Jerry Stratton

NOODLE SOUP
eight servings
1 egg
Flour
Chicken broth

To one egg add one-half egg shell of water. Beat slightly. Add flour enough to make a very stiff dough. Knead. Then roll as thinly as possible. Dust with flour. Cut with noodle cutter, or roll and cut into thin strips. Unroll strips and add to seasoned chicken broth. Boil rapidly for about 5 minutes.

Noodles may also be cooked in chicken stew and served in place of a vegetable.

How would you like to escape to a world of wizards and warlocks, warriors and wenches—a world where gleaming cities raise their shining spires against the stars, sorcerers cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs, baleful spirits stalk through crumbling ruins, primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets, and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the bloody blades of broadswords brandished by heroes of preternatural might and valor? A “purple and golden and crimson universe where anything can happen—except the tedious”? And were, moreover, nobody ever so much as mentions the income tax, the school dropout problem, or the virtues and faults of socialized medicine?

In other words, do you feel like saying: “To hell with the world’s problems for a while! Let’s read something for fun”? Then you should read heroic fantasy, like the stories in this volume and its predecessor, Swords and Sorcery.

Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal’s Gyrator, Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and The Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere.

The iron statue came thrusting and slashing in, Fafhrd took the great sword on his, chopped back, and was parried in return. And now the combat assumed the noisy deadly aspects of a conventional longsword duel, except that Graywand was notched whenever it caught the chief force of a stroke, while the statue’s somewhat longer weapon remained unmarked.

Vegetable Soup
Take a soup bone and boil until thoroughly done.
At 11 o’clock add 2 T rice, 2 carrots, 2 potatoes, 1 onion. Boil until done.
Lucille Nordhausen

Mix in evening and make into a loaf. Put in cool place until morning. Slice and bake.

Of the many peoples of Earth, the Romans may have had the most boring religion of all. They had a pantheon of gods, patron-protectors of various families and tribes, but most of these gods were little more than names. Contact with the impressive stories of Greek mythology and the thrilling art that accompanied them—a contact that began as a result of the Greek colonization of southern Italy—encouraged the Romand to dress up their own religion in Greek fashions. Their high God, Jupiter, they reinterpreted as a variant of Greek Zeus. Roman Venus was assigned the Greek stories about Aphrodite, Juno took on the stories of Hera, Minerva those of Athena, Mars those of Ares, Vulcan those of Hephaestus, and so far. This instant myth making gave the Roman gods faces as well as stories and considerably enlivened Roman imagination.

I am not merely an instance of Man, I am this particular, unrepeatable man, who never existed before and will never exist again.

Coffee is never flavored; after all, coffee is a flavor… the protocol around coffee in Italy is strict, and experimenting is left to foreigners.

Bars in the center of the city [Milan] serve meals that people gulp in piedi come un cavallo, or standing like a horse.

Maurizio rarely smiles or speaks when fixing espresso; he must concentrate for perfection. The ritual begins as the barista bangs out the old grounds but never washes the coffee machine with soap since the flavor would be compromised. He loads it up with fresh grounds and packs it hard. The steam billows around the machine, and the black elixir dribbles down into a pair of heated tazze (cups).

He presents the tiny cups with only a thimble full of espresso lining the bottom. Everyone dumps in at least a teaspoon of sugar, which somehow dissolves in the already thick brew. Stirring the sugar is the longest part of the process and requires an absolutely bored expression, as though each swirl of the spoon might brings its stirrer closer to the grave.

The word safe doesn’t really exist in Italian. Sicuro is just “secure.” My students suggest non pericoloso (not dangerous) but add that everything has a certain amount of danger, so “safe” is a paradox.