United States or Cabo Verde ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The main dish was a wonderful stew of fish, for which, Nebris told us, Marseilles was famous. It was flavored with any number of vegetables and relishes, and had bits of meat in it, but fish was the chief ingredient and the blended flavors made it a most appetizing viand.
The praises lavished by our guides upon the delicacy of this viand their talk over the camp-fire, about "fat cow" and "boudins" and "hump-ribs," quite tantalised our palates, and we were all eager to try our teeth upon these vaunted tit-bits. No buffalo appeared yet, and we were forced to chew our bacon, as well as our impatience, for several days longer.
Some told their feats in beggary; others, their achievements in theft; not a viand they had fed on but had its appropriate legend; even the old rabbit, which had been as tough as old rabbit can well be, had not been honestly taken from his burrow; no less a person than Mim himself had purloined it from a widow's footman who was carrying it to an old maid from her nephew the Squire.
We were now more cheerful, and the anticipation of such an odd viand for supper, drew jokes from several of the party. To the trappers such a dish was nothing new, although they were the only persons of the party who had partaken of it.
For if all this praise is to be lavished on plain, fresh, immature, roast pig, what adjectives shall we find to do justice to that riper, richer, more subtle and sustaining viand, broiled bacon? On roast pig a man can not work; often he can not sleep, if he have partaken of it immoderately. But bacon "brings to its sweetness no satiety." It strengthens the arm while it satisfies the palate.
They were too ill-humored to talk much, but stood around and sipped their hot coffee and munched sodden crackers and fried pork in silence. Pork fried in the morning in a half-canteen, and carried for hours in a dripping haversack, which reduced the crackers to a tasteless mush, is not an appetizing viand; but the hunger of hard exercise in the open air makes it "go."
England, however, was not, in the seventeenth century, destitute of watering places. The gentry of Derbyshire and of the neighbouring counties repaired to Buxton, where they were lodged in low rooms under bare rafters, and regaled with oatcake, and with a viand which the hosts called mutton, but which the guests suspected to be dog. A single good house stood near the spring.
As a viand, a mere bit of fancy, insignificant in such a repast, it made him think of the naïf phrase of the great lady concerning the starving wretches "Let them eat cake." Nevertheless, this little cake is bread all the same bread made of flour, which in turn is made of wheat.
Still, that was the aim: he wanted to take the stranger on a meandering path of circumlocutions that would shake him from earlier thoughts and deposit him in this concept that he, Nawin Biadkang, the prostitute artist, was and forever would be a lady's man. "Women are the viand of a man's eyes, the fruit for the bon vivant."
Waiters came, brought strange preparations of food which were a revelation to Johnny, to whom meat had meant just meat, boiled, roasted or fried, to whom salad meant two or three kinds of vegetables hashed together and served sour. Girls' glances were wasted upon him while he tasted dubiously, succumbed to each new and delicious viand, and explored farther, secretly eager for more wonders.
Word Of The Day