

 

 

 

 

• He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
• I have no enthusiasm for nature which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy.
• I regard as a mortal sin not only the lying of the senses in matters of love, but also the illusion which the senses seek to create where love is only partial. I say, I believe, that one must love with all of one’s being, or else live, come what may, a life of complete chastity.
• Admiration and familiarity are strangers.
• I ask the support of no one, neither to kill someone for me, gather a bouquet, correct a proof, nor to go with me to the theater. I go there on my own, as a man, by choice; and when I want flowers, I go on foot, by myself, to the Alps.
• My profession is to be free.
• Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect.
• The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine.
• The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.
• Masterpieces are only lucky attempts.
• All of us who have time and money to spare, travel — that is to say, we flee; since surely it is not so much a question of travelling as of getting away? Which of us has not some sorrow to dull, or some yoke to cast off?
• We cannot tear a single page from our life, but we can throw the whole book into the fire.
• The truth is too simple: one must always get there by a complicated route.

To see what other Thursday 13ers write about today, visit Thursday 13.

Today’s Thursday 13 is about cookbook and cooking quotes…

Image by Skånska Matupplevelser at flickr

• The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books — how not to eat what you’ve just learned how to cook. ~Andy Rooney
• I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book. . . . I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right. ~Groucho Marx
• Anyone who eats three meals a day should understand why cookbooks outsell sex books three to one. ~L.M. Boyd
• Women can spin very well, but they cannot write a good book of cookery. ~Dr. Samuel Johnson
• I can’t cook. I use a smoke alarm as a timer. ~Carol Siskind
• I don’t even butter my bread. I consider that cooking. ~Katherine Cebrian
• By November I had convinced myself that I had better things to do than read ‘Moby Dick’ and learn about the Continental Congress. Cook for instance. ~Ruth Reichi
• When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking. ~Gail Sheehy
• When compelled to cook, I produce a meal that would make a sword swallower gag. ~Russell Baker
• What is literature compared with cooking? The one is shadow, the other is substance. ~E.V. Lucas
• The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight. ~M.F.K. Fisher
• Yeah, I’ve been around. They want me to find the man who rules the Universe, but I don’t care to meet him. I believe the man can’t cook. ~Douglas Adams
• Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen. ~Robert Burton

 

To see what other Thursday 13ers write about today, visit Thursday 13.

Today’s post in my indulgence T13 series is about truffles. Click on the image to enlarge it.

 

 

Credits: all images from flick’r (by izolan; jamesjyu; qwrrty; digital defection; SanFranAnnie; cacaobug; Surat Lozowick; Chocolate Reviews; Quintana Roo; artizone; Andy Ciordia) Template: Simply Yin; Paper: M. Fenwick, Title font: One Fell Swoop; Text from wikipedia

Image by ilco @sxc.hu

This is the second part of the Thursday 13 about food named after people.

• Fettuccine Alfredo – Alfredo di Lelio, an early-20th century Italian chef who invented the dish for his wife in  1914-1920 at his Roman restaurant. The dish became famous in part because Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks touted it after their 1927 visit to Rome. The authentic Alfredo recipe contains only several butters, no cream sauce.
• Béchamel sauce, named to flatter the matre d’Hotel to Louis XIV, Louis de Bchamel, Marquis de Nointel (1630-1703), also a financier and ambassador.
• Caesar salad – Caesar Cardini (1896-1956), an Italian who came to San Diego, California after World War I, is generally thought to have created the salad (sans anchovies, except those in the Worcestershire sauce) at his restaurant in 1924. The restaurant was located in Tijuana, most likely to avoid Prohibition in the U.S. As with many popular dishes, there are more claimants to the salad’s invention, including Cardini’s business partner, his brother, and one of his young sous-chefs who said it was his mother’s recipe. Julius Caesar is not involved, except perhaps as the source of Mr. Cardini’s first name.
• German chocolate cake, originally known as German’s Chocolate Cake – the 1950?s American cake took its name from Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate, which in turn took its name from Sam German who developed the sweet baking chocolate (between milk and semi-sweet) in 1852.
  Earl Grey tea – named after Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, Viscount Howick, and British Prime Minister 1830-1834.
• Kaiserschmarren – the Austrian pancakes were created for Franz Josef I (1848-1916).
• Macaroni Lucullus – Lucullus (c. 106-56 BC), full name Lucius Licinius Lucullus Ponticus, was perhaps the earliest recorded gastronome in the Western world, and he may also be its most famous. After a long spell of wars, the Roman general retired to a life of indulgence and opulence, most evident in his gardens and his cuisine. His name has become associated with numerous dishes of the over-the-top sort, using haute cuisine‘s favorite luxury staples – truffles, foie gras, asparagus tips, artichoke hearts, sweetbreads, cockscombs, wild game meats, Madeira, and so on. Macaroni Lucullus incorporates truffles and foie gras
• Mirepoix – the carrot and onion mixture used for sauces and garnishes is thought to be named after the Duc de Lvis-Mirepoix, 18th-century marshal of France and one of Louis XV‘s ambassadors.
• Mozartkugel – Salzburg, the birthplace of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), is also the place where this marzipan/nougat-filled chocolate was created c. 1890. Also in the composer’s honor, Ranhofer created “Galantine of pullet la Mozart” at Delmonico’s.
• Dr Pepper – Dr. Charles Pepper. The soft drink invented by pharmacist Charles Atherton in 1885 at a Waco, Texas drugstore owned by Wade Morrison is said to be named for Morrison’s first employer, who owned a pharmacy in Virginia.
• Dom Perignon – Dom Perignon (1638-1715), (Pierre) a blind French Benedictine monk, expert wine maker and developer of the first true champagne in the late 17th century.
• Baby Ruth candy bar – most likely, Babe Ruth (1895-1948) was the inspiration for the name. Although the Curtiss Candy Co. has insisted from the beginning that the candy bar was named after a daughter of Grover Cleveland, Ruth Cleveland died in 1904 at the age of 12, while the Baby Ruth was introduced in 1921 right at a time when George Herman Ruth, Jr. had become a baseball superstar. It is interesting to note that very early versions of the wrapper offer a baseball glove for 79 cents. Babe Ruth’s announced intent to sue the company is probably what drove and perpetuated the dubious cover story.

To see what other Thursday 13ers write about today, visit Thursday 13.

I’m continuing my indulgence T13 series today with quotes about food by famous writers. 

Image by bybar @sxc.hu

• Edible, adj.:  Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.  ~Ambrose Bierce
• The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.  ~G.K. Chesterton
• There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won’t, and that’s a wife who can’t cook and will.  ~Robert Frost
• Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don’t eat has been proved to be indispensable for life.  But I go marching on.  ~George Bernard Shaw
• Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.  ~Mark Twain
• Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.  ~Mark Twain
• All sorrows are less with bread.  ~Miguel de Cervantes
• A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.  ~Aldous Huxley
• Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. ~G. K. Chesterton

• There is no love sincerer than the love of food. ~George Bernard Shaw

• Sacred cows make the best hamburger” ~Mark Twain
• Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine. ~Anthony Trollope

• It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes. ~Douglas Adams

To see what other TT 13ers are talking about, go to the Thursday 13 website.