I love you, Larousse Gastronomique:
Human kind has used its intelligence to vary the flavour of drinks, which may be sweet, aromatic, fermented or spirit-based.
Awright human kind!
(From the entry on "Drink". Later we read that "family and social life also offer numerous other occasions to consume drinks for pleasure". It's true; I'm reminded of the last time I went home to visit family, and we consumed some drinks for pleasure, and I've met people occasionally specifically to consume drinks for pleasure, and occasionally ostensibly for other purposes but actually to consume drinks for pleasure (no one was fooled). Just the other day I attempted to convene a friend so that we could consume drinks for pleasure, but she could not be hailed, so I consumed a drink for pleasure by myself. One is rather reminded of Nancy Mitford's claim:
Our outlook is totally different from that of our American cousins, who have never had an aristocracy. Americans relate all effort, all work and all of life itself to the dollar. Their talk is of nothing but dollars. The English seldom sit happily chatting for hours on end about pounds.
And of Ogden Nash's reply, which begins:
Dear Cousin Nancy, / You probably never heard of me or Cousin Beauregard or Cousin Yancey, / But since you're claiming kin all the way across the ocean, we figure you must be at least partwise Southern, / So we consider you not only our kith and kin but also our kithin' couthern. / I want to tell you, when Cousin Emmy Lou showed us your piece it stopped the conversation flat, / Because I had twenty dollars I wanted to talk about, and Cousin Beauregard had ten dollars he wanted to talk about, and Cousin Yancey didn't have any dollars at all, and he wanted to talk about that.
)
Comments