Day 40: Ah, you mean you can't very well take less.-- The March Hare

"Ah, you mean you can't very well take less."-- The March Hare
"Yes, you can always take more than nothing."-- The Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland 

These two quotes go hand in hand. After Alice politely turns down a cup of tea by staying she "can't very well take more" since she hadn't had her first cup, the two inform her of this gem.

Quite frankly, those two make a lot of sense. From an early age, we're taught that nothing means zero or that something was there but it is not anymore, among other meanings. Since nothing is the lowest of the low, you can only go up from there because once you have one thing, like say a cup of tea, you no longer have nothing since 1 is more than nothing. 

Unless you're working a math problem that deals with negative numbers, you're not going to encounter less than nothing in the real world. You either have something or you don't have anything. For example, let's say you want sugar cookies but don't have any at home. You can either go out and buy them or go buy the ingredients to make them. Either way, you'll have more than the nothing you had before you got them. In Alice's case, she didn't get to take her first sip of tea before the two called for a new cup. So she had nothing to start with and got to drink her second cup which was her first because she got to take a sip from it. 

So until next time keep cooking with character!