Octopuses are tough--and not just in the sense that they can take out sharks (both real and computer generated, as in Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus). They're almost pure muscle. With tridirectional muscles in the arms, they're a tad less supple than a well-marbled sirloin, to say the least (though certainly a lot more healthful). So over the centuries, people have been finding ways to make them a little easier on the jaw.The classic tactic is beating the bejesus out of them on rocks.

Nu var det bare to ting vi kunde få fat på i sjåen, det var flatbrød og sild. Og ikke engang dette kunde vi ta noget videre av uten at det ble savnet; men vi hadde en underlig mor som ofte vendte om igjen og lot som hun hadde glemt noget når hun kom på oss i sjåen. Og flatbrød og sild spiste vi selv mangen hemmelig gang utenfor måltiderne og med flatbrød og sild reddet vi mer enn en langveisfarende hund. (Blandt dyr, Stridende liv)

Right, I totally forgot. I can’t wait to taste the flummery.”“I’m not sure if I want to know what that is,” Manning said.“It’s a sort of jelly, but made into a mold that is shaped like a castle or a tower or just a”—Debbie Mae wiggled one hand—“big wobbly thing. The ragout of veal will be a hit, I’m sure. And the Roman punch will have to be changed a little bit. It’s usually lemon water and hot syrup with a lot of rum.

...no matter how rhapsodic one waxes about the process of wresting edible plants and tamed animals from the sprawling vagaries of nature, there's a timeless, unwavering truth espoused by those who worked the land for ages: no matter how responsible agriculture is, it is essentially about achieving the lesser of evils. To work the land is to change the land, to shape it to benefit one species over another, and thus necessarily to tame what is wild. Our task should be to deliver our blows gently.

A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.

I had a dream about you. We picked up where we left off, with leftovers, and I said this was the best second-time dinner I’ve ever had a first time. Oh, I had it before, when it was fresh and first made, but this was the first time I was having it for a second time, and that made it special, like a tie at the Olympics. Would both winners get medals made of two metals, gold and silver? That’s what I thought about as I chewed the food as I tried to remember what it tasted like the first time.

Wszyscy przeczuwamy niebezpieczeństwo. Nasze jedzenie powstaje kosztem ogromnego cierpienia.Gdy ktoś proponuje nam obejrzenie filmu o produkcji mięsa, spodziewamy się horroru. Możliwe, że wiemy więcej, niż nam się wydaje. Wolimy jednak odsuwać od siebie tę świadomość. Jedząc mięso, spożywamy udręczone zwierzę. Z białka pochodzącego od torturowanych stworzeń powstają nasze mięśnie.

The longer I think about a food industry organized around an animal that cannot reproduce itself without technical assistance, the more I mistrust it. Poultry, a significant part of the modern diet, is emblematic of the whole dirty deal. Having no self-sustaining bloodlines to back up the industry is like having no gold standard to underpin paper currency. Maintaining a natural breeding poultry flock is a rebellion, at the most basic level, against the wholly artificial nature of how foods are produced.

Dr. Pottenger theorized that there are similarities between malformationsfound in animals and those found in humans. My points here are that:1. I firmly believe there is indeed a direct connection between diet, health,sexual performance, and fertility for both men and women.2. The lack of whole foods and live nutrients combined with the abundance of synthetic chemicals in the typical American diet makes it a deficient and toxic diet, which causes impotency, sterility, disorders, and cancer in men and women.

Is it just a coincidence that as the portion of our income spent on food has declined, spending on health care has soared? In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent of national income on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on heath care has climbed to 16 percent of national income. I have to think that by spending a little more on healthier food we could reduce the amount we have to spend on heath care.

Ved kvældsmaten skulde familjen ha en dram, det var gammel takst, og Rinaldus var den som skulde skjænke i glassene. Det var ham et høitidelig øieblik han skulde holde karaflen med de store malte roser i sine små hænder. Alles øine vogtet på ham... Maten var den reneste fremmedmat, det var både lefse og sirup og et ægg til hver. Man kunde se at det var jul, for det var atpå kjøpet smør til lefserne. (Jul i Åsen, Stridende liv)

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.

In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product only to grinders who agree to not test their product for E. coli contamination--until after it's run through a grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources...It's like demanding of a date that she have unprotected sex with four or five other guys immediately before sleeping with you--just so she can't point the finger directly at you should she later test positive for clap.

While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. p.187

To the chefs who pioneered the nouvelle cuisine in France, the ancienne cuisine they were rebelling against looked timeless, primordial, old as the hills. But the cookbook record proves that the haute cuisine codified early in this century by Escoffier barely goes back to Napoleon's time. Before that, French food is not recognizable as French to modern eyes. Europe's menu before 1700 was completely different from its menu after 1800, when national cuisines arose along with modern nations and national cultures.