Some children like to make castles out of their rice pudding, or faces with raisins for eyes. It is forbidden -- so sternly that, when they grow up, they take a horrid revenge by dying meringues pale blue or baking birthday cakes in the form of horseshoes or lyres or whatnot.

We ought to enjoy our food, we ought to take time and care and prepare it correctly, and we ought to have fun doing it and make it a communal event.

Sometimes ... it takes me an entire day to write a recipe, to communicate it correctly. It's really like writing a little short story.

I was kind of an innocent hayseed from a middle-class, utterly nonintellectual background.

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.

Wine is meant to be with food - that's the point of it.

When the war broke out I decided I would be very patriotic. Standing my full height. I presented myself to the Wacs and the to the Waves. And I was rejected - I was an inch too tall.