Important Food Quotes

“Did you ever stop to taste a carrot?  Not just eat it, but taste it?  You can’t taste the beauty and energy of the earth in a Twinkie.”

~ Astrid Alauda

“Sugar is a type of bodily fuel, yes, but your body runs about as well on it as a car would.”

~ V.L. Allineare

When the world wearies, and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.

~ Minnie Aumonier

“When baking, follow directions.  When cooking, go by your own taste.”

~ Laiko Bahrs

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts!”

~ James Beard

“A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.”

~ James Beard

“I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.”

~ James Beard

“Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables.  They probably get jet-lagged, just like people.”

~ Elizabeth Berry

“Custard:  A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.”

~ Ambrose Bierce

“What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets.  I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?”

~ Erma Bombeck, “No One Diets on Thanksgiving,” 26 November 1981

“Stored away in some brain cell is the image of a long-departed aunt you haven’t thought of in 30 years.  Stored away in another cell is the image of a pink pony stitched on your first set of baby pajamas.  All it takes to get that aunt mounted on the back of that pony is to eat a hunk of meatloaf immediately before going to bed.”

~ Robert Brault

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”

~ Anthelme Brillat Savarin

“And I find chopsticks frankly distressing.  Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven’t yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?”

~ Bill Bryson

“And, of course, the funniest food of all, kumquats.”

~ George Carlin

“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook”

~ Julia Child

“How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?”

~ Julia Child

“In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men’s underwear.”

~ Julia Child

“If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.”

~ Julia Child

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

~ Julia Child

“Cooking is one failure after another, and that’s how you finally learn.”

~ Julia Child

“You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces — just good food from fresh ingredients.”

~ Julia Child

“Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba.”

~ Julia Child

“Everything in moderation…including moderation.”

~ Julia Child

“Always remember: If you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?”

~ Julia Child

“It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate – you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.”

~ Julia Child

“I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make…. Usually one’s cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile…then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile.”

~ Julia Child, My Life in France

“Of course I made many boo-boos. At first this broke my heart, but then I came to understand that learning how to fix one’s mistakes, or live with them, was an important part of becoming a cook.”

~ Julia Child, My Life in France

“The American poultry industry had made it possible to grow a fine-looking fryer in record time and sell it at a reasonable price, but no one mentioned that the result usually tasted like the stuffing inside of a teddy bear.”

~ Julia Child, My Life in France

“Learn how to cook–try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!”

~ Julia Child, My Life in France

“If organic farming is the natural way, shouldn’t organic produce just be called “produce” and make the pesticide-laden stuff take the burden of an adjective?”

~Ymber Delecto

“It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby Dick.”

~ Annie Dillard

“If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate.”

~ Diogenes the Cynic

“The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.  I am not alone and unacknowledged.  They nod to me and I to them.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.”

~ Epicurus

“Cheese – milk’s leap toward immortality.”

~ Clifton Fadiman

“It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat.”

~ Robert Fuoss

“Think what a better world it would be if we all–the whole world–had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.”

~ Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“Memory. My poison, my food.”

~ Eduardo Galeano

“There are people in this world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

“Proust had his madeleines; I am devastated by the scent of yeast bread rising.”

~ Bert Greene

“Great food is like great sex.  The more you have the more you want.”

~ Gael Greene

“It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a home grown tomato”

~ Humorist Lewis Grizzard

“As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists.”

~ Joan Gussow

“Cooking is not about being the best or most perfect cook, but rather it is about sharing the table with family and friends.”

~ Skye Gyngell, My Favorite Ingredients

“Food is so primal, so essential a part of our lives, often the mere sharing of recipes with strangers turns them into good friends.  That’s why I love this community.”

~ Jasmine Heiler, about recipezaar.com

“What you eat is like how you pray:  Your Own Business. Not to be forced on others. Worship at Burger King or Chez Panisse, depending on your tastes, wallet and personal needs…Just don’t make me go there.”

~ Sheila Himmel

“A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.”

~ Aldous Huxley

“We load up on oat bran in the morning so we’ll live forever.  Then we spend the rest of the day living like there’s no tomorrow.”

~ Lee Iacocca

“A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.”

~ Samuel Johnson

“Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn.”

~ Garrison Keillor

“Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.”

~ Walt Kelly

“You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.”

~ Charles Kuralt

“…cooking, we know, has a way of cutting through things, and to things, which have nothing to do with the kitchen. This is why it matters.”

