If you're a politician it's very useful to say that we can have economic growth and at the same time green the economy, but writers just have to face up to the fact that there are some fundamental tensions between the economic order and the biological order.

In a way, the more techniques you apply, the less important the ingredients are. It shouldn't be that way, but you can get away with it. But if you're highlighting this astounding artichoke, it's got to be an astounding artichoke.

But that's the challenge -- to change the system more than it changes you.

Don't ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.

The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.

The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.

Eating is a political act.