words of culinary wisdom          

If the soup had been as warm as the wine, if the wine had been as old as the turkey, and if the turkey had had a breast like the maid, it would have been a swell dinner. Duncan Hines

When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping.Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking. Elaine Boosler 

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart. Erma Bombeck

Happy and successful cooking doesn't rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate and needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life. Georges Blanc, Ma Cuisine des Saisons

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. Calvin Trillin

Aioli (garlic mayonnaise) epitomizes the heat, the power, and the joy of the Provençal sun, but it has another virtue - it drives away flies. Frédéric Mistral (1891)

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness. Jane Austen

Good soup is one of the prime ingredients of good living. For soup can do more to lift the spirits and stimulate the appetite than any other one dish. Louis P. De Gouy, The Soup Book (1949)

Good bread is the great need in poor homes, and oftentimes the best appreciated luxury in the homes of the very rich. A Book for A Cook, The Pillsbury Co. (1905)

It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can't do it. John Kenneth Galbraith

Salt is the policeman of taste: it keeps the various flavors of a dish in order and restrains the stronger from tyrannizing over the weaker. Margaret Visser, 20th century author

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. Plutarch (AD 46-120) Greek biographer and philosopher

He was a wise man who invented beer. Plato (Greek philosopher) 428- 347 BC

To be always intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it -- this is as if a man should put off eatingand drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed. Sir Walter Scott

Go along, go along quickly, and set all you have on the table for us. We don't want doughnuts, honey buns, poppy cakes, and other dainties; bring us a whole sheep, serve a goat and forty-year old mead! And plenty of vodka, not vodka with all sorts of fancies, not with raisins and flavorings, but pure foaming vodka, that hisses and bubbles like mad. Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. Wallace Stevens (1880-1955)

Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

The duty of a good Cuisinier is to transmit to the next generation everything he has learned and experienced.    Fernand Point, 1941

Oysters are the most tender and delicate of all seafoods. They stay in bed all day and night. They never work or take exercise, are stupendous drinkers, and wait for their meals to come to them. -Hector Bolitho, 'The Glorious Oyster'(1960)

There is no such thing as a little garlic.  ~A. Baer

If one consults enough herbals...every sickness known to humanity will be listed as being cured by sage. Varro Taylor, Ph.D. (herb expert)

Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration. Charles Dudley Warner, 'My Summer in a Garden' (1871)

Anyone who eats three meals a day should understand why cookbooks out-sell sex books three to one. L. M. Boyd 

Red onions are especially divine. I hold a slice up to the sunlight pouring in through the kitchen window, and it glows like a fine piece of antique glass. Cool watery-white with layers delicately edged with imperial purple...strong, humble, peaceful...with that fiery nub of spring green in the center...Mary Hayes Grieco, ‘The Kitchen Mystic’

I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he is unable to have a chicken in his pot every Sunday. -Henry IV of France 

I would like to find a stew that will give me heartburn immediately, instead of at three o'clock in the morning.  ~John Barrymore

Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables.  They probably get jet-lagged, just like people.  ~Elizabeth Berry

No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.  ~Channing Pollock

I doubt the world holds for anyone a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice cream. -Heywood Broun 

Red meat is not bad for you.  Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you!  ~Tommy Smothers

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

The perfect lover is one who turns into pizza at 4am. Charles Pierce

The rich would have to eat money if the poor did not provide food. Russian proverb

Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal. Voltaire

I've been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I've lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet. Erma Bombeck

Chemicals, n:  Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.  ~Author Unknown

Everything you see I owe to spaghetti. Sophia Loren

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer. Frank Zappa

Recipes are like poems; they keep what kept us. And good cooks are like poets; they know how to count. Henri Coulette

It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat.  ~Robert Fuoss

As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices:  take it or leave it.  ~Buddy Hackett

I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex. - Erma Bombeck

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office. Fitness Expert Covert Bailey

Do not overcook this dish. Most seafoods...should be simply threatened with heat and then celebrated with joy. Jeff Smith (The Frugal Gourmet)

Ponder well on this point: the pleasant hours of our life are all connected by a more or less tangible link, with some memory of the table. Charles Pierre Monselet

The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven, I can scarcely expect bread. Thomas Jefferson

Pigs with character farmed by people with character will tend to produce pork with character. -Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The River Cottage Meat Book 

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.  - Ben Franklin

There are always mysteries in old cookbooks, because even the most unpoetical depend on the existence of a living tradition for the cook to know when the result is correct. -Charles Perry, from In Taste: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery 

Welcome to the Church of the Holy Cabbage.  Lettuce pray.  ~Author Unknown

Edible, adj.:  Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.  ~Ambrose Bierce

Of all smells, bread; of all tastes, salt. George Herbert, English poet (1593-1633)

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.  ~Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story

The fine arts are five in number, namely: painting, sculpture, poetry, music and architecture, the principal branch of the latter being pastry. - Antonin Careme 

After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual "food" out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking 30 or 40 postage stamps.  ~Miss Piggy

The bagel, an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis.  ~Beatrice & Ira Freeman

These goat sausages sizzling here in the fire-

We packed them with fat and blood to have for supper.