~ Nigella Lawson, How to Be a Domestic Goddess

“Sometimes…we don’t want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.”

~ Nigella Lawson, How to Be a Domestic Goddess

“Cake baking has to be, however innocently, one of the great culinary scams: it implies effort, it implies domestic prowess; but believe me, it’s easy.”

~ Nigella Lawson, How to Be a Domestic Goddess

“You could probably get through life without knowing how to roast a chicken, but the question is, would you want to?”

~ Nigella Lawson, How to Eat

“High-tech tomatoes.  Mysterious milk.  Supersquash.  Are we supposed to eat this stuff?  Or is it going to eat us?”

~ Annita Manning

“The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.”

~ George Miller

“We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.”

~ Alfred E. Newman

“As the days grow short, some faces grow long.  But not mine.  Every autumn, when the wind turns cold and darkness comes early, I am suddenly happy.  It’s time to start making soup again.”

~ Leslie Newman

“A small garden, figs, a little cheese, and, along with this, three or four good friends – such was luxury to Epicurus.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

“I just figured if I was going to make the world a better place, I’d do it with cookies.”

~ Ana Pascal, Stranger than Fiction

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”

~ Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story

“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.”

~ Michael Pollan

“At home I serve the kind of food I know the story behind.”

~ Michael Pollan

“In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel – it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.”

~ Michael Pollan

“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

~ Michael Pollan

“No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.”

~ Channing Pollock

“Salt is the difference between eating in Technicolor and eating in black and white.”

~ Jay Rayner, restaurant critic and novelist

“While the dough is rising, life goes on.”

~ Peter Reinhart, Brother Juniper’s Bread Book

“If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

~ Carl E. Sagan

“Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?”

~ Frank Scully, author

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”

~ George Bernard Shaw, The Revolutionist’s Handbook

“The story of barbecue is the story of America:  Settlers arrive on great unspoiled continent, discover wondrous riches, set them on fire and eat them.”

~ Vince Staten

“It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the pediatrician.”

~ Meryl Streep

“He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

“But I don’t want nutrition. I want food!”

~ Alice B. Toklas

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers.  The original meal has never been found.”

~ Calvin Trillin

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

~ Mark Twain

“A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.”

~ Mark Twain, Following the Equator

“Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

~ Mark Twain

“Cooking is like love.  It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”

~ Harriet van Horne

“My doctor told me I had to stop throwing intimate dinners for four unless there are three other people.”

~ Orson Wells

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

~ Thornton Wilder

“There is no sight on earth more appealing than the sight of a woman making dinner for someone she loves.”

~ Thomas Wolfe

“Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.”

~ Lin Yutang

MFK Fisher

“Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.”

“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.”

“There are many of us who cannot but feel dismal about the future of various cultures. Often it is hard not to agree that we are becoming culinary nitwits, dependent upon fast foods and mass kitchens and megavitamins for our basically rotten nourishment.”

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg until it is broken.”

“It is also a waste of good food, to serve it to new lovers.”

~ Serve It Forth

“Almost every person has something secret he likes to eat. He is downright furtive about it usually, or mentions it only in a kind of conscious self-amusement, as one who admits too quickly, “It is rather strange, yes – and I’ll laugh with you!”

~ Serve It Forth

“Sharing our meals should be a joyful and a trustful act, rather than the cursory fulfillment of our social obligations.”

~ Serve It Forth

“If time, so fleeting, must like humans die, let it be filled with good food and good talk, and then embalmed in the perfumes of conviviality.”

~ Serve It Forth

“He looks at her with dreadful wonder. How can she bear to do it? He could not, COULD NOT have given more than a crumb of his cooky to anyone. Perhaps even a crumb would be too big. Aunt Gwen is wonderful; she is brave and superhuman. He feels a little dizzy as he looks at the bitten cooky in his hand. How could she do it?”

~ Serve It Forth

“Too few of us, perhaps, feel that breaking of bread, the sharing of salt, the common dipping into one bowl, mean more than satisfaction of a need. We make such primal things as casual as tunes heard over a radio, forgetting the mystery and strength in both.”

~ Serve It Forth

“There are only three things I need, to make my kitchen a pleasant one as long as it is clean. First, I need space enough to get a good simple meal for six people. More of either would be wasteful as well as dangerously dull. Then, I need a window or two, for clear air and a sight of things growing. Most of all I need to be let alone. I need peace.”

~ Serve It Forth

“Once at least in the life of every human, whether he be brute or trembling daffodil, comes a moment of complete gastronomic satisfaction.”

