It is always wise to make too much potato salad. Even if you are cooking for two, make enough for five. Potato salad improves with age - that is, if you are lucky enough to have any left over.

No one who cooks cooks alone.

For the socially timid, the kitchen is the place to be. At least, it is a place to start.

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures.

The old days were slower. People buttered their bread without guilt and sat down to dinner en famille.

There is really a je ne sais quoi about turkey cooking - the air of festivity, the family squabbles, the constant basting - that does not apply to the turkey breast, which is, really, a convenience of food... A turkey without seasonal angst is like a baseball game without a national anthem, a winter without snow, a birthday party without candles.

It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again, and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life.