Salted Quotes & Sayings

It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle. — P.G. Wodehouse

When the going gets tough, the tough get salted caramel cappuccinos. — Dani Harper

The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves. Then — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I got around a lot, and lots of people talked to me. I salted down stories by the barrel load. — Hedda Hopper

What if I said I wanted a friend?' The ship crouches among the fresh-cut stalks. 'Or a lover? That's how you make a person, yes? By affection and intimacy. By touches like knives in a salted bed. — Benjanun Sriduangkaew

She set a tankard of grog before him, the moment before he became aware of his own thirst. Gray reached for it, shaking his head. A long swallow of watered-down rum added fuel to his resentment. He'd allowed himself to become so transparent to her, while she remained an enigma to him. Her talents fit no logical pattern-sketching, painting, deceit, seduction, thievery...now the ability to pound biscuit and salted meat into a fair-tasting chowder? It was enough to make him abandon all hope of ever comprehending her.
Perhaps he never would. But it was another thought that had him hurrying through his food, desperate to put some distance between them. He might never understand her, Gray realized, but he could get dangerously accustomed to this other feeling.
Being understood. — Tessa Dare

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING FOR RED VELVET SURPRISE CUPCAKES 4 ounces cream cheese (I used Philadelphia Brand in the rectangular silver package - half a package was 4 ounces) ¼ cup salted butter (½ stick, 2 ounces, pound) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups powdered sugar (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) Place the cream cheese and the butter in a medium-size microwave-safe bowl. (I used a quart measuring cup.) Microwave on HIGH for 30 seconds. Stir. If you can stir the cream cheese and the butter smooth, take the bowl out and put it on the counter. If it's still not soft enough to stir, microwave on HIGH in 20-second intervals until it is. Add the vanilla extract to your bowl and stir that in. Add the powdered sugar, a half-cup at a time, stirring after each addition. Continue to add powdered sugar until the frosting is spreadable, not runny. — Joanne Fluke

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

By the time I get home, I will have grimaced through 26 sets of traffic lights and acquired the following: a hefty wood-carving of a horse; a censored girlie calendar; an inflatable Power Ranger; a chess set; nine boiled sweets; two slices of salted pineapple; a fake Rolex; three kretek cigarettes and a blowpipe. — Derek Bacon

War and tooth enameled
salted lemon childhoods
All colors run, none of us solid
Don't look for shadow behind me
I carry it within
I live cycles of light and darkness — Suheir Hammad

There is dignity in suffering; nobility in pain; but failure is a salted wound, that burns and burns again! — Woody Allen

If I weren't in Radiohead I'd be working at a grocery store, I'd be that creepy guy who lives in an efficiency apartment and collects salted, cured meats. — Thom Yorke

We found letters at the house we bought from a sailor to his wife who lived in the house. He went down to the Caribbean on this trader vessel, bringing down salted fish. There would be handwritten letters, but also telegrams, saying which ports he was in. And he'd be gone for three months. That was just the way it is. — Michael Winter

And as for going as cook, - though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on shipboard - yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls; - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. — Herman Melville

Jacob thought about going home. He still had some American change, which he kept in an empty matchbox in his sock drawer, and one night, after he had finished his pancakes and jam, he took the coins out, spread them on the kitchen table, and admired the burnt sienna patina of one of the pennies, which in the candlelight was iridescent with violet and green where people's touch had salted it. The portrait of Lincoln was ugly and noble, and Jacob took off his glasses to look more closely. On the other side, an erratic line of shrubbery was engraved beside the Lincoln monument's steps. The idealism seemed to be in Lincoln rather than in the coin's design, which was homely. It was so homely, in fact, that there was a kind of democratic grandeur to it. It was the most beautiful currency in the world. Jacob was on the verge of tears. — Caleb Crain

In 1994, when I came to PepsiCo, there were really three businesses. They were soft drinks, which included both bottling and the concentrate company. There were salted snacks - Frito Lay. And restaurants where we had, we all talk of them, Pizza Hut, KFC and a whole bunch of casual dining chains. — Indra Nooyi