~ Serve It Forth

“In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavor. We are as a nation taste-blind.”

~ Serve It Forth

“I almost never ate meat, mainly because I did not miss it.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “A is for Dining Alone”

“Snug misanthropic solitude is better than hit-or-miss congeniality.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “A is for Dining Alone”

“Escoffier as well as the Chinese would be astonished at what I did with beef bouillon and a handful of watercress or a teaspoonful of soy.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “A is for Dining Alone”

“Their approach to gastronomy is basically sexual, since few of them under seventy-nine will bother to produce a good meal unless it is for a pretty woman.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “B is for Bachelors”

“A complete lack of caution is perhaps one of the true signs of a real gourmet: he has no need for it, being filled as he is with a God-given and intelligently self-cultivated sense of gastronomical freedom….But there are some gastronomers who live only by the book. Most of them are happily unconscious of their loss.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “C is for Cautious”

“When I hear of a gourmet with exquisite taste I assume, perhaps too hastily and perhaps very wrongly, that there is something exaggeratedly elaborate, and even languidly perverted, about his gourmandism….I take it for granted, in spite of my good sense, that rare volumes on witchcraft have equal place with Escoffier in his kitchen library, and I read into his basic recipe for meat stock a dozen deviously significant ingredients.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “E is for Exquisite”

“The cold truth is that family dinners are more often than not an ordeal of nervous indigestion, preceded by hidden resentment and ennui accompanied by psychosomatic jitters.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “F is for Family”

“It must not simply be taken for granted that a given set of ill-assorted people, for no other reason than because it is Christmas, will be joyful to be reunited and to break bread together.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “F is for Family”

“Perhaps the nearest I come to gluttony with wine. As often as possible, when a really beautiful bottle is before me, I drink all I can of it, even when I know that I have had more than I want physically. That is gluttonous.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “G is for Gluttony”

“It is a curious fact that no man likes to call himself a glutton, and yet each of us has in him a trace of gluttony, potential or actual. I cannot believe that there exists a single coherent human being who will not confess, at least to himself, that once or twice he has stuffed himself to the bursting point, on anything from quail financiere to flapjacks, for no other reason than the beastlike satisfaction of his belly. In fact I pity anyone who has not permitted himself this sensual experience, if only to determine what his own private limitations are, and where, for himself alone, gourmandism ends and gluttony begins.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “G is for Gluttony”

“I want her to have a keen palate, inquisitive but never tyrannical. I want her to be able to eat at least one taste of anything in the world, from Beluga caviar to porcupine grilled with locusts, with social impunity and a modicum of inquisitive gusto.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “J is for Juvenile Dining”

“Or why not just cookery books? Why do I not just have what I think are the best work manuals and read them carefully when I need them (which I do constantly)? But no: I have everything from Mrs. Simon Kander’s Settlement Cook Book, through all of Sheila Hibben, to the latest throwaways from baking powder and refrigerator companies, with their flossy culinary triumphs in full Kodachrome. I have them in rows and piles. Fortunately I also have the common sense to limit my working manuals to a maximum of twelve inches of shelf space. But the rest!—they go on for countless feet, through European titles and Hawaiian and regional, through Susanne Roukhomovsky and Trader Vic and Andre Simon, some of them good and a lot of them absolutely phony except for perhaps one invaluable recipe or hint.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “L is for Literature”

“I look at my crammed shelves and feast with artful reflection, for no meal is good that cannot be reflected upon with pleasure.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “L is for Literature”

“We must hold out the torch to these taste-deafened friends of ours and promise them that they too can throw away a few, if not all, of their gastronomical hearing aids; they too, once they have learned how to walk among the pots and pipkins, can add saffron where Escoffier said thyme, or put kirsch instead of maraschino into a soufflé—once they have rightly learned what saffron tastes like, and what a soufflé is.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “Q is for Quantity”

“This (Basic Rule for Kasha) is admittedly a blatant example of rich-bitch deviation from a basically “poor” recipe. I know that I could be grateful for a handful of the beneficent grains, boiled in a little water. I know that someday I may want them that way, desperately. But meanwhile I like them in a cloud of added richness and savor and have no shame in saying so. However they may come, they will be good.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “Q is for Quantity”

“Often I thank him for having, no matter how accidently, taught me to realize the almost vascular connection between love and lobster pate, between eating and romance.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “R is for Romantic”

“…anything that involves plucking, cleaning, boning, simmering, seasoning, this and that, somewhat discourages me.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “S is for Sad”

