Random Quotes and a recipe

Because I'm weeding books from a bedside chest (and other places . . . like the floor) to make room for a new bed frame, I have collected a few quotes I think worth sharing before I pass on the books. And, a recipe that I haven't tried. If you beat me to it, let me know how it turns out.

Quotes and a recipe!

Being in this recession feels like watching a nature film about the disintegration of a major polar ice shelf: Huge chunks of everything we thought was solid keep breaking apart and disappearing into an abyss, the depth of which no one knows.

from Cherries in Winter by Suzan Colon

"A little while later, we got pulled over by a state trooper. We thought, What now? He took a look at our license plate and said, 'Do you mean to tell me that you-all drove here all the way from New York in this car?' Daddy said, 'Yes, sir, we did.' And the trooper said, 'Well, God bless, and welcome to Florida.' "

from Cherries in Winter by Suzan Colon

Quick Apple Cake

1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1 cup sifted flour
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup butter or margarine [plus about 1 Tablespoon, melted]
2 apples, peeled and sliced
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, beat the egg with the milk. Sift together into a second bowl the flour, baking powder, salt and tablespoon of sugar. Cut the butter or margarine into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender or two knives until the mixture is the consistency of cornmeal. Stir in the egg and milk. Spread batter in a greased pan (8 x 8 x 2 in.).

Press apple slices into batter in rows. Brush top with part of the melted butter or margarine, sprinkle with the combined sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg and top with remaining melted butter or margarine. Bake in a quick oven until the cake leaves the sides of the pan and is nicely browned on top, twenty-five minutes or more. Serve warm or cool cut in squares.

--also from Cherries in Winter

Over the PA system, the captain came on again. "I'm sure y'all have noticed we've been circling. We're trying to use up some a that big ol' tank a gas before we come on in." He proceeded to tell us that there was a little ol' problem with getting the landing wheels to go down. That got everyone thinking. Now all you could hear was the vibration of the propellers slicing evenly through the dark, and the muffled terror of people mentally preparing to die. Only the Indians in the back appeared unconcerned; what did they care--they'd be back.

--from Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden

The thought of performing operations on numbers was much slower in coming because performing arithmetic requires a certain degree of abstraction. Anthropologists tell us that among many tribes, if two hunters fired two arrows to fell two gazelles, then got two hernias lugging them back toward camp, the word used for "two" might be different in each case. In these civilizations, you really couldn't add apples and oranges. It seems to have taken many thousands of years for humans to discover that these were all instances of the same concept: the abstract number, 2.

--from Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace by Leonard Mlodinow

I am living once again in the town where I grew up, having returned here several weeks ago in a state of dull torment for which the Germans probably have a word.

--from All New People by Anne Lamott