He wanted to tell her that he was inspired and vigilant and recklessly alone, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe: porous and spiky, shifting with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickerings of white and green and pale gold; something that loved stars because it was made of the same substance. — Michael Cunningham

Count your salted wounds then name them
like the stars of a bright constellation
Count your scars and bruises then give them
the wings of forgiveness to fly — Malak El Halabi

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 in court by dying in the often miserable conditions of the prisons. They too would be salted and put on trial. Breton historians have discovered that in 1784 in the town of Cornouaille, Maurice LeCorre had died in prison and was ordered salted for trial. But due to some bureaucratic error, the corpse did not get a trial date and was found by a prison guard more than seven years later, not only salted but fermented in beer, at which point it was buried without trial. — Mark Kurlansky

Our first kiss was there on the bridge in the woods. How do you describe a first kiss? It is like trying to hold water in your hands. There is an ancient Chinese proverb that compares kissing to drinking salted water. "You drink, and your thirst increases," it says. Time, I'm sure, passed by, but we remained unavailable for comment. — Kirstie Collins Brote

THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted. — Mark Kurlansky

He sees his world in black and white: Filthy snow, a hollow sky, the gray cement of the walls - water stains, like giant ink spills, eating into them - and his own skin, an ashy patina enveloping his body. Even the wounds on his feet, hardened and crusted, have lost their red. He has come to think of colour as something fantastic that exists only in his mind - the red of a tomato sliced and salted at the lunch table, the deep blue of a lapis lazuli on Farnaz's finger, the honey hue of his daughter's hair in the sun. — Dalia Sofer

Faith is salted and peppered through everything at Christmas. And I love at least one night by the Christmas tree to sing and feel the quiet holiness of that time that's set apart to celebrate love, friendship, and God's gift of the Christ child. — Amy Grant

Other people salted away money for their old age, but Nanny preferred to accumulate memories. — Terry Pratchett

Rats
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles.
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats. — Robert Browning

Two peanuts walk into a rather rough bar, not looking for any trouble. Unfortunately, one was a salted. — Tommy Cooper

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

You can always put balsamic vinaigrette on salted meat and sort of pretend it's a salad. — Karen Russell

Nicholas had not seen such a look of unwelcome surprise on his captain's face since the time their former cook announced he had served the crew stewed rat instead of salted beef. — Alexandra Bracken

butter in a golden lump, drowning in the buttermilk. Then Ma took out the lump with a wooden paddle, into a wooden bowl, and she washed it many times in cold water, turning it over and over and working it with the paddle until the water ran clear. After that she salted it. Now — Laura Ingalls Wilder

They passed it late in the afternoon, their single sail stretched to bursting, clinker-built hull heeling well over, bow slicing up a column of spray that salted mouths, eyes and bodies. — Garth Nix

The circle of salt's potential victims grew at an alarming rate. Part of Dahl's research into the evils of salt involved breeding a strain of salt-sensitive rats, in which he induced hypertension by feeding them commercially prepared baby food that contained added sodium. In April 1970, newspapers ran an Associated Press report about Dahl's findings under scary headlines like "Baby Food Salt May Be Harmful, Researcher Says." The report quoted Dahl calling salted baby food "a needless kind of risk. — Alan Levinovitz

Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: The more US troops come home, the more will be demanded. — Henry A. Kissinger

completely. Meanwhile, bring another pan of salted water to the boil and blanch the broccoli for 1 minute, drain and pat completely dry with kitchen paper. — Anna Clark

He tastes like salted caramel and sunshine. Or what I think salted caramel and sunshine taste like. He tastes like nothing I've ever experienced, like hope and possibility and future — Nicola Yoon

In this world of uncertainty and woe, one thing remains unchanged: Fresh, canned, pureed, dried, salted, sliced, and served with sugar and cream, or pressed into juice, the tomato is reliable, friendly, and delicious. We would be nothing without it. — Laurie Colwin

My father would eat cat shit if it was salted, fried, or frosted, but it took an act of Congress to get him to eat a vegetable. — Janet Evanovich

