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Europeans started wearing linen underwear instead of wool. There is no record indicating that this made the Europeans less irritable, but it did make a lot more rags available. -- Mark Kurlansky
In 1352, Ibn Batuta, the greatest Arab-language traveler of the Middle Ages, who had journeyed overland across Africa, Europe, and Asia, reported visiting the city of Taghaza, which, he said, was entirely built of salt, including an elaborate mosque. -- Mark Kurlansky
softness overcomes hardness. -- Mark Kurlansky
At about this time the Asiatic wolf, a fierce predator that despite its small size would eat a human if it had the opportunity, came under human control because its friendly young cubs could be fed and trained. A dangerous adversary was turned into a dedicated helper - the dog. -- Mark Kurlansky
Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man's relationship with nature, about the climate, about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies, alliances, wars, religion. It is about memory and tradition and, at times, even about sex. -- Mark Kurlansky
Revolutions are always easier to admire from across the border. -- Mark Kurlansky
Cherokee faction of fewer than 500 people in a nation of 17,000 who were agreeable to removal. -- Mark Kurlansky
The salt intake of Europeans, much of it in the form of salted fish, rose from forty grams a day per person in the sixteenth century to seventy grams in the eighteenth century. -- Mark Kurlansky
Whenever I was called a gourmet, I suspected I was being accused of something at least slightly unpleasant. But that was before I heard the term "foodie." I am still not sure that a gourmet is a good thing to be, but it must be better than a foodie. -- Mark Kurlansky
New black heroes were made and old ones dropped every day. -- Mark Kurlansky
Davy's work in Bristol came under attack by conservative politicians, including the famous Irish MP Edmund Burke, who accused the gas experiments of promoting not only atheism but the French Revolution. -- Mark Kurlansky
ENEMIES OFTEN become mirror images of each other. -- Mark Kurlansky
Venice manipulated markets by controlling production. In the late thirteenth century, wishing to raise the world market price, Venice had all saltworks in Crete destroyed and banned the local production of salt. -- Mark Kurlansky
Now, at peace, Jordan has few resources but is full of plans. Mohammed Noufal observed with a smile, All we need is Israel's technology, Egypt's workers, Turkey's water, and Saudi Arabia's oil, and I am sure we can build a paradise here. -- Mark Kurlansky
Take the tail of the female tuna - and I'm talking of the large female tuna whose mother city is Byzantium. -- Mark Kurlansky
The Phoenicians are also credited with the first alphabet. Chinese and Egyptian languages used pictographs, drawings depicting objects or concepts. Babylonian, which became the international language in the Middle East, also -- Mark Kurlansky
the Poor Men of Lyons, -- Mark Kurlansky
The first pan-European peace organization was established in Geneva in 1830, but -- Mark Kurlansky
In 1411, the French Crown granted a patent declaring that only the cheese of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon could be called Roquefort cheese. -- Mark Kurlansky
A true gourmet - a judge - has the wisdom to know when to stop eating. -- Mark Kurlansky
Toward the end of the first century A.D., a Confucian government minister had them once more abolished, declaring, Government sale of salt means competing with subjects for profit. These are not measures fit for wise rulers. -- Mark Kurlansky
The painstakingly extracted purple dye was a luxury item of such prestige that the color purple became a way of showing wealth and power. -- Mark Kurlansky
No one ever escapes Gloucester. Kids go off to college and settle somewhere else. But they always come back. If Gloucester is all you know, every place else seems a little phony. -- Mark Kurlansky
When these early settlers hunted, they would leave red herring along their trail because the strong smell would confuse wolves, which is the origin of the expression red herring, meaning "a false trail. -- Mark Kurlansky
Chloride is essential for digestion and in respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, the body would be unable to transport nutrients or oxygen, transmit nerve impulses, or move muscles, including the heart. -- Mark Kurlansky
When my enemies seek my life, how can I do other than use my endeavor to destroy them in my own defense? The -- Mark Kurlansky
In eighteenth-century England, anchovy sauce became known as ketchup, katchup, or catsup. -- Mark Kurlansky
The indigenous people of five continents were facing an intractable enemy from a sixth continent that was convinced that they had the right to steal the land on other -- Mark Kurlansky
The longer wars last, the less popular they become. -- Mark Kurlansky
There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government, the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only nine months later in carnage the scale of which had never before been seen on earth. -- Mark Kurlansky
