Preserved Quotes

“I had thought fermentation was controlled death. Left alone, a head of cabbage molds and decomposes. It becomes rotten, inedible. But when brined and stored, the course of its decay is altered. Sugars are broken down to produce lactic acid, which protects it from spoiling. Carbon dioxide is released and the brine acidifies. It ages. Its color and texture transmute. Its flavor becomes tarter, more pungent. It exists in time and transforms. So it is not quite controlled death, because it enjoys a new life altogether.
The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread, to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes, and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me. So that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me, in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled, dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you. It went with the noiselessness of late night, and only the crickets chirping, the frogs sobbing off in the moist swampland. One of those things in a big jar that makes your stomach jump as it does when you see a preserved arm in a laboratory vat.”
― Ray Bradbury, The October Country

“Three children lay on the rocks at the water's edge.
A dark-haired girl, two boys, slightly older.
This image is caught forever in my memory, like some fragile creature preserved in amber.”
― Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest

“He lifted one bottle into the light.
" 'GREEN DUSK FOR DREAMING BRAND PUREE NORTHERN AIR,' " he read. " 'Derived from the atmosphere of the white Arctic in the spring of 1900, and mixed with the wind from the upper Hudson Valley in the month of April, 1910, and containing particles of dust seen shining in the sunset of one day in the meadows around Grinnell, Iowa, when a cool air rose to be captured from a lake and a little creek and a natural spring.'
"Now the small print," he said. He squinted. " 'Also containing molecules of vapor from menthol, lime, papaya, and watermelon and all other water-smelling, cool-savored fruits and trees like camphor and herbs like wintergreen and the breath of a rising wind from the Des Plaines River itself. Guaranteed most refreshing and cool. To be taken on summer nights when the heat passes ninety.' "
He picked up the other bottle.
"This one the same, save I've collected a wind from the Aran Isles and one from off Dublin Bay with salt on it and a strip of flannel fog from the coast of Iceland."
He put the two bottles on the bed.
"One last direction." He stood by the cot and leaned over and spoke quietly. "When you're drinking these, remember: It was bottled by a friend. The S.J. Jonas Bottling Company, Green Town, Illinois- August, 1928. A vintage year, boy... a vintage year.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“So, your cobbler traveled from the South of the US to the south of the Iberian Peninsula! I let the peaches sit in the juice of some sour oranges and added apricots, and the patrons at the restaurant I'm working at gobbled it up before the lunch rush was over!”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, With the Fire on High

“The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants consists of around four thousand painstakingly accurate fire-blown glass and hand-painted specimens. A German father-and-son team had made them, around the turn of the nineteenth century, as a commission from the university. They were the answer to a problem: How do you preserve the impossible to preserve? Or, in other words, how do you stop time and death? Could there have been a more propitious place to begin the company that would become Unfair Games? What, after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“A man is preserved by prayer.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The lemons I used were pickled in salt for over two weeks!"
"I knew it! You used preserved lemons!"
A North African condiment, salted lemons are made by pickling whole lemons in salty brine for weeks or months. Because the entire lemon, including the peel, is pickled parts of it can be used to emphasize just about any flavor...
... be it tartness, saltiness, bitterness, freshness or mellowness!
"I added the zest and pickling brine in my sponge cake, pralines and even the sauce! Its mild tartness should make the sweetness of the semifreddo stand out even more!”
― Yūto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 10 [Shokugeki no Souma 10]

“The scent from the open box was starting to come alive now. It is a scent I have come to know well; the dusty scent of cacao beans hoarded in cedarwood caskets; the spicy scent of cacao liqueur whisked to a froth in an abalone cup; the hot scent of chilies, and cumin, and mace; the sweet and rich vanilla scent of innocence and childhood. Chocolate is like wine, I think. Like wine, it unleashes the tongue. Like wine, it has its rituals. Like wine, it opens the mind to different possibilities.”
― Joanne Harris, Vianne