BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FOOD & DRINK

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHRASE "BRING HOME THE BACON"
Most on-line sources claim the phrase originated in 1104 in a small town in Essex, England. A local Lord and his wife dressed themselves as common folk and asked the local Prior for a blessing for not arguing after a year of being married. The Prior, impressed by their devotion, gave them a side of bacon (a ‘flitch’). After revealing his true identity, the Lord gave land to the monastery on the condition they awarded flitches to couples who proved they were similarly devoted.

"A regular contest was started with contestants coming from far and wide; the winners would bring home the bacon. This contest, called the Dunmow Flitch, still continues every four years. The tradition was certainly well known in England and therefore a plausible origin for the phrase. Chaucer mentioned it in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” (circa 1395) and there is a documented list of winners from the 1400’s in the British Museum.'

by Jonathan  Becher. MANAGE BY WALKING AROUND  Jonathon Becher. Com.   Jonathan dot Becher at Yahoo dot Com)


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EGGS IS EGGS

"Sure as eggs is eggs" Professor de Morgan suggests that this is
a corruption of the logician's formula 'x is x'. Notes & queries

E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 
(New York. Avenel Books, MCMLXXVIII)

**


ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND EGGS

“Hitch had his usual steak. I ordered an omelette. “Never ate an egg in my life,” said Hitch,..
    “Really, never?” I asked.
    “Never one egg. I suppose eggs are in some of 
the things I eat,” he said, “but I never could face 
a naked 
egg.”
      “I’ll change my omelette to something else.”
     “Oh, no, please, other people’s taste don’t
 bother me at all,” he assured me.
       “What about other kinds of eggs,” I asked.
 “How about caviar?”
         “As far as I’m concerned ,” he said, “it’s not another kind of egg. As you put it, it is an egg; or if you will, it are eggs.”

Joseph Cotton. Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. 
(San Francisco: Mercury House, Inc. 1987)
  **
"They say we are almost as like as eggs."
Shakespeare. Winter's Tale. 

**

CORN BEEF, NOT ON RYE, BUT ON WHITE BREAD WITH MAYONNAISE

‘I went home and ate sandwiches in the kitchen with 
my wife Ruth. She didn’t even make any of her usual
 funnies when I asked for corned beef on white.
 (You want to know what a Jew’s doing eating corned 
beef on white bread with mayonnaise, you go spend 
your childhood moving across country eating in diners 
and hash houses and railroad lunch counters and dumps 
you can’t even imagine, and you’ll find out. Catsup is hollandaise to me, and mayonnaise is mother’s milk, 
and dead packaged white bread is my staff of life.)

Milton Berle. 

Milton Berle: An Autobiography, with Haskel Frankel
(New York, Delacorte Press, 1974).
**
ON NAMING SANDWICHES

“Years ago at Twentieth Century Fox, the commissary 
began to name sandwiches after movie stars, as did 
some New York and Hollywood restaurants. There
was a Don Ameche sandwich , an Alice Faye sandwich,
and an Orson Welles (by contract his had to be a steak sandwich). The front office soon put a stop to this, 
reasoning that if stars start to select the food 
which bears their name, some will demand a caviar 
sandwich, others will ask for a sturgeon sandwich, and 
humble born chicken, and bacon-and-tomato sandwiches
 will go nameless.”

 David Brown. Let Me Entertain You (New York:
William Morrow & Co.)

**

THE INVENTION OF POPSICLES

In 1905, an 11-year-old boy named Frank Epperson 
unintentionally invented the popsicle when his cup 
of soda with a stick it in was left outside overnight 
and froze. He decided to call his invention "epsicles," a combination of his name and the word "icicles." 
Many years later, when he finally patented the frozen 
treat, his children talked him into renaming it 
"popsicles," because to them, the treats were 
"pop's icicles."

Source: Mental Floss | Date Updated: January 14, 2022 & TRIVIA GENIUS
**


HIGH PRAISE FOR LETTUCE
‘
“You are indeed a useful medicine to all tyrants 
and madness flees when touched with your divine 
coolness. Gird, I pray you, their heads with a 
better crown; and, if you can bring succour 
 them to this world. At your command, love, 
the greatest of tyrants, sometimes abandons  
inflamed hearts. It is a false love, for you 
do not attempt to expel true love, which has 
the title of a just king and deserves to be 
loved. That dog-star lust which slays green 
things with its fire and gives birth to monsters 
is rightly hated by you.”

Abraham Cowley. From "A Certain Crowley"
By W.H. Auden

**
FIG SUNDAY

"Palm Sunday is so called from the custom of eating
figs that day. The practice arose from the Bible story
of Zaccheus, who climbed up into a fig-tree to see'
Jesus."
 E. Cobham Brewer.The Dictionary of Phrase and
Fable (New York: Avenel Books, MCMLXXVIII
**

ALL THE NEWS THAT IS FIT TO EAT

John Horton -- the iron duke of Wellington, Kansas,
ate a sack of Portland Cement. He also ate newspapers
and catalogs.

Ripley's BELIEVE IT OR NOT (Garden City, NY: 1934)

If The New York Times printed its newspapers on
cabbage leaves or other vegetable matter, its
Sunday edition could feed a family of four for s
week.
**

WILLIAM BEARD

The chef William Beard
Took down his chopping board
& 400 onions. Chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop
(He did not know when to stop)

Louis Phillips