Quotes from Amy Stewart

we have to be a part of the world in which we live. We don't scurry away when we're in trouble, or when someone else is. We don't run and hide.

and Bessie for offering. But we've done just fine standing up for

The twentieth century contributed skyscrapers and typewriters and automobiles and telephones to the world. Solid, workable objects. Every innovation of the twenty-first century could be erased by a power failure.

Lucy didn't stop spinning and I began to wonder if she was ever going to let the boy come up for air. They formed their own planet in the middle of the room, rotating around a sun that only they could see.

The trillions of microorganisms we harbor in our bodies, collectively known as our microbiome, outnumber human cells 10 to 1.

yeast produce esters in order to attract insects, hoping they will pick up the yeast and move it around. This makes bugs unwitting accomplices in the dance between sugar and yeast.

The fact that the Irish embraced the potato only helped convince the English that it was a lowly food fit only for a peasant. Nonetheless

American white oak, on the other hand, releases the same flavor molecules found in vanilla, coconut, peach, apricot, and cloves. (In fact, artificial vanilla is made from a sawdust derivative because it has such high levels of vanillin.)

It had survived a fire that burned most of the city when Fleurette was a little girl, and traces of black soot were still lodged in the crevices of its scrollwork, giving it the appearance of a building that had been drawn in artist's charcoal.

That night they sat up well past dark around the dim flame of a single gas lamp, knowing, I suppose, that going to bed would be an admission that there was no ordinary, everyday explanation for my disappearance, and that when they awoke in the morning, they would have passed into some new era in their lives — the era that began with the unexplained loss of one of their own, and whatever that might mean next for them.

It is not much of an exaggeration to claim that the very process that gives us the raw ingredients for brandy and beer is the same one that sustains life on the planet.

EVERY DAY, AMERICANS go out and buy about ten million cut flowers. After all I've seen, that really doesn't sound like much. It works out, on a daily basis, to one flower for every twenty-five people. Another way to look at it: Every man, woman, and child gets fourteen stems a year. That's just over one flower a month. How can anybody get by on one flower a month?

archeologist Patrick McGovern found evidence of an eight-thousand-year-old brew of rice, fruit, and honey at the Jiahu site in Henan Province. (He worked with Dogfish Head brewery to re-create the brew, which they named Chateau Jiahu.) It

But first, rice diversified and spread around the world. It is a water-loving grass that reaches up to sixteen feet in flooded fields. However, it does not have to grow in standing water. Its peculiar method of cultivation in rice paddies probably came about when people noticed healthy rice plants growing in flooded fields during the monsoon season. The

Norma's frown had become so deeply etched in her face over the years that it took a great deal of effort to reverse its direction, but I thought I saw some change come over her. There was a hint of interest in her eyes. She

Although people can force a trap to close by running a finger along it, carnivorous plant enthusiasts consider this rude.

When I was younger," she said slowly, "I always hoped you were hiding some horrid secret. You were too nice." She sniffed. "You have no idea how annoying it is that your horrid secret is a heart complaint, and not, for instance, a double murder committed by moonlight.

Males approach with caution, first assessing whether the female has had anything to eat lately. If she looks well fed, the male has some hope of getting through the ordeal alive.

The man who worries morning and night about the dandelions in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dandelions. —L. H. BAILEY, Manual of Gardening, 1910

Don't bother fighting with your husband over something he's never actually going to do. He'll give up on his own eventually, and then you don't have to be the bad guy.

I can't keep doing this," she said to Sy, "but I can't do anything else, either. So where does that leave me?

Young shoots contain enough cyanide to kill a horse. Death is mercifully swift, usually caused by cardiac arrest or respiratory failure and preceded by only a few hours of anxiety, convulsions, and staggering about.

The science of fermentation is wonderfully simple. Yeast eat sugar. They leave behind two waste products, ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. If we were being honest, we would admit that what a liquor store sells is, chemically speaking, little more than the litter boxes of millions of domesticated yeast organisms, wrapped up in pretty bottles with fancy price tags.

When I allowed myself to think about the brevity of the time ahead of me, and the futility of spending any more of it on cooking and mending and gardening, it frightened me so much that I almost couldn't breathe.