If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod ... But it has among its predators - man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod. -- Mark Kurlansky
The true expression of nonviolence is compassion, which is not just a passive emotional response, but a rational stimulus to action. -- Mark Kurlansky
The Roman historian Plutarch estimated that the civilized Romans under Julius Caesar, in his decade-long campaign in Gaul, destroyed 800 towns and villages and enslaved 3 million people. -- Mark Kurlansky
Judging foods without regard to price is a rich mans game, and yet poor people can be gourmets able to discern a good potato from a bad one. -- Mark Kurlansky
The main body of Vikings were given lands in the Seine basin in exchange for protecting Paris. They settled into northern France and within a century were speaking a dialect of French and became known as the Normans. -- Mark Kurlansky
In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping and murder, the Socialist government was still vulnerable to the accusation of being soft on Basques. -- Mark Kurlansky
One result of the tea boycott was that Americans very quickly became coffee drinkers. -- Mark Kurlansky
Pastrami, of Romanian origin, is dried, spiced, and salted beef, smoked over hardwood sawdust and then steamed. The name may come from pastra, the Romanian verb "to preserve. -- Mark Kurlansky
Under English law the penalty for eating meat on Friday was hanging. The law remained on the books until the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII broke with the Vatican. -- Mark Kurlansky
Mennonites are so called because they followed Menno Simons, a sixteenth-century Dutch Catholic priest -- Mark Kurlansky
It takes two years for the salt to reach the center of a wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. -- Mark Kurlansky
It was the seventeenth-century English who gave corned beef its name - corns being any kind of small bits, in this case salt crystals. -- Mark Kurlansky
It is always easier to promote war than peace, easier to end the peace than end the war, because peace is fragile and war is durable. -- Mark Kurlansky
Theoretically, pickling can be accomplished without salt, but the carbohydrates and proteins in the vegetables tend to putrefy too quickly to be saved by the emerging lactic acid. Without salt, yeast forms, and the fermentation process leads to alcohol rather than pickles. -- Mark Kurlansky
It is an old remark, that all arts and sciences have a mutual dependence upon each other ... Thus men, very different in genius and pursuits, become mutually subservient to each other; and a very useful kind of commerce is established by which the old arts are improved, and new ones daily invented. -- Mark Kurlansky
The Egyptians of 4000 B.C. believed that the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, taught them how to grow olives. The Greeks have a similar legend. But the Hebrew word for olive, zait, is probably older than the Greek word, elaia, and is thought to refer to Said in the Nile Delta. -- Mark Kurlansky
The parallels between preserving food and preserving mummies were apparently not lost on posterity. In the nineteenth century, when mummies from Saqqara and Thebes were taken from tombs and brought to Cairo, they were taxed as salted fish before being permitted entry to the city. -- Mark Kurlansky
Herzl had said that attracting the Jewish diaspora would be a slow process, but after a half century as a nation, according to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, only 17 percent of American Jews have ever visited Israel. -- Mark Kurlansky
When a peasant has a baby girl, the family puts up a vegetable every year and gives the jars to her when she's married. This -- Mark Kurlansky
Literary Teas are constantly in a state of flux. The uninitiated gravitates toward the author, the author toward the editor or publisher, the publisher toward the reviewer, and the reviewer, in desperation, toward another drink. -- Mark Kurlansky
Jamming was our ally. It made people curious about what we were hiding. -- Mark Kurlansky
Violence requires few ideas, but nonviolence requires imagination. -- Mark Kurlansky
nunna daul Tsuny in the Cherokee language, -- Mark Kurlansky
A Wedding In Haiti is a great experience and its unaffected prose is as true a portrait of complex Haiti as you will find. -- Mark Kurlansky
For a time, the Hanseatics were well appreciated as honorable merchants who ensured quality and fought against unscrupulous practices. They were known as Easterlings because they came from the east, and this is the origin of the word sterling, which meant "of assured value. -- Mark Kurlansky
History's greatest lessons is that once the state embraces a religion, the nature of that religion changes radically. It loses its nonviolent component -- Mark Kurlansky
General Motors, ITT, and Ford come most readily to mind as having plants protected by Hitler, -- Mark Kurlansky
A gourmet knows that the best part is not always the expensive part, and he will find that part, and then he will share it. A gourmet should want to share. -- Mark Kurlansky
