The Daily Mouthful: On Servers

"The real judges of your character aren't your neighbors, your relatives, or even the people you play bridge with. The folks who really know you are waiters, waitresses, and clerks."
-- attributed to Katherine Piper

The Daily Mouthful: On Cabbage

"Zee cabbage does not run away from zee corn-beef!" -- Pepe Le Pew

The Daily Mouthful: On -- Ahem -- Sausages

At the table of a gentleman living in the Chausee d'Antin was served up an Arles sausage of enormous size. "Will you accept a slice?" the host asked a lady who was sitting next to him; "you see it has come from the right factory." -- "It is really very large," said the lady, casting on it a roguish glance; "What a pity it is unlike anything."

-- Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in The Physiology of Taste (1825)

The Daily Mouthful: On Breakfast

"He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart." -- C.S. Lewis

The Daily Mouthful: On Patriotism

"What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?" ~Lin Yutang

Bonus vocab word: "Globesity." Coined by the World Health Organization

The Daily Mouthful: Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!

"I don't think anybody gives a rat's ass whether I am about to eat a tuna sandwich. I don't even care. Some of it is so inane and narcissistic and bizarre I don't quite get it. I don't know why anyone would want to read it, much less why I would want to write it."

-- Katie Couric, talking about Twitter.

Want minute-by-minute updates on our every mouthful of tuna? Witness our devastatingly pithy reflections on beer, burgers, and occasionally, broads? Follow Clean Plate Charlie on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CleanPlateBPB, and Gail Shepherd at http://twitter.com/gailshepherd.

The Daily Mouthful: On Turkish Coffee

*Ed. Note: Sometimes even Twain can be a fool. Maybe he should have asked the Turks how to drink it.

"Of all the unchristian beverages that ever passed my lips, Turkish coffee is the worst. The cup is small, it is smeared with grounds; the coffee is black, thick, unsavory of smell, and execrable in taste. The bottom of the cup has a muddy sediment in it half an inch deep. This goes down your throat, and portions of it lodge by the way, and produce a tickling aggravation that keeps you barking and coughing for an hour."

--Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

The Daily Mouthful: On Gourmets

"Gourmet /n./ Anyone whom, when you fail to finish something strange or revolting, remarks that it's an acquired taste and that you're leaving the best part." (source unknown)

The Daily Mouthful: On Chocolate

"If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage?"

-- Marquise de Sevigne, February 11, 1677
Tags: chocolate

The Daily Mouthful: A La Creole

"A good cup of Creole Coffee! Is there anything in the whole range of food substances to be compared with it? And is there any city in the world where coffee is so delightfully concocted as in New Orleans?"

-- The Picayune's Creole Cook Book (1901)
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