I grew up around strong women; weak men were pickled and salted. The women wouldn't waste time raising a weak boy. — Robert Jordan

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
The spring begins before the winter's over. — Elinor Wylie

Look up, greet sparks of fire with salted eyes,
For he's a burning atmospheric sigh:
One blaze of liquid flame on midnight sky,
Soft orbital decay, and last goodbye. — Alan James Roll

She was skinny, like a salted anchovy, she gave off an odor of wildness, she had a long face, narrow at the temples, framed by two bands of smooth black hair. But — Elena Ferrante

I had to do something about my longing, so I got up, went to the kitchen in my nightgown, peeled a pound of potatoes, boiled them up, sliced them, fried them in butter, salted them generously and ate every bite of them - asking my body the whole while if it would please accept the satisfaction of a pound of fried potatoes in lieu of the fulfillment of lovemaking.
My body replied, only after eating every bite of food: No deal, babe. — Elizabeth Gilbert

As I reach my thirtieth year of service as a butler in a gentleman's household, I find myself looking back. Between my secret recipe for boot blacking (an indispensable tool for a butler), and a vastly superior method to remove wine stains from velvet (which some will erroneously hold to be an impossibility), I find my memories salted with some faint wisdoms, a few tested experiences, and many, many interesting stories. — Karen Hawkins

Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras. — Herman Melville

You should stop by the shop. I'll make you up a special Welcome-To-Marietta chocolate basket for Samara. She'll love it."
Of course. He should have thought of it himself.
"She's got this salted caramel thing that will earn you major points," said Dawson. "the ladies love it."
"I shouldn't say this in church." Sage looked down, and dropped her voice to a whisper. "But it's been called orgasmic."
With that word, for a split second, everyone around him disappeared. Logan imagined putting a tiny square of rich, smooth candy onto Samara's tongue, watching her lips move as she savored it, kissing her, sharing the sweet, silky heat. What sound would she make when the flavor hit the back of her mouth? Would she moan? Would she ask for more? "It's a gift that keeps on giving," added Dawson, waggling his eyebrows. — Roxanne Snopek

Ottolenghi sells lots of delicious sweet things, but my daily addiction is their unbelievable dark chocolate salted caramel biscuits. They're the best things in the world - I go through half a packet every night. I bring them out after pudding at dinner parties. — Trinny Woodall

We've been lucky. The autumn happened to be dry and warm. We managed to dig the potatoes before the rain and cold set in. Minus what we owed and returned to the Mikulitsyns, we have up to twenty sacks, and it is all in the main bin of the cellar, covered above, over the floor, with straw and old, torn blankets. Down there, under the floor, we also put two barrels of Tonya's salted cucumbers and another two of cabbage she has pickled. The fresh cabbage is hung from the crossbeams, head to head, tied in pairs. The supply of carrots is buried in dry sand. As is a sufficient amount of harvested black radishes, beets, and turnips, and upstairs in the house there is a quantity of peas and beans. The firewood stored up in the shed will last till spring. — Boris Pasternak

I'm religious about salted butter. I don't understand how it happened that everyone thought we should all have sweet butter. I blame the French. — Nora Ephron

Two solid weeks of beautiful weather. Clear sunny days, low humidity, temperature in the seventies, air so brisk and clean you could read E PLURIBUS UNUM on a dime across the street. Clear cloudless nights, temperature in the fifties, the sky a great soft raven's breast, an immense bowl of octopus ink salted with a million hard white crystalline stars and garnished with a huge moon pulsing with white light. It was disgusting. — Donald E. Westlake

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

Let's start with ice cream and go from there."
"You're gonna love it." Holly nodded. "All their ingredients are fresh, and they make the most delicious, wackiest flavors you've ever heard of."
Clearly she'd forgotten that Lindsey had come from D.C. "Like what?"
"Honey lavender. Sweet corn raspberry. Toasted coconut fudge. Lemon fig ... blueberry pie ... marshmallow peach ... salted caramel chocolate chunk ... — Tracy March

