Jonathan Miles

“You can't rent a car in Bermuda; about twenty miles long and two miles wide at its fattest, it deems itself too small for surplus traffic.”

“Think schnitzel, and you usually think veal or pork: pounded into tenderness, battered, and fried to a golden magnificence.”

“The rich flavors of duck meat have always attracted sweet, fruit-based sauces.”

“I'm either proud or embarrassed to say that I never took a journalism class in my life.”

“Without strenuous preplanning, road food is almost always bad food, sad food, chain food, clown food.”

“Wild geese have so much less fat than their domestic brethren that, as far as the kitchen is concerned, the two birds should be considered different species altogether - so much so that they require opposite roasting methods.”

“Grilling grapes may sound crazy, but the smoky, blistered char they get from a few minutes on the fire gives them a deep, winelike character.”

“I was born in Cleveland, Ohio; raised primarily in Phoenix, Arizona; and, after running away from home in my teens to play music and bouncing around a bit, settled in Oxford, Mississippi, which I consider more my home than anywhere else in the world.”

“The spectacle of a good bar fight, properly executed and healthily ended, is not merely annoying boorishness. The best of them - an admittedly minor slice - are shaded with the elements of high art.”

“Ask any deer camp old-timer for a foolproof recipe, and you're likely to encounter a lot of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. There is a reason for that: Mushrooms plus cream plus game meat adds up to a perfect trinity of flavors.”

“My childhood was basically divided between fishing and roaming the woods and hiding out in my bedroom. Maybe things would've turned out differently if I'd had a TV in there; who knows.”

“The best largemouth bass fishing I've ever encountered was at Lake Huites, a vast impoundment on the outskirts of the Sierra Madre Occidentals in Sinaloa, Mexico.”

“A salmi is an oldfangled, richly flavored game stew - often served, like chipped beef, over toast - that was a delicacy popular in the 1890s.”

“Had Stella been named anything else, and/or had we lived in any other city besides New Orleans, my desperate call would have been just my desperate call. In that alternate universe the neighbors might have peeked from behind the curtains but they wouldn't have laughed or, worse, joined in. But you simply cannot shout the name Stella while standing under a window in New Orleans and hope for anything like an authentic or even mildly earnest moment. Literature had beaten me to this moment, had staked its flag here first, and there was nothing I could do outside in that soupy, rain-drenched alleyway that could rise above sad parody. Perhaps if she'd been named Beatrice, or Katarzyna-maybe then my life would have turned out differently. Maybe then my voice would have roused her to the window, maybe then I could have told her that I was sorry, that I could be a better man, that I couldn't promise I knew everything it meant but I loved her. Instead I stared up at that black window, shutmouthed and impotent, blinking and reblinking my eyes to flush out the rainwater. "Stella," I whispered. The French have an expression: "Without literature life is hell." Yeah, well. Life with it bears its own set of flames.”

“The James Brown we saw tended to be the James Brown we chose to see: as the caped crusader of funk and soul, adored by millions, or as the face in a seemingly endless series of mug shots. The ways in which he appealed to and appalled different audiences made Brown a kind of national Rorschach test.”

“Aside from the martini, the mint julep may be the most iconic cocktail in America.”

“The perfect way for an angler who loves to cook to show off his fish is serving it whole, fresh off the grill, with crispy skin and moist flesh. Problem is, that's not usually how it happens.”