Each man must choose between corn and vengeance

Those fields were the special joy of Mark Ukacierra. They bore witness to the power of the Kanun. Whole clans allowed their fields to go uncultivated and themselves to suffer hunger so that the blood might be redeemed, and contrarily there were families who did just the opposite, putting off the redemption of blood from season to season and from year to year, to gather enough corn to be able to cloister themselves for a long time. You a free to choose between keeping your dignity as a man and losing it, the Kanun said. Each man must choose between corn and vengeance. Some, to their shame, chose corn, others, on the contrary, vengeance.

I. Kadare, Broken April (1982), 147

If cotton was the king of the antebellum South, rice was her queen

If cotton was the king of the antebellum South, rice was her queen for the three centuries of her engagement with slavery. With the revamp of Carolina Golden rice and other heirloom varieties and hybrids thereof, the narrative of rice in the South has been centred in the rebirth of one of its most important cash crops as a boutique ingredient.

M.W. Twitty, The cooking gene (2017), 241

You don't just make a gumbo, you build one

Now you can get everything you want, but back them a gumbo meant something - it told you what time it was.

You don't just make a gumbo, you build one. I don't just throw everything in the pot at once after the roux - it's the stock I make and the order I put the crab or shrimp or chicken in. You know a good gumbo because it has layers. You can taste each level the chef has put into it. The rice is important too; each grain has to be separate.

Chef Henderson in Mobile, quoted in M.W. Twitty, The cooking gene (2017), 196

With African American genealogy, it's more about social justice, regaining a heritage denied

This is not a hobby. Look, for many white Americans, genealogy is a hobby, it gets them out of the house, gives them something to enjoy researching. With African American genealogy, it's more about social justice, regaining a heritage denied. Every African American living today is stolen African history embodied.

M.W. Twitty, The cooking gene (2017), 85

It was a labor camp system for exiled prisoners of war and victims of kidnapping

The American plantation wasn't the quaint village community that you saw depicted in your history textbook. It was a labor camp system for exiled prisoners of war and victims of kidnapping.

M.W. Twitty, The cooking gene (2017), 5

He follows this up with a hammer of a metaphor about his grandmother who left Alabama at the earliest opportunity she could: 'Once she left Alabama, she never went back to Alabama. The heart of Dixie was her Poland' (Ibid. 56) 

Fruit that is bred primarily for sweetness at the expense of complexity of flavour

Gala is the apple that always seemed to me to encapsulate the unfortunate shift in recent decades towards fruit that is bred primarily for sweetness at the expense of complexity of flavour. Of course it is an apple that is extremely successful due to its attractive appearance and colour, and as it is grown all over the world in both hemispheres it can be in the supermarkets all year round. So it has become the dominant variety.

R. Blanc, The lost orchard (2019), loc 1,530

England had been ruled by men whose competing priorities made an unstable compound

The problem was that ever since Ireton and Pride had purged Parliament in 1649 to push through the trial and execution of the King, in which Oliver Cromwell had acquiesced, England had been ruled by men whose competing priorities made an unstable compound. The desire for more powerful and active parliaments, for social reform and for a quite different form of religion from the old Church of England could not easily be satisfied in a single government. The representatives of the people did not want the wholesale religious reform that the victors of the civil wars felt must happen and were unconvinced about many ingredients of the programmes for social and political reform. That the regime, or various versions of it, had endured so long owed a great deal to Oliver Cromwell himself.

A. Keay, The restless republic (2022), loc. 5,036