Thread: In a barrel of odds and ends

The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time.
When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to
wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the
victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them,--that
is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds
and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of
swaps around, and the things go better.

What could those highlighted passages mean? It’s from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I’ve never gotten around to reading it in my tender years and wouldn’t have now in my rugged ones if I hadn’t chanced on the audio book. Maybe it’s the narrator and probably Mark Twain himself, but I just love the book and thank God I didn’t read it at school because it would have killed the desire to revisit it today on my car’s MP3.player. I’ve listened it through three times already - it’s so much fun, gotten most of the gist I hope, but not being a native myself and the narrator relentlessly vice versa, I couldn’t get all of the gist audioly. Visually it’s not as simple as it might seem either, so above was the first of what promises to be many questions as regards the lingo of the book.
If you please!

Okay, this one is about cooking and some folks say it is also a metaphor.

Let's take the cooking part first.
Huck is saying that Widow Douglas cooked all the food separately and placed it on the plate separately as well. Now, when you cook, say a stew, you would put all the ingredients together in one pot (the meat, potatoes, carrots, onions (and all the odds and ends you have in your refrigerator) and so on) the flavors all combine to make it a better dish. And you serve it that way too. All the juice mingles together and you have great sauce for your bread!

Now for the metaphor.
In the story the races were segregated and the whites much more superior. Twain is hinting that if we combine the races and "all get along" so to speak, we will have a much more flavorful world and things will go better.

Well, politics aside for the time being, Huck would rather have widow put all the food in a big bowl, a barrel that is, thus, according to his liking, making it much tastier, right?
OK Another one:

I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality,
or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy--if you
are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all
over in upwards of a thousand places.

with the quality???

Originally Posted by alexB

Well, politics aside for the time being, Huck would rather have widow put all the food in a big bowl, a barrel that is, thus, according to his liking, making it much tastier, right?

I think Huck mean a barrel that people use to dispose garbage. He used to took food from that barrel before the widow adopted him and he seems to think that food was tastier.

Originally Posted by Полуношник

I think Huck means a barrel that people use to dispose of garbage. He used to take food from that barrel before the widow adopted him and he seems to think that the food was tastier.

If you don't mind

That would perfectly tie up all loose ends here. You really do remember that garbage barrel mentioned in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer?

If you are with the quality

I dare guess that quality here means people of high descent

Originally Posted by alexB

If you don't mind

Thank you.

That would perfectly tie up all loose ends here. You really do remember that garbage barrel mentioned in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer?[/QUOTE]
I liked the book and read it several times. Unfortunately it was many years ago. I vaguely recall that Huck either ate from a barrel or slept in a barrel.