Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Satay Sashay

From the book description at the Oxford University Press:
Seasoned generously with literary wit, The Diner's Dictionary is a veritable feast, tracing the origins and history of over 2,300 gastronomical words and phrases. John Ayto spreads across our table a veritable cornucopia, from common fruits and vegetables (apples, cherries, apricots, and broccoli, to name a few), to exotic foreign dishes such as gado-gado, nasi goreng, satay, and dashi, and even junk foods such as doughnuts, brownies, and candy. Thoroughly revised, the second edition boasts 1,000 new entries, including the word origins of affogato, bento, cava, goji berry, jalfrezi, mocktail, rugelach, vache qui rit, and zigni. In addition, Ayto has expanded the coverage of vocabulary from foreign cuisines, such as Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, and parts of South America.
How's that for an intro to The Diner's Dictionary:  Word Origins of Food and Drink by John Ayto?  Ayto's other contributions to literature include The Dictionary of Slang and the Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms.

Quirky word references, food, wit?  How could this be bad?

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