On Saturday mornings I would walk to the Flavor Cup or Puerto Rico Importing coffee store to get my coffee. Often it was freshly roasted and the beans were still warm. Coffee was my nectar and my ambrosia: I was very careful about it. I decanted my beans into glass...and I ground them in little batches in my grinder.

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.

When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally.

People who like to cook like to talk about food....without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.

To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.

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

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.