In times of war prices of the necessaries of life are generally very much increased, but the prices of labor of the poor do not usually rise. -- Mark Kurlansky
In the first century A.D., Pliny estimated that the average Roman citizen consumed only 25 grams of salt a day. The modern American consumes even less if the salt content of packaged food is not included. -- Mark Kurlansky
The egg creams of Avenue A in New York and the root beer float ... are among the high points of American gastronomic inventiveness. -- Mark Kurlansky
A modern revolutionary group, explained Abbie Hoffman, headed for the television station, not the factory. -- Mark Kurlansky
Even creative nonviolence can go unnoticed unless participants are attacked. -- Mark Kurlansky
International League of Peace and Freedom, was formed in 1867 in Geneva. Its -- Mark Kurlansky
At the height of their power in the fifteenth century, the Hanseatics were believed to have had at their command 40,000 vessels and 300,000 men. -- Mark Kurlansky
If all poor people refused to fight, he argued, the rich would have no army and there would be no war. -- Mark Kurlansky
Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese' (Charles de Gaulle, 1961 speech) -- Mark Kurlansky
It is a peculiarity of the English language that while most fish swim in schools, herring swim in shoals, a word of the same meaning derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root. -- Mark Kurlansky
The hams of Westphalia, which were dried, salted, and then smoked with unique local woods - a recipe still followed today in Westphalia - were very popular with Romans. -- Mark Kurlansky
Gen. de Gaulle is only concerned about history, and no jury can dictate the judgment of history. Georges Pompidou -- Mark Kurlansky
In 'The Republic' he [Plato] states that the enjoyment of food is not a true pleasure because the purpose of eating is to relieve pain - hunger. -- Mark Kurlansky
In nineteenth-century Russia, sauerkraut was valued more than caviar, -- Mark Kurlansky
And another small point, or two actually; Aldus was the first to use the modern semicolon. -- Mark Kurlansky
The name potash is derived from the process used for making potassium carbonate, cooking down water and wood ash in earthen pots. -- Mark Kurlansky
Children need fairy tales, but it is just as essential that they have parents who tell them about their own lives, so that they can establish a relationship to the past. -- Mark Kurlansky
A superpower that no longer stands for anything, that no one believes in anymore, that is seen only as a bully, will fall despite its military might. If the Bush administration ever wanted to reflect on history, it might think about this. -- Mark Kurlansky
THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted. -- Mark Kurlansky
Modern people have seen too many chemicals and are ready to go back to eating dirt. -- Mark Kurlansky
Salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history. -- Mark Kurlansky
the Egyptians learned very early that the bitter glucides unique to this fruit, now known as oleuropeina, could be removed from the fruit by soaking in water, and the fruit could be softened in brine. The salt would render it not only edible but enjoyable. -- Mark Kurlansky
Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the single most significant trademarks of a culture. -- Mark Kurlansky
Proteins unwind when exposed to heat, and they do the same when exposed to salt. So salting has an effect resembling cooking. -- Mark Kurlansky
I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. Clarence Birdseye -- Mark Kurlansky
The adversary must first be made into a demon before people will accept the war. This was why during the Cold War, the U.S. government became infuriated at any -- Mark Kurlansky
Castiglione has 150 employees. But every March another 120 are hired to work the tonnara. The leader is known by the Arab word Raiz, and the fishermen sing an Arab song, "Cialome" (pronounced SHALOMAY), to invoke the gods for the hunt. -- Mark Kurlansky
Massachusetts, like Queen Elizabeth, encouraged salt making through the granting of monopolies to those who showed the skill to produce salt cheaply. The colony granted Samuel Winslow a ten-year monopoly to employ his ideas on salt producing, which is considered the first patent issued in America. -- Mark Kurlansky
The history of the Americas is one of constant warfare over salt, -- Mark Kurlansky
In fact, the first experiments in refrigeration were not with fish or meat but with everyone's favorite luxury - butter. -- Mark Kurlansky
All Quiet on the Western Front, -- Mark Kurlansky
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. -- Mark Kurlansky
Nonviolence is more effective than violence, that violence does not work. -- Mark Kurlansky
Fate likes to tease paranoids.' -- Mark Kurlansky
According to Seneca, Apicius committed suicide because, having spent one tenth of a considerable fortune on his kitchen, he realized that he could not long continue in the style he had chosen. -- Mark Kurlansky
It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than an American Rockefeller. -- Mark Kurlansky
