2
" As long as I can remember, male candy eaters have been ill-used, misunderstood, and denigrated, in films and on television, as weak, self-indulgent, soft, effeminate, undisciplined, and venal. Most of us have been driven underground. We eat our candy alone and on the sly. We never experience the intimacy of sharing candy with others—unless we have chosen our mates wisely. "
― Jeffrey Steingarten , It Must've Been Something I Ate: The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything
8
" We passionate eaters elevate, we ennoble the bestial impulse to feed into a sublime activity, into an art, into the art of eating. And some of us create what might even be called literature while we're at it. We transmute what animals do into what the angels would do if angels ate food, which I don't think they do, at least not in their official capacity. This is what Freud calls sublimation, the highest form of impulse control. Yes, Doctor, I plead guilty to an obsession with beauty, edible or otherwise. I am guilty as charged! "
― Jeffrey Steingarten , The Man Who Ate Everything
14
" nothing in my grandmothers’ repertory had prepared me for that first wondrous mouthful of fruitcake at the house of a friend from college. It was a moist, alcoholic plum pudding, full of dark, saturated medieval tastes and colors—currants, dates, and black raisins, aromatic orange peel, mace and allspice and nutmeg, brandy and molasses—aged for a year and then set aflame at the very last minute, carefully spooned out like the treasure it was, and topped with an astonishing ivory sauce made only of butter, sugar, brandy, and nutmeg. They called it, simply, hard sauce. No "
― Jeffrey Steingarten , The Man Who Ate Everything