Now, whoever wins this bout and proves thr stronger,

Let that man step up and take his pick of the lot! - Homer, The Odyssey 

You can say this for ready-mixes - the next generation isn't going to have any trouble making pies exactly like mother used to make.  ~Earl Wilson

The belly rules the mind.  ~Spanish Proverb

I would give all my fame for a pot of ale. Shakepeare, King henry v - act 1, scene 3

My favorite animal is steak.  ~Fran Lebowitz

Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply, 'In my mother's womb, probably as a result of the oysters and champagne - the food of Aphrodite. Isadora Duncan, American dancer (1878-1927)

When baking, follow directions.  When cooking, go by your own taste.  ~Laiko Bahrs

We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.  ~William Osler

If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate.  ~Diogenes the Cynic

Show me another pleasure like dinner which comes every day and lasts an hour. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838)

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.  ~G.K. Chesterton

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.  ~John Gunther

The most dangerous food is wedding cake. James Thurber (1894-1961)

Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.  ~Josh Billings

Biochemically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate.~ John Milton

Congealed fat is pretty much the same, irrespective of the delicacy around which it is concealed. Clement Freud, Freud on Food (1978)

Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.  ~Fran Lebowitz

A bagel is a doughnut with the sin removed.  ~George Rosenbaum

Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable of anything else that is great.  ~Henry IV of France

Escargot' is French for 'fat crawling bag of phlegm'. Dave Barry

Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography.  ~Robert Byrne

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.  ~Lewis Grizzard

If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens. Robert Browning (1812-1889) English poet

Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it I wash my mouth out with chocolate. ~ Charles M. Schultz

Central heating, French rubber goods and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man's ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and, of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful. M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992) Serve It Forth (1937)

 In Mexico we have a word for sushi:  bait.  ~José Simons

I don't think America will have really made it until we have our own salad dressing.  Until then we're stuck behind the French, Italians, Russians and Caesarians.  ~Pat McNelis

Chili represents your three stages of matter:  solid, liquid, and eventually gas.  ~Roseanne, "Don't Make Me Over," May 1992, spoken by character Dan Conner

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness. Elsa Schiaparelli

The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it. Jackie Gleason

The dangerous person in the kitchen is the one who goes rigidly by weights, measurements, thermometers and scales. I would say once more that all these scientific implements are not of much use, the only exception being for making pastry and jams, where exact weights are important. X. Marcel Boulestin, chef, food writer

An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful before all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? the exterior is not persuasive. Henry Ward Beecher

When one has tasted watermelon he knows what the angels eat. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910)

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza. Dave Barry

Boiled cabbage a l'Anglaise is something compared with which steamed coarse newsprint bought from bankrupt Finnish salvage dealers and heated over smoky oil stoves is an exquisite delicacy. William Connor (aka 'Cassandra') British columnist

If organic farming is the natural way, shouldn't organic produce just be called "produce" and make the pesticide-laden stuff take the burden of an adjective?  ~Ymber Delecto

My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far I've finished two bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.~ Dave Barry

The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than 30 percent of the people in the world. Robert Orben 

A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.  ~Old New York Proverb

Onions can make even heirs and widows weep. Benjamin Franklin

Public and private food in America has become eatable, here and there extremely good. Only the fried potatoes go unchanged, as deadly as before. Luigi Barzini, O America

Non-cooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, well, so is the ballet. - Julia Child 

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Large, naked raw carrots are acceptable as food only to those who lie in hutches eagerly awaiting Easter.  ~Fran Lebowitz

It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician.  ~Meryl Streep

I love drinking now and then. It defecates the standing pool of thought. A man perpetually in the paroxysm and fears of inebriety is like a half-drowned stupid wretch condemned to labor unceasingly in water; but a now-and-then tribute to Bacchus is like the cold bath, bracing and invigorating. Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish Poet

Eat little, sleep sound.  ~Iranian Proverb

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.  I am not alone and unacknowledged.  They nod to me and I to them.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man taking basil from a woman will love her always. Sir Thomas Moore

Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)

The way you cut your meat reflects the way you live.  ~Confucius

Worries go down better with soup.  ~Jewish Proverb

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet. What happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it? Steven Wright

