In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.

Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the single most significant trademarks of a culture.

In nineteenth-century Russia, sauerkraut was valued more than caviar.

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. Clarence Birdseye

A Wedding In Haiti is a great experience and its unaffected prose is as true a portrait of complex Haiti as you will find.

Fate likes to tease paranoids.'

Whenever I was called a gourmet, I suspected I was being accused of something at least slightly unpleasant. But that was before I heard the term "foodie." I am still not sure that a gourmet is a good thing to be, but it must be better than a foodie.