Food and Drink
We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man can not live without cooks.
He may
live without books, -- what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope, -- what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love, -- what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?
-- Owen Meredith
One could reasonably ask why a website ostensibly devoted to book collecting would reprint stanzas from a poem implying that civilized man can live without books. Of course, the critical reader will already have recognized Meredith's ironic tone, for surely the poet is not recommending that we live without books, nor that we should "live without conscience and live without heart."
But we all need to eat.
The fact is, we like food, and drink, and we like books about food and drink. We thought it would be a good idea to organize the pages in our website that have to do with food and drink under a central heading, and those pages are listed below. We hope to be adding to this section; but, then again, "what is hope but deceiving?"
Cheers!
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How to Carve, by George Routledge.
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Huevos Rancheros - a recipe.
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Old Cookery Books, by W. Carew Hazlitt.
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On Cheeses, by H. Belloc.
Thanks to the nice folks at Google, you can search our site for a particular term or phrase: