Quotes from Mark Kurlansky

Rumors spread of possible salt substitutes. In 1862, there was a rumor of a substitute for curing bacon and beef. A newspaper in Alabama reported that pyroligneous acid, a vinegar made from hard wood, could preserve meat.

Boil 15 large potatoes in jackets. When done peel and rice them, letting them cool about 5 minutes, then add 2 eggs, 1½ cups of flour, 1 teaspoon salt and roll into balls and roll balls in flour. Have a pot of boiling water on the fire, place the dumplings in the water that has been salted and boil for 10 minutes, remove and serve. Hasenpfeffer and Kartoffel Klösze are generally served together but either can be served separate or with other food.

THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted. The oldest surviving complete book of Latin prose, Cato's second-century-B.C. practical guide to rural life, De agricultura, suggests eating cabbage this way: If you want your cabbage chopped, washed, dried, sprinkled with salt or vinegar, there is nothing healthier.

the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.

And so you have more opportunities and more responsibilities than any other generation in history.

Scientists are sometimes wrong and fisherman are sometimes wrong.

notes he made in his mirror-image script—a curious response to being left-handed.

A world without fishing would be sad.

nonviolence is more effective than violence, that violence does not work.

In 1893, Ranhofer published The Epicurean, his twelve-hundred-page, four-thousand recipe "Franco-American Culinary Encyclopedia," which, though it made its way into few household kitchens, became a bible for American restaurants and hotels. Though

This one is from the 1851 edition of Miss Leslie's Directions for Cookery: BROILED SALMON Split the salmon and take out the bones as nicely as possible without mangling the flesh. Then cut it into filets or steaks about an inch thick. Dry them lightly in a cloth and dredge them in flour. Take care not to squeeze or press them. Have ready some clear, bright, coals, such as are

A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered that the bodies of people who took their own lives be salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Nor could the accused escape their day

the dissemination of information alone does not set people free, and a new information technology creates a new ruling class.

Then in the fifth century an Algerian bishop, Augustine of Hippo, wrote the enduring apologia for murder on the battlefield, the concept of "just war." Augustine, considered one of the fathers of the Catholic Church, declared that the validity of war was a question of inner motive. If a pious man believed in a just cause and truly loved his enemies, it was permissible to go to war and to kill the enemies he loved because he was doing it in a high-minded way.

AFTER THE FALL of Rome in the fifth century, garum was often thought of as just one of the unpleasant hedonistic excesses for which Rome was remembered. Leaving fish organs in the sun to rot was not an idea that endured in less extravagant cultures. Of course when garum was made properly, the salt prevented rotting until the fermentation took hold. But it became increasingly difficult to convince people of this.

History teaches over and over again that a conflict between a violent and a nonviolent force is a moral argument. The lesson is that if the nonviolent side can be led to violence, they have lost the argument and they are destroyed.

Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese.

But as soon as paper started to be made from trees, concern shifted to the destruction of the forests.

In the American South, as recently as the 1930s, flying squirrels were so common that there were recipes for them—they were a favorite local dish. But today, flying squirrels are a scarcity because they live only in old-growth forests.

So even Cicero imagined moveable type, but only in his polemic as an absurd idea. He used the phrase formae literarum, and when moveable type was finally made some sixteen centuries later, that is the name they gave it—though it was not such an absurd idea after all.

anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule." The

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. —MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND QUENTIN FIORE, The Medium Is the Massage, 1967

Enthusiasm and hard work are also indispensable ingredients of achievement.

ahimsa, or nonviolence