Plank to base. I require urgent backup. Repeat. Urgent backup. Am knackered. Repeat. Knackered. And can you pick me up a bag of ready salted crisps on the way? Repeat. Ready salted crisps. Urgent. Over. — David Walliams

Dear Mr. Gibbon. Sorry I was absent. Here is some salted food. Please grade it the way you would a jenti piece of beef jerky. — Douglas Rees

People don't enjoy salt. They enjoy what is salted. We are the salt of the earth. We do not exist for ourselves. — John Piper

Breathing in Shepelevo was like hitting the right note on the piano. There was only one note. When I was young, Shepelevo was the smell of nettles, of salted smoked fish, of fresh water from the Gulf of Finland, and of burning firewood, all wrapped up in one Shepelevo. — Paullina Simons

I haven't got a very sweet tooth, but I love salted things like nuts. I would have to be dragged in by a lorry if I ate as many salted peanuts as I would like to. — Joanna Lumley

Poncho was in a red mood slanging with rage and needed to cook himself out of it , while shoving handfuls of salted peanuts down his gullet and slurping ice cold Fanta — Saira Viola

Salt is one of the flavors that makes food taste good - salt, sugar and fat. So it's a natural thing for all chefs and cooks to add salt, because it enhances the flavor of the food. If you go out to eat, I guarantee you're going to be eating a lot of salted foods that you are going to have no idea. — Brett Hoebel

Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar. — Mickey Spillane

I was too miserable to take much consolation just from feeling good for a moment in a welter of shudders and salted, bloodstained tears. — Anne Rice

Russians will consume marinated mushrooms and vodka, salted herring and vodka, smoked salmon and vodka, salami and vodka, caviar on brown bread and vodka, pickled cucumbers and vodka, cold tongue and vodka, red beet salad and vodka, scallions and vodka-anything and everything and vodka. — Hedrick Smith

She got a confused, disgusted look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it. — Kathryn Stockett

I have made this one dish, a salted caramel chocolate ganache tart. It's so rich. You can only have a few bites! — Ed Oxenbould

Both Jews and Muslims believe that salt protects against the evil eye. The Book of Ezekial mentions rubbing newborn infants with salt to protect them from evil. The practice in Europe of protecting newborns either by putting salt on their tongues or by submerging them in saltwater is thought to predate Christian baptism. In France, until the practice was abolished in 1408, children were salted until they were baptized. In parts of Europe, especially Holland, the practice was modified to placing salt in the cradle with the child. — Mark Kurlansky

The smells arose from everything, everywhere, flowing together and remaining as a sickening, tantalizing discomfort. They flowed from the delicatessen shop with its uncovered trays of pickled herrings, and the small open casks of pickled gherkins and onions, dried fish and salted meat, and sweaty damp walls and floor; from the fish shop which casually defied every law of health; from the kosher butcher, and the poulterer next door, where a fine confetti of new-plucked feathers hung nearly motionless in the fetid air; and from sidewalk gutters where multitudes of flies buzzed and feasted on the heaped-up residue of fruit and vegetable barrows. — E.R. Braithwaite

The normal Christian Life is not supposed to be an exhausting wrestling match with a dead man, but is an abundant, joy-filled life with God, salted with an occasional season of strong resistance from our archenemy. — Kris Vallotton

A college education is not a quantitative body of memorized knowledge salted away in a card file. It is a taste for knowledge, a taste for philosophy, if you will; a capacity to explore, to question to perceive relationships, between fields of knowledge and experience. — Alfred Whitney Griswold

I'll be riding rough horses when you are salted away in a box. — Elmer Kelton

In a famous hoax, physicist Alan Sokal submitted an article to a leading journal of cultural studies purporting to describe how quantum gravity could produce a "liberatory postmodern science." The article, which parodied the convoluted style of argument in the fashionable academic world of cultural studies, was promptly published by the editors. Sokal announced that his intention was to test the intellectual standards of the discipline by checking whether the journal would publish a piece "liberally salted with nonsense." Sokal, "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies," April 15, 1996, — Dani Rodrik

Father,
you died once,
salted down at fifty-nine,
packed down like a big snow angel,
wasn't that enough? — Anne Sexton

Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef's ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water. — Rex Stout

Two peanuts were walking down the street, and one was a salted. — Tina Fey

The huntsman couldn't bear to kill Snow White, of course, so presented instead the organs of a pig. According to the original Grimms' tale the Queen inspected them, was satisfied, then ate them "salted and cooked. — Gavin Francis

Do you really like to read that much?" she asked as we ambled our way casually in the dark toward the piazzetta. I looked at her as if she had asked me if I loved music, or bread and salted butter, or ripe fruit in the summertime. "Don't get me wrong," she said. "I like to read too. But I don't tell anyone." At last, I thought, someone who speaks the truth. I asked her why she didn't tell anyone. "I don't know ... " This was more her way of asking for time to think or to hedge before answering, "People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don't always like who they are." "Do you hide who you are?" "Sometimes. Don't you?" "Do I? I suppose. — Andre Aciman

we have forgotten what night tastes like,
salted by full moon silver rupturing
the dark. we have forgotten how the skin
sings when the lunar fervor unfurls
across its follicles. — Beth Morey

This book could not have been written without the people of Mongolia, who allowed me to live among them for a time and who taught me their history over salted tea and vodka while the winter eased into spring. — Conn Iggulden

She came back pinked, sun-dazed and slow moving, with spume-salted hair and a sandy butt, displaying upon a narrow palm, with a child's innocence, a small and perfect white shell, saying in a voice still drugged with sun and heat, "It's like the first perfect thing I ever saw, or the first shell. It's a little white suit of armor with the animal dead and gone. What does it mean when things look so clear and so meaningful? Silly little things." I sat on a low stool, hating the phone. — John D. MacDonald

Somehow I had to turn the salted peanuts in the cigar box into petits fours. — Ruta Sepetys

I couldn't wait to get out of the car. The first thing I did was smell the air. I closed my eyes and took a breath, the biggest breath of my life, knowing I was taking the biggest breath of my life. I was taking a breath to smell Shepelevo. Breathing in Shepelevo was like hitting the right note on the piano. There was only one right note. When I was young, Shepelevo was the smell of nettles, of salted smoked fish, of fresh water from the Gulf of Finland, and of burning firewood, all wrapped up in one Shepelevo. As it had been, so it was. Across two continents, a dozen countries, twenty cities, three colleges, two marriages, three children, three books, and twenty-five years of another life, I breathed it and smelled the air. Nowhere else in the world had it. "Papa," I said, my voice breaking. "Do you think we could photograph the smell?" He gave me a look and then laughed. — Paullina Simons

The heat of his body surrounded her, overwhelming her. Suddenly his hold on her shifted. One arm captured her waist to drag her against his chest before his mouth descended on hers.
Heat and pleasure coursed through her at once, fierce and wild and uncompromising. She fell boneless against him, winding her arms around his neck dizzily, drinking in the salted taste of his mouth. — Jeannie Lin

This kiss was of a different taste. Instead of the raw, angry, tear-salted heat we had both felt before, it was a kiss of pure adoration and was very, very sweet. — Katlyn Charlesworth

Jesus used small things to describe his kingdom: a sprinkling of yeast that causes the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt that preserves a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden that grows into a great bush in which the birds of the air come to nest. Practices that used to be common - human sacrifice, slavery, duels to the death, child labor, exploitation of women, racial apartheid, debtors' prisons, the killing of the elderly and incurably ill - have been banned, in large part because of a gospel stream running through cultures influenced by the Christian faith. Once salted and yeasted, society is difficult to un-salt and un-yeast. Many — Philip Yancey

We are certainly descendents of the sea for our tears are salted and when we shed them on the jowl of time, the sea that has always been within us flows on our face. — Sorin Cerin

Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef's ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. — Rex Stout

POLO: Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space where the same calm reigns as here, the same penumbra, the same silence streaked by the rustling of learn. At the moment when I concentrate and reflect, I find myself again, always, in this garden, at this hour of the evening, in your august presence, though I continue, without a moment's pause, moving up a river green with crocodiles or counting the barrels of salted fish being lowered into the hold. — Italo Calvino