Britain is the only country in the world where the food is more dangerous than the sex. Jackie Mason

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.  ~Fran Lebowitz

I eat merely to put food out of my mind.  ~N.F. Simpson

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will. Robert Frost

Bread deals with living things, with giving life, with growth, with the seed, the grain that nurtures. Its not coincidence that we say bread is the staff of life. Lionel Poilne

I take a vitamin every day.  It's called a steak.  ~Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick, Kicking & Screaming, 2005, spoken by the character Buck Weston

Dyspepsia is the remorse of a guilty stomach.  ~A. Kerr

Nine out of ten people like chocolate. The tenth person always lies. ~ John Q. Tullius

This is every cook's opinion -
no savory dish without an onion,
but lest your kissing should be spoiled
your onions must be fully boiled.
~Jonathan Swift

Sleep 'til you're hungry, eat 'til you're sleepy.  ~Author Unknown

Watermelon - it's a good fruit.You eat, you drink, you wash your face. Enrico Caruso

There's fennel for you, and columbines; there's rue for you; and here's some for me; we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Chowder breathes reassurance.  It steams consolation.  ~Clementine Paddleford

A nickel's worth of goulash beats a five dollar can of vitamines.  ~Martin H. Fischer

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer. Dave Barry

We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.  ~Alfred E. Newman

Not all men who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we aren't poets. unknown

If God had intended us to follow recipes, he wouldn't have given us grandmothers.
~Linda Henley

An empty belly is the best cook.  ~Estonian Proverb

Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers, Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet - act 4, scene 2

There is nothing like a morning funeral for sharpening the appetite for lunch. Arthur Marshall

It is, in my view, the duty of an apple to be crisp and crunchable, but a pear should have such a texture as leads to silent consumption.  ~Edward Bunyard

If we're not willing to settle for junk living, we certainly shouldn't settle for junk food.  ~Sally Edwards

If junk food is the devil, then a sweet orange is as scripture.  ~Audrey Foris

Rice is born in water and must die in wine.  ~Italian Proverb

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will.  ~Robert Frost

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialistic, otherworldly, New Age spiritual types.  But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu and seaweed slime.  ~Edward Abbey

Forget love... I'd rather fall in chocolate! ~ Author Unknown

The breakfast slimes, angel food cake, doughnuts and coffee, white bread and gravy cannot build an enduring nation.  ~Martin H. Fischer

When you cook it should be an act of love.To put a frozen bag in the microwave for your child is an act of hate. Raymond Blanc

Bread, milk and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), 'The Seer'

He felt it was a better use of his time to eat his way steadily through his steak and kidney pie, then a large plateful of his favorite treacle tart. -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter & the Order of The Phoenix 

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?  ~Lin Yutang

I understand the big food companies are developing a tearless onion. I think they can do it -- after all, they've already given us tasteless bread. Robert Orben

Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life.  But I go marching on.  ~George Bernard Shaw

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.  ~James Beard

We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what?  A camel-load of idol's eyes?  The title deeds of Radio City?  The empire of Asia?  A trip to the moon?  No, no, no, no.  Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs.  ~J.B. Priestly

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.  ~Charles Kuralt

Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes

What would life be like without homegrown tomatoes

Only two things that money can't buy

That's true love and home grown tomatoes.”

John Denver, 'Home Grown Tomatoes' 

I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly.  Tuna fish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.  ~Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Hunger is the best sauce in the world.  ~Cervantes

How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex? Julia Child

Once in a while I say, 'Go for it' and I eat chocolate. ~ Claudia Schiffer

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.  ~George Bernard Shaw, "The Revolutionist's Handbook," Man and Superman

She was so wild that when she made French toast she got her tongue caught in the toaster. Rodney Dangerfield

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.  ~Henry David Thoreau

I will not eat oysters.  I want my food dead - not sick, not wounded - dead.  ~Woody Allen

Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Oscar Wilde

This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate two eggs, but it doesn't say how far to separate them. Gracie Allen

To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day. W. Somerset Maugham

Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays. Henny Youngman

Acorns were good till bread was found. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading. Henny Youngman

The appetites of the stomach and the palate, far from diminishing as men grow older, go on increasing. Cicero, Roman statesman (106-43. B.C.)

