We know that without food we would die. Without fellowship, life is not worth living.

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.

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.

Many people eat salad dutifully because they feel it is good for them, but more enlightened types eat it happily because it is good.

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.

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.

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.