My father was in real estate, banking, and land management. As family life, it was very conventional, happy, and comfortable. We weren't wealthy, but we were well-off.

Fine #‎ wine is a living liquid ... Its life comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death.

Because I've done a lot of television, I'm sort of a generalist. I'm not a pastry cook, but I've had to learn a certain amount about it. I'm not a baker, though I've had to learn how to do it. I'm sort of a general cook.

You learn to cook so that you don't have to be a slave to recipes. You get what's in season and you know what to do with it.

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.

Cooking well doesn't mean cooking fancy.

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.