“I was taught when very young that it is an insult to the cook to salt a dish before it has been tasted, and in spite of my adult knowledge of the reasons for such an unthinking gesture I still resent it when anyone at my table seasons something as soon as it is put before him.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “U is for Universal”

“There is, it seems, no substitute for NaCl. There is no faking its fine stimulus, its artful aid—except to use it with more respectful attention to its basic powers and dangers; except, perhaps, to taste it for a change, instead of taking it for granted.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “U is for Universal”

“Breadmaking, I have found, is a very personal thing, and what one cook does another cannot or will not do because it does not feel right. Fortunately for the cook’s vanity as well as the consumer’s appetite, good bread can never be anything but that, whether the dough rose twice or thrice, whether the yeast worked in a Yorkshire buttery or on a California cellar shelf. Good bread will forever send out its own mysterious and magical goodness, to all the senses, and quite aside from all the cookbooks, perhaps the best way to learn how to make it is to ask an old, wise, and, above all, good woman.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, “U is for Universal”

“…gastronomical perfection can be reached in these combinations: one person dining alone, usually upon a couch or hill side; two people, of no matter what sex age, dining in a good restaurant; six people, of no matter what sex or age, dining in a good home….A good combination would be one married couple, for warm composure; one less firmly established, to add a note of investigation to the talk; and two strangers of either sex, upon whom the better-acquainted diners could sharpen their questioning wits….(two beautiful, one intelligent, three of correlated professions such as architecture, music and photography)”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, pg 205, 206, 208

“…the usual should be made unusual; extraordinariness should cloak the ordinary.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, pg 207

“…a hand-count of cheeses on a board: buttery Gorgonzola, Camembert “more running than standing,” impeccable Gruyeres, Cheddar with a bite and a crumbling to it, and double-cream as soothing as a baby’s fingertip.”

~ Alphabet for Gourmets, pg 209

“[Breadbaking is] “one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony.  It leaves you filled with one of the world’s sweetest smells… there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.”

~ The Art of Eating

Proverbs, etc.

“If you ate pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry?”

~ Author Unknown

“A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.”

~ Old New York Proverb

“The more you eat, the less flavor; the less you eat, the more flavor.”

~ Chinese Proverb

“Fish, to taste right, must swim three times – in water, in butter, and in wine.”

~ Polish Proverb

When eating fruit, remember who planted the tree; when drinking water, remember who dug the well.

~ Vietnamese proverb

“We believe that this world would be happier if it had more good plain cooks.”

~ The Good Housekeeping Cook Book

EcoSalon’s favorite quotes about the simple pleasures of cooking and eating.

If we’re not willing to settle for junk living, we certainly shouldn’t settle for junk food. -Sally Edwards

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. -Voltaire

Vegetables are a must on a diet.  I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. -Jim Davis

Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn. -Garrison Keillor

I have long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime “associates,” food, for me, has always been an adventure. -Anthony Bourdain

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives. -Oscar Wilde

It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato. -Lewis Grizzard

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. -Luciano Pavarotti

When baking, follow directions. When cooking, go by your own taste. -Laiko Bahrs

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. -John Gunther

We plan, we toil, we suffer – in the hope of what?  A camel-load of idol’s eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. -J.B. Priestly

There is no love sincerer than the love of food. -George Bernard Shaw

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. -Calvin Trillin

Life is a combination of magic and pasta. -Federico Fellini

Soup is just a way of screwing you out of a meal. -Jay Leno

The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn’t waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it. -Mario Batali

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. -Harriet van Horne

A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe. -Thomas Keller

It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate – you know someone’s fingers have been all over it. -Julia Child

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts! -James Beard

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. -Doug Larson

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. -Virginia Woolf

Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements. -Marcel Boulestin

I’ll bet what motivated the British to colonize so much of the world is that they were just looking for a decent meal. -Martha Harrison

Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea. -Pythagoras

I prefer to regard a dessert as I would imagine the perfect woman: subtle, a little bittersweet, not blowsy and extrovert. Delicately made up, not highly rouged. Holding back, not exposing everything and, of course, with a flavor that lasts. -Graham Kerr

Great food is like great sex. The more you have the more you want. -Gael Greene

The belly rules the mind. -Spanish Proverb

For the first time I know what it is to eat. I have gained four pounds. I get frantically hungry, and the food I eat gives me a lingering pleasure. I never ate before in this deep carnal way… I want to bite into life and to be torn by it. -Anaïs Nin

Life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks. -Marilyn Wann