Nature was indeed at her artistic best when she created the nutmeg, a delight to the eye in all its avatars, from the completely garbed to nudity.

The hard-drinking newspaperman is, or used to be, a stock character of fiction. Now he is being phased out of literature just as he is being phased out of life.

The oat is the Horatio Alger of cereals, which progressed, if not from rags to riches, at least from weed to health food.

Every country possesses, it seems, the sort of cuisine it deserves, which is to say the sort of cuisine it is appreciative enough to want. I used to think that the notoriously bad cooking of the English was an example to the contrary, and that the English cook the way they do because, through sheer technical deficiency, they had not been able to master the art of cooking. I have discovered to my stupefaction that the English cook that way because that is the way they like it.

The turkey has a destiny which ends on San Martino's day.

It is the destiny of mint to be crushed.

The turnip is a capricious vegetable, which seems reluctant to show itself at its best.