Our perception that we have 'no time' is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture.

It is the nature of human beings not to be able to leave nature alone.

We use eating as a medium for social relationships: satisfaction of the most individual of needs becomes a means of creating community.

Eating is aggressive by nature, and the implements required for it could quickly become weapons; table manners are, most basically, a system of taboos designed to ensure that violence remains out of the question.

food is never just something to eat.

Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves, desiccates but is wrested from the water. ... It preserves things from corruption - even as it corrodes other things with its bite. A little of it fertilizes the land; a lot sterilizes it.

A meal can be thought of as a ritual and a work of art, with limits laid down, desires aroused and fulfilled, enticements, variety, patterning and plot. As in a work of art, not only the overall form, but also the details matter intensely.