We load up on oat bran in the morning so we'll live forever.  Then we spend the rest of the day living like there's no tomorrow.  ~Lee Iacocca

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. Anon

Recipe:  A series of step-by-step instructions for preparing ingredients you forgot to buy, in utensils you don't own, to make a dish the dog wouldn't eat.  ~Author Unknown

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks. Lin Yutang

Nouvelle Cuisine, roughly translated, means: I can't believe I paid ninety-six dollars and I'm still hungry. Mike Kalin

Drink sir, is a great provoker of three things....nose painting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire but takes away the performance. Shakespeare, Macbeth - Act 2, scene 3

And I find chopsticks frankly distressing.  Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?  ~Bill Bryson

Never serve oysters in a month that has no paycheck in it. P. J. O'Rourke

Kissing don't last; cookery do!  ~George Meredith

As for rosemary, I let it run all over my garden walls, not only because my bees love it but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance and to friendship, whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)

That fish in the riddle!

It's broke in the middle,

A turbot! A fiddle!

It's only a brill! -Thomas Hood

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.  ~Mark Twain

People who drink light "beer" don't like the taste of beer; they just like to pee a lot. Capital Brewery, Middleton, WI.

Did you ever stop to taste a carrot?  Not just eat it, but taste it?  You can't taste the beauty and energy of the earth in a Twinkie.  ~Astrid Alauda

Cutting stalks at noontime.  Perspiration drips to the earth.  Know you that your bowl of rice each grain from hardship comes?  ~Chang Chan-Pao

Some say the glass is half empty, some say the glass is half full. I say, are you going to drink that? Lisa Claymen

Condensed milk is wonderful.  I don't see how they can get a cow to sit down on those little cans.  ~Fred Allen

Great food is like great sex.  The more you have the more you want.  ~Gael Greene

No, I don't take soup.  You can't build a meal on a lake.  ~Elsie de Wolfe (Lady Mendl)

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight. M. F. K. Fisher (1908-1992)

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

Anyhow, the hole in the doughnut is at least digestible.  ~H.L. Mencken

You can tell German wine from vinegar by the label. Mark Twain

Chocolate makes everyone smile - even bankers. ~ Chocolatier Benneville Strohecker

Woman's success in lifting men out of their way of life nearly resembling that of the beasts -- who merely hunted and fished for food, who found shelter where they could in jungles, in trees, and caves -- was a civilizing triumph. Mary Ritter Beard, US historian, writer (1876-1958) Woman as a Force in History (1946)

The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread. Steven Wright

We all have hometown appetites. Every other person is a bundle of longing for the simplicities of good taste once enjoyed on the farm or in the hometown left behind. Clementine Paddleford Charles Wysocki's Americana Cookbook

Old people shouldn't eat health foods. They need all the preservatives they can get. Robert Orben

I pray you, do not fall in love with me, For I am falser than vows made in wine. Shakespeare, As You Like It - act 3, scene 5

Anything is good if it's made of chocolate. Jo Brand

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can't remember what they are. Matt Lauer

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? Charles De Gaulle

You are what you eat.  For example, if you eat garlic you're apt to be a hermit.  ~Franklin P. Jones

I bought some powdered water, but I don't know what to add to it. Steven Wright

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy. Saki', pen name of Scottish writer Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916)

Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine. Anthony Trollope, English novelist (1815-1882)

The inventor of soda crackers has a place in hell.  ~Martin H. Fischer

You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat The New York Times. - Morley Safer

Wine, the most delightful of drinks, whether we owe it to Noah, who planted the vine, or to Bacchus, who pressed juice from the grape, goes back to the childhood of the world. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The physiology of taste

Plant a radish, get a radish, never any doubt.  That's why I love vegetables, you know what they're about!  ~Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink... ~Epicurus

He who eats alone chokes alone.  ~Proverb

After dinner sit a while, and after supper walk a mile.  ~English Saying

I come from a home where gravy is a beverage. Erma Bombeck

Always eat grapes downward - that is eat the best grapes first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last.  If you eat the other way, you will not have a good grape in the lot.  ~Samuel Butler

The story of barbecue is the story of America:  Settlers arrive on great unspoiled continent, discover wondrous riches, set them on fire and eat them.  ~Vince Staten

Custard:  A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.  ~Ambrose Bierce

Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried fish warehouse. -Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

If you ate pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry?  ~Author Unknown

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol. Steven Wright 

Biochemically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate. ~ John Milton

A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Therefore if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating oysters.  ~James I

Tell me what you eat, I'll tell you who you are.  ~Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Most people hate the taste of beer - to begin with. It is, however, a prejudice that many people have been able to overcome. Winston Churchill

Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life: let us swear eternal friendship. Sydney Smith, English writer (1771-1845)

The more you eat, the less flavor; the less you eat, the more flavor.  ~Chinese Proverb

Proust had his madeleines; I am devastated by the scent of yeast bread rising.  ~Bert Greene

