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

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.

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.

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.

A person cooking is a person giving. Even the simplest food is a gift.

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 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.