The sharing of food is the basis of social life, and to many people it is the only kind of social life worth participating in.

There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.

The best way to eat crabs, as everyone knows, is off newspaper at a large table with a large number of people.

No one who cooks cooks alone.

The table is a meeting place, a gathering ground, the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction. A person cooking is a person giving: even the simplest food is a gift.

That family glaze of common references, jokes, events, calamities-that sense of a family being like a kitchen midden: layer upon layer of the things daily life is made of. The edifice that lovers build is by comparison delicate and one-dimensional.

I do not believe that you have to spend a lot of money to eat well: it is hard to beat a plain old baked potato.