The saints, who are living sacrifices to God, must have salt in themselves, for every sacrifice must be salted with salt (Mark 9:49, — Matthew Henry

A chunk of seared albacore tuna, salted and peppered, then seared rare in a little oil in a hot skillet for just a minute or so per side, is the perfect addition to a savory plate of fried rice. Just slice the tuna across the grain and fan those mild, meaty slices over the top of the rice. — Tom Douglas

Our town was known for two things--no, three: salted fish, expertly dyed fabrics, and corruption. — Angela Elwell Hunt

Wall-to-wall masterpieces, after all, ought to be preferred to wall-to-wall decorative arts, even if the decorative arts are of the highest quality peppered and salted with dukes and tiaras. — Joseph Alsop

Lucy paused, hands full of green beans, her memory flashing back to the giant pots of crawfish on the stove. Her Mama's green eyes would squint into the steam, hair pulled back, a frown of concentration on her face. The salted water was flavored and ready to receive the "mudbugs" out of their burlap sacks. Other than an onion or maybe an ear of corn, if it wasn't alive when you threw it in, then it shouldn't be in the pot, she'd say. Did her Mama mind that Lucy didn't cook those old family recipes? Was she turning her back on her culinary heritage as surely as Paulette was?
She snapped the ends of the beans faster, glancing at the clock. This whole dinner was breaking her Mama's cardinal rule: don't hurry. She thought if a cook was in a hurry, you might as well just make a sandwich and go on your way. — Mary Jane Hathaway

One of the gabelle's most irritating inventions was the sel du devoir, the salt duty. Every person in the Grande Gabelle over the age of eight was required to purchase seven kilograms (15.4 pounds) of salt each year at a fixed high government price. This was far more salt than could possibly be used, unless it was for making salt fish, sausages, hams, and other salt-cured goods. But using the sel du devoir to make salted products was illegal, and, if caught, the perpetrator would be charged with the crime of faux saunage, salt fraud, which carried severe penalties. Many simple acts were grounds for a charge of faux saunage. In the Camargue, shepherds who let their flocks drink the salty pond water could be charged with avoiding the gabelle. — Mark Kurlansky

I have salted my hatred and cured it, stored it in a dark cellar of my mind against the day when I could let it be my only nourishment. The day is finally come, and I will tear into this meat and savor its taste. — Kevin Hearne

Words kept salted when they cannot be found fresh. Words kept fresh when they cannot be found clean. The words go deeper, far out of reach of vessels, blood vessels bursting, that thick humming in the head. To find the words, just out of reach, beyond my hand, the coral of it, the pearl of it, fish. — Jeanette Winterson

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

The beautiful courage of us, the hope that defines our kind, is that we go on, no matter how much life wounds us. We walk. We face the sea and the wind and the salted truth of death, and we go on. — Gregory David Roberts

How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much. — David Mitchell

ESTHER'S RECIPE FOR BOYFRIEND COOKIES Ingredients: 1 cup butter, softened ¾ cup granulated sugar ¾ cup brown sugar, packed 3 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla ¼ cup whole wheat flour ¼ cup soy flour 3½ cups quick-cooking oatmeal 1½ cups salted peanuts, coarsely chopped 1 cup carob chips Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla, beating until fluffy. Sift flours and add to creamed mixture. Fold in oatmeal, peanuts, and carob chips. Drop by teaspoon 2 inches apart on greased baking sheet and bake 8 to 10 minutes. Yield: 7 to 8 dozen cookies. — Wanda E. Brunstetter

But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh! sweet friends, hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits and salted pork cut up into little flakes! the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt ... we dispatched it with great expedition. — Herman Melville

Kissing her is like drinking salted water, he thinks. His thirst only increases. — Sara Sheridan

My trainer taught me, because he's Iranian, and that's a beautiful snack [pistachios]. I have some with me, actually, in my bag. You could eat that on a plane instead of the salted nuts. And a serving size a day is the size of your hand, not the size of your head! — Sandra Cisneros