Sally > Sally's Quotes

“I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.”
― W.C. Fields

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
― Calvin Trillin

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”
― Laurie Colwin

“Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need.”
― Julia Child

“I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and say to myself "well, that's not going to happen”
― Rita Rudner

“I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

“I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.”
― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

“in the abstract art of cooking,
ingredients trump appliances,
passion supersedes expertise,
creativity triumphs over technique,
spontaneity inspires invention,
and wine makes even the worst culinary disaster taste delicious.”
― Bob Blumer

“Zip it kiddo. Don't ever admit you know a thing about cooking or it'll be used against you later in life.”
― Rebecca Wells, Little Altars Everywhere

“Cooking is not about convenience and it's not about shortcuts. Our hunger for the twenty-minute gourmet meal, for one-pot ease and prewashed, precut ingredients has severed our lifeline to the satisfactions of cooking. Take your time. Take a long time. Move slowly and deliberately and with great attention.”
― Thomas Keller, The French Laundry Cookbook

“For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“…food is capable of feeding far more than a rumbling stomach. Food is life; our well-being demands it. Food is art and magic; it evokes emotion and colors memory, and in skilled hands, meals become greater than the sum of their ingredients. Food is self-evident; plucked right from the ground or vine or sea, its power to delight is immediate. Food is discovery; finding an untried spice or cuisine is for me like uncovering a new element. Food is evolution; how we interpret it remains ever fluid. Food is humanitarian: sharing it bridges cultures, making friends of strangers pleasantly surprised to learn how much common ground they ultimately share.”
― Anthony Beal

“I want them to bite into a cookie, and think of me, and smile. Food is love. Food has a power. I knew it in my mind, but now I know it in my heart.”
― Jael McHenry (The Kitchen Daughter)

“Good kitchens are not about size; they are about ergonomics and light.”
― Nigel Slater, The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater

“TV cookery is very like internet porn - the overwhelming majority of its audience will never ever get to act out what's happening on screen.”
― skint foodie

“My message is, as it alway has been, moderation: meat as a main course on three days a week, eggs on one, fish on one other and some form of vegetarian meal on the rest constitute a perfectly acceptable, interesting and varied diet.”
― Delia Smith, One Is Fun!

“Give two cooks the same ingredients and the same recipe; it is fascinating to observe how, like handwriting, their results differ. After you cook a dish repeatedly, you begin to understand it. Then you can reinvent it a bit and make it yours. A written recipe can be useful, but sometimes the notes scribbled in the margin are the key to a superlative rendition. Each new version may inspire improvisation based on fresh understanding. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as all that, but such exciting minor epiphanies keep cooking lively.”
― David Tanis, Heart of the Artichoke: and Other Kitchen Journeys

“This explains why I've been making Recession Tea- letting a teabag steep for half the time it should so I can use it again for a second cup later.”
― Suzan Colon

“For is there any practice less selfish, any labor less alienated, any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for people you love?”
― Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

“This is something different again. A feeling of peace. The feeling you get when a recipe turns out perfectly right, a perfectly risen souffle, a flawless sauce hollandaise. It's a feeling which tells me that any woman can be beautiful in the eyes of a man who loves her.”
― Joanne Harris, Five Quarters of the Orange

“Cooking gives you the opportunity to meet the things you eat. You can touch each carrot or olive and get to know its smell and texture.You can feel its weight and notice its color and form. If it is going to become part of you, it seems worthy, at least, of acknowledgment, respect, and thanks. It takes much time and care in order for things to grow, and many labors are needed to bring these ingredients to the kitchen. There is a lot to be grateful for that takes place between the wheat field and the dumpling.”
― Gary Thorp, Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks

“How wonderful are the women and men in the world who feed us. Especially those who feed us with no salary. The mothers—I thought. The wives.”
― Katharine Hepburn, The Making of The African Queen Or How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind

“In its essence, a meal is a creative act that has its genesis in the mind of someone who cares enough to plan it, gather ingredients and labor over its creation.”
― Andi Ashworth, Real Love for Real Life: The Art and Work of Caring

“Well, every art requires appreciation, doesn't it? I mean people who paint, sculpt, or write books want an audience. that's the reason they're doing it for, and it's the same when you're a cook. You need somebody who savours it, not one who just says, 'Oh it's not bad.”
― Margaret Powell, Below Stairs

“I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one's hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as "Oh, I don't know how to cook...," or "Poor little me...," or "This may taste awful...," it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one's shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, "Yes, you're right, this really is an awful meal!" Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed -- eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile -- and learn from her mistakes.”
― Julia Child, My Life in France

“Sometimes it's good just to be seduced by the particular cheeses spread out in front of you on a cheese counter.”
― Nigella Lawson, How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food

“In normal life, "simplicity" is synonymous with "easy to do," but when a chef uses the word, it means "takes a lifetime to learn.”
― Bill Buford, Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany