Word: civets
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...civet cat, a nocturnal mammal similar to the weasel, is served in southern China in a variety of ways: roasted whole, braised in brown sauce or standing in for tiger flesh in the classic Dragon, Tiger and Phoenix Soup. (The dragon is snake meat, the phoenix ordinary chicken.) Some diners believe cooked civet has medicinal properties, such as a warming effect during the winter months...
...little Zimbabwean girl as she wakes up at dawn and walks miles through forests and grasslands to her school. Small children can have fun finding Manyoni's tiny figure in a grove of fig trees or waist-deep in riverside grass; older kids can learn to spot the civet cat, the yellow hornbill and the impalas, kudus and wildebeests she passes. The exceptional illustrations treat the vast African landscape with awe and love. Beautifully redrawn cave paintings, based on work by prehistoric artists who saw much the same landscape -- a rhinoceros, a fish and what might be an antelope -- serve...
...species. One story introduces a cheap carnival girl whose "act" requires her to spend all day being licked by a bat; another implicitly compares the hero's lickerish mother to a pleasure-loving lizard; a third likens the members of a platoon to an anteater, a peafowl, a civet cat and other zoo dwellers. To make so beastly a world bearable, an author should ensure that disgust is in his characters' minds and not in his own. At this Boyd does not invariably succeed. In the title story, for example, a G.I. in Saigon undresses a shy local...
...Xmas turkey or ye mince pie at all. They are instead preparing outlandish dishes that I can barely spelle or pronownce. These platters have such names as ortolans á la périgourdine, chausson de jambon au foie gras et truffes, polio in umido, media yemista, klephtiko charti, kalua pig, civet de lievre, poularde de Bresse a la demi-deuil, moussaka, agnello in vescica con ginepro, frit-tatas, beignets, gaufrettes, gazpacho, gefullte Schweinerippchen, pastello di pesce, dim sum, kaeng keao wan, shashlik, crudites, ratatouille, pho, ktapodi krassato, calfs head (aargh!) caillou, grenouilles, escargots, mousselines, and such exotick sweetmeats as oeufs...
Down through the centuries, no civet has been found to sweeten the toxic war between the sexes. Every seeming peace is breached: no cease-fire is ever signed. Perhaps that is why the theme has exerted such a powerful hold on the imaginations of dramatists, for the playwright must rely above all things on conflict. And the scourging struggle between a man and a woman whose love has turned to hate is probably without equal...