As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists.  ~Joan Gussow

France has found a unique way of controlling its unwanted critter population. They have done this by giving unwanted animals like snails, pigeons, and frogs fancy names, thus transforming common backyard pests into expensive delicacies. These are then served to gullible tourists, who will eat anything they can't pronounce. Chris Harris 'Quotable Feast' by Sarah E. Parvis

An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.  ~Will Rogers

Hunger:  One of the few cravings that cannot be appeased with another solution.  ~Irwin Van Grove

Training is everything.  The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.  ~Mark Twain

The woman just ahead of you at the supermarket checkout has all the delectable groceries you didn't even know they carried.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

You can tell how long a couple has been married by whether they are on their first, second or third bottle of Tobasco.  ~Bruce Bye

There is nothing better on a cold wintry day than a properly made pot pie.  ~Craig Claiborne

Now my wife may think she's locked me out of the kitchen but MacGyver's not my patron saint for nothing. - Alton Brown

You know how I feel about tacos.  It's the only food shaped like a smile.  A beef smile.  ~Danielle Sanchez-Witzel and Michael Pennie, My Name is Earl, "South of the Border Part Uno/Dos," original airdate 7 December 2006, spoken by the character Earl Hickey

If soup isn't hot enough to make a grown man wince, it's undrinkable.  ~Grey Livingston

The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive.  ~William Ralph Inge

And, of course, the funniest food of all, kumquats.  ~George Carlin

A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money.  Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do.  ~P.J. O'Rourke

Avoid fruit and nuts.  You are what you eat.  ~Jim Davis

I love oysters. It's like kissing the sea on the lips. Leon-Paul Fargue

In general, mankind, since the improvement in cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.  ~Benjamin Franklin

Food is so primal, so essential a part of our lives, often the mere sharing of recipes with strangers turns them into good friends.  That's why I love this community.  ~Jasmine Heiler, about recipezaar.com

Wine, when taken without excess, is a tonic for the muscles and a stimulant for the mind. – Dr Widal

Happiness is a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry under a shade tree.  ~Astrid Alauda

In Spain, attempting to obtain a chicken salad sandwich, you wind up with a dish whose name, when you look it up in your Spanish-English dictionary, turns out to mean: Eel with big abscess. Dave Barry

All sorrows are less with bread.  ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again.  ~George Miller

This special feeling towards fruit, its glory and abundance, is I would say universal.... We respond to strawberry fields or cherry orchards with a delight that a cabbage patch or even an elegant vegetable garden cannot provoke.  ~Jane Grigson

No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.  ~Christopher Morley

I pray that death may strike me in the middle of a large meal. I wish to be buried under the tablecloth between four large dishes. Marc Desuagiers

Beware the term 'local delicacy.' It's usually code for something revolting. Lillian Marsano

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria. David Auerbach (2002)

...fried fish & chips served by S. Gamgee. You couldn't say no to that. -J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings; The Two Towers

Oil and potatoes both grow underground so french fries may have eventually produced themselves, had they not been invented.  ~J. Esther

When I'm at a Chinese restaurant having a hard time with chopsticks, I always hope that there's a Chinese kid at an American restaurant somewhere who's struggling mightily with a fork.  ~Rick Budinich

A converted cannibal is one who, on Friday, eats only fishermen.  ~Emily Lotney

I put instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went back in time. Steven Wright

Fish, to taste right, must swim three times - in water, in butter, and in wine.  ~Polish Proverb

He that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well.  ~English Proverb

The spirit cannot endure the body when overfed, but, if underfed, the body cannot endure the spirit.  ~St Frances de Sales

[Breadbaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony.  It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.  ~M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

Artichokes ...are just plain annoying ...After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual 'food' out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking thirty or forty postage stamps. Have the shrimp cocktail instead. Miss Piggy

I'll bet what motivated the British to colonize so much of the world is that they were just looking for a decent meal.  ~Martha Harrison

Cooking is like love.  It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.  ~Harriet van Horne

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.  ~Aldous Huxley

Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.  ~Clifton Fadiman

Life goes faster on protein.  ~Martin H. Fischer

But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface.  ~Mark Twain

There is no sight on earth more appealing than the sight of a woman making dinner for someone she loves.  ~Thomas Wolfe

Soup and fish explain half the emotions of human life.  ~Sydney Smith

Don't forget that the flavors of wine and cheese depend upon the types of infecting microörganisms.  ~Martin H. Fischer

To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a "home" might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation.  ~Emily Post

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bread deals with living things, with giving life, with growth, with the seed, the grain that nurtures.  It is not coincidence that we say bread is the staff of life.  ~Lionel Poilane

An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful before all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive. Henry Ward Beecher

