16 September 2008

Martinis and Wry Chicken

Okay, enough moaning for the nonce.

Do you drink martinis?  I prefer scotch (on the rocks) or a gin & tonic, heavy on the lime.  But I loved this sentence from The Dud Avocado

We had dry martinis; great wing-shaped glasses of perfumed fire, tangy as the early morning air.

Kind of makes you want one, right?

A couple of pages later, they follow the martinis with some food:

We were very hungry but we didn't want to leave, so we ate there.  We had chicken sandwiches; boy, the chicken of the century.  Dry, wry, and tender, the dryness sort of rubbing against your tongue on soft, bouncy white bread with slivers of juicy wet pickles.  Then we had some very salty potato chips and some olives stuffed with pimentos and some Indian nuts and some tiny pearl onions and some more popcorn.  Then we washed the whole thing down with iced martinis and finished up with large cups of strong black coffee and cigarettes.  One of my really great meals.

I didn't love the book, and the first 2/3 was kind of a slog, but by the end she was sparkling right along.  And those couple of passages about food jumped right off the page and grabbed me by the tastebuds.  Imagine describing your chicken as "wry".  

Mmm.  I love food writing that really makes you taste the food.  Mmm.  It's especially nice to find such luscious descriptions of food in a novel.  Mmm.

8 comments:

MamaGeek @ Works For Us said...

Mmmm.

I find I'm partial to ANYTHING containing 'tini' in it. Well, except tanktini.

Mental P Mama said...

I loooove a dirty martini. And now I want one so very much.

Janet said...

take some of those "olives stuffed with pimentos and some tiny pearl onions", plop 'em into a nice dirty martini...heaven!

That writing is awesome :-)

Anonymous said...

That is good writing...really.

Woman in a Window said...

"We had dry martinis; great wing-shaped glasses of perfumed fire, tangy as the early morning air."
See? You must be sophistocated. I'd rather have something that tasted like bubble gum or just makes you fart. Oh, beer. That sounds brilliant!

flutter said...

I am so hungry.

Jenn @ Juggling Life said...

Mmmm.

Vodka Mom said...

well.......I have a martini RIGHT HERE! What a co-ink-i-dink.