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.

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.

We need time to defuse, to contemplate. Just as in sleep our brains relax and give us dreams, so at some time in the day we need to disconnect, reconnect, and look around us.

Woe to those who get what they desire. Fulfillment leaves an empty space where your old self used to be, the self that pines and broods and reflects. You furnish a dream house in your imagination, but how startling and final when that dream house is your own address. What is left to you? Surrounded by what you wanted, you feel a sense of amputation. The feelings you were used to abiding with are useless. The conditions you established for your happiness are met. That youthful light-headed feeling whose sharp side is much like hunger is of no more use to you.

I was taught in my Introduction to Anthropology [course in college], it is not just the great works of [hu]mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.

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.