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people. Orson Welles

Most of the food allergies die under garlic and onion.  ~Martin H. Fischer

Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity. Frank Lloyd Wright

I went to a restaurant that serves 'Breakfast at any time'. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. Steven Wright

The thought of eating snails conjures up all kinds of weird mental pictures. This state of mind doesn't last for long upon seeing how snails are prepared in Burgundy. We then realize how corrupt our mental picture of this delicacy was. Leon Kafka, Paris News Post (1951)

Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels.  There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one's belt buckled.  ~Frederic Raphael

A gin and tonic says a lot about you as a person. It is more than just a drink, it is an attitude of mind. It goes with prawn cocktail, a grilled Dover sole, Melba toast and Black Forest Gateau. - Nico Ladenis, My Gastronomy

It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.  ~Julia Childs

As the days grow short, some faces grow long.  But not mine.  Every autumn, when the wind turns cold and darkness comes early, I am suddenly happy.  It's time to start making soup again.  ~Leslie Newman

Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eating under a tree.  ~Elizabeth Russell

My soul is dark with stormy riot,
Directly traceable to diet.
~Samuel Hoffenstein

I'm trying to eat better.  And, I do feel wise after drinking tea.  After eating vegetables, I just feel hungry.  ~Carrie Latet

I hate people who are not serious about their meals. Oscar Wilde

A three-year-old gave this reaction to her Christmas dinner:  "I don't like the turkey, but I like the bread he ate."  ~Author Unknown

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.  ~Doug Larson

Vegetables are a must on a diet.  I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.  ~Jim Davis, "Garfield"

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.  ~Voltaire

We think fast food is equivalent to pornography, nutritionally speaking.  ~Steve Elbert

Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn.  ~Garrison Keillor

Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?  ~Author Unknown

Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it.  ~Author Unknown

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.  ~Voltaire

There is a lot more juice in grapefruit than meets the eye.  ~Author Unknown

High-tech tomatoes.  Mysterious milk.  Supersquash.  Are we supposed to eat this stuff?  Or is it going to eat us?  ~Annita Manning 

It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it. W. C. Fields 

Chocolate is nature's way of making up for Mondays. ~ Anonymous

Do you know on this one block you can buy croissants in five different places? There's one store called Bonjour Croissant. It makes me want to go to Paris and open a store called Hello Toast. Fran Liebowitz

I'll bet what motivated the British to colonize so much of the world is that they were just looking for a decent meal. ~Martha Harrison

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child? ~Lin Yutang

Slicing a warm slab of bacon is a lot like giving a ferret a shave. No matter how careful you are, somebody's going to get hurt. - Alton Brown

The gentle art of gastronomy is a friendly one. It hurdles the language barrier, makes friends among civilized people, and warms the heart. -Samuel Chamberlain

I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond. - Mae West

I bought a box of animal crackers and it said on it "Do not eat if seal is broken." So I opened up the box, and sure enough... - Brian Kiley

The definition of eternity is two people and a ham. - Dorothy Parker

If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a failure in health and intellect, a void much more terrifying than all the recesses and the deviations for which wine is regarded as responsible. – Charles Baudelaire

A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles. -Sir Richard Burton

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars. -Abbie Hoffman

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them. -Adlai Stevenson

Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm. -Ambrose Pierce

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires. -Benjamin Franklin

Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.-Charles Caleb Colton

To eat is human, to digest divine. -Charles Copeland

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention. -Christopher Morley

Give me a bowl of wine. In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius." Brutus from Julius Caesar Act IV Scene III.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. -H.L. Mencken

Sigh. Got to go buy some food. A mouse hung itself in my fridge and left a note 'can't live like this'. -Ustas

Ingredients as fresh as they were 27 years ago. -slogan of The Biscuitville Restaurant

If life gives you a lemon, make lemonade. However — if life gives you a pickle, you might as well give up, because pickle-ade is disgusting. -Clifton J. Gray

It's important to watch what you eat. Otherwise, how are you going to get it into your mouth? -Matt Diamond

The devil came to me last night and asked what I wanted in exchange for my soul. I still can't believe I said pizza. Friggin' cravings. -Mark Ostroff

I'd think that anyone who truly wanted to end world hunger would donate his or her body to culinary science. -Kevin Wickart

I think they should put a warning label on strawberries: 'Caution: tastes nothing like a strawberry milkshake'. -Ryan Kaplan

Green clovers. Blue diamonds. Orange Stars. Pink hearts. Purple horseshoes. Man, I never know if I looking at a bowl of cereal or having another acid flashback. -Dave Henry

The first time you see something that you have never seen before, you almost always know right away if you should eat it or run away from it. -Scott Adams

Give a man food, and he can eat for a day. Give a man a job, and he can only eat for 30 minutes on break. -Lev L. Spiro

Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt. -Scott Adams

I mean, seriously, we are a culture that can stand in front of a microwave with a burrito in it and scream 'Faster'! -Ross Brown

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. -Samuel Butler

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked. -Winston Churchill

Last week I ate a 5th Avenue bar on 5th Avenue while little kids eating Snickers bars snickered at me. It was probably that whole 'irony' thing. -John Gephart 

A converted cannibal is one who, on Friday, eats only fishermen. -Emily Lotney

Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child — if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender. -W.C. Fields

By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry'. -Gary Marshall, The Far Side 

I don't think America will have really made it until we have our own salad dressing. Until then we're stuck behind the French, Italians, Russians and Caesarians. — Pat McNelis.

How can you expect to govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six kinds of cheese ? -Charles de Gaull

Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes. - Norman Douglas

First need in the reform of hospital management ? That's easy ! The death of all dietitians, and the resurrection of a French chef. - Martin H. Fischer

I'll bet what motivated the British to colonize so much of the world is that they were just looking for a decent meal. -Martha Harrison

I never eat sushi. I have trouble eating things that are merely unconscious. -George Carlin

I was once watching this documentary on Discovery channel. They had this Asian family cooking scorpions. The reporter asked one of the family members: 'what does it taste like ?' The family member responded: 'it tastes like penguin'."  — Octane

I can't believe you can get banned from a bakery for mispronouncing 'focaccia' ! — Hikeeba

You're thinking I'm one of those wise-ass California vegetarians who is going to tell you that eating a few strips of bacon is bad for your health. I'm not. I say its a free country and you should be able to kill yourself at any rate you choose, as long as your cold dead body is not blocking my driveway. — Scott Adams

Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick. — SatanicPuppy

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me. -George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950), Irish dramatist and critic. Explaining why he had turned down an invitation to a vegetarian gala dinner.  

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. -Socrates

Gastronomy, has been the joy of all peoples through the ages. It produces beauty and wit and goes hand in hand with goodness of heart and a consideration of others. Charles Pierre Monselet (1825-88) French author.

All passions, rationalized and controlled, become an art: gastronomy, more than any other passion, is sensitive to rationalism and direction. Charles Pierre Monselet

Thus it is Gastronomy, to tell the truth, which motivates the farmers, fineyardists, fishermen, hunters, and the great family of cooks, no matter under what names or qualifications they may disguise their part in the preparation of foods. Jean-Antheleme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

Gastronomy is the joy of all conditions and all ages. It adds wit to beauty. Charles Pierre Monselet

The gentle art of gastronomy is a friendly one. It hurdles the language barrier, makes friends among civilized people, and warms the heart. Samuel Chamberlain

The goose is nothing, but man has made of it an instrument for the output of a marvelous product, a kind of living hothouse in which there grows the supreme fruit of gastronomy. Charles Gérard, L'Ancienne Alsace à table

A connoisseur of gastronomy was congratulated on his appointment as a director of indirect contributions at Perigues: and, above all, in the pleasure there would be in living in the midst of good cheer, in the country of truffles, partridges, gruffled turkeys, and so forth. "Alas!" replied with a sigh the sad gastronomer, "can one really live at all in a country where there is no fresh sea-fish? Jean-Antheleme Brillat-Savarin

True gastronomy is making the most of what is available, however modest. Claudia Roden, food writer, Picnic (1981)

A dessert without cheese, is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.' Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

You may feel that you have eaten too much...But this pastry is like feathers - it is like snow. It is in fact good for you, a digestive! M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992)

I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, 'Then let them eat pastry!' Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

In the centre of a spacious table rose a pastry as large as a church, flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal, on the south by an enormous ham, on the east by a monumental pile of butter, and on the west by an enormous dish of artichokes, with a hot sauce. Jean-Antheleme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce, and mayonnaise on toasted bread with catsup on the side. Hubert H. Humphrey (former Senator from Minnesota)

Who would guess that a peanut butter and bacon sandwich is so good it will bring tears to your eyes? It does. Add lettuce, and you have a complete meal, with every known daily nutrient needed by the average 200 pound man. Roger Welsch, 'Diggin' In and Piggin' Out' (1997)

Everyone has the talent to some degree: even making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you know whether it tastes better to you with raspberry jam or grape jelly; on chewy pumpernickel or white toast. Anna Shapiro, 'A Feast of Words' (1996)

My idea of feng shui is to have them arrange the pepperoni in a circle on my pizza. Unknown

An apple is an excellent thing -- until you have tried a peach. George du Maurier (1834-1896)

A Georgia peach, a real Georgia peach, a backyard great-grandmother's orchard peach, is as thickly furred as a sweater, and so fluent and sweet that once you bite through the flannel, it brings tears to your eyes. Melissa Fay Greene, Praying for Sheetrock

A loaf of bread, the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters, dear,
We can begin to feed!”
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898) Alice Through the Looking-Glass

It takes four men to dress a salad: a wise man for the salt, a madman for the pepper, a miser for the vinegar, and a spendthrift for the oil. anonymous

Don't be too daring in the kitchen. For example, don't suddenly get involved with shallots. Later, when you are no longer a Lonely Guy, you can do shallots. Not now. If you know coriander, stay with coriander and don't fool around. Even with coriander you're on thin ice, but at least you've got a shot, because it's familiar. Stay with safe things, like pepper. Bruce Jay Friedman, The Lonely Guy Cookbook (1976)

It's been a long time since I've had champagne. -Anton Chekhov, his last words on his deathbed

Ah, Caviar! I keep on eating it, but can never get my fill. -Anton Chekhov, when asked what his favorite food was

Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers. -Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 2 

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts. James Beard (1903-1985)

My dear boy, when curds are churned, the finest part rises upward and turns into butter. So too, dear boy, when food is eaten the choice parts rise upward and become mind. Chandogya Upanishad

Bread, milk and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world.”
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), 'The Seer'

Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing room, is ambrosia eating under a tree. Elizabeth Russell

I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking. Katherine Cebrian, Artist, writer

Unbuttered toast is a substance half complete, and to be forced to eat it in that state is necessarily to feel deprived. John Thorne, 'Pot on the Fire' (2000)

Butter is "...the most delicate of foods among barbarous nations, and one which distinguishes the wealthy from the multitude at large. Pliny

All in all, I think the British actually hate food, otherwise they couldn't possibly abuse it so badly. Americans, on the other hand, love food but seldom care what it tastes like. Bill Marsano

The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart;
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

An epicure is one who gets nothing better than the cream of everything but cheerfully makes the best of it. Oliver Herford 

Grilling, broiling, barbecuing - whatever you want to call it - is an art, not just a matter of building a pyre and throwing on a piece of meat as a sacrifice to the gods of the stomach. -James Beard, 'Beard on Food'

In the Barbecue is any four footed animal -- be it mouse or mastodon -- whose dressed carcass is roasted whole.... at its best it is a fat steer, and must be eaten within an hour of when it is cooked. For if ever the sun rises upon Barbecue, its flavor vanishes like Cinderella's silks, and it becomes cold baked beef -- staler in the chill dawn then illicit love. William Allen White (1868-1944)

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. Doug Larson

I've long said that if I were about to be executed and were given a choice of my last meal, it would be bacon and eggs. There are few sights that appeal to me more than the streaks of lean and fat in a good side of bacon, or the lovely round of pinkish meat framed in delicate white fat that is Canadian bacon. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing. James Beard (1903-1985)

We plan, we toil, we suffer -- in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake up just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. And, again I cry, how rarely it happens! But when it does happen -- then what a moment, what a morning, what a delight! J. B. Priestley, British author (1894-1984)

I love drinking now and then. It defecates the standing pool of thought. A man perpetually in the paroxysm and fears of inebriety is like a half-drowned stupid wretch condemned to labor unceasingly in water; but a now-and-then tribute to Bacchus is like the cold bath, bracing and invigorating. Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish Poet

Finally we came to Gatsby's own apartment, a bedroom and a bath, and an Adam study, where we sat down and drank a glass of some chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the wall. -what Gatsby shares with tha narrator Nick in F. Scott's Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby

A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end. Walter Savage Landor

Savory seasonings stimulate the appetite. Latin Proverb

A good meal makes a man feel more charitable toward the world than any sermon. Arthur Pendenys

Fervet olla, vivit amicitia: While the pot boils, friendship endures. Latin Proverb

Cookery has become a noble art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen. -Robert Burton

The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star.  -Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation. -Madam Benoit

Even were a cook to cook a fly, he would keep the breast for himself. -Polish Proverb

I should never have switched from scotch to martinis? -Humphrey Bogart's last words on his death bed

Gourmandise is an impassioned, rational and habitual preference for all objects that flatter the sense of taste. -Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

The joys of the table belong equally to all ages, conditions, countries and times; they mix with all other pleasures, and remain the last to console us for their loss. -Jean Antheleme Brillet-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

This is what is meant by "sacrifice", literally, the "making sacred" of an animal consumed for dinner. Yet sacrfice, because it dwells on the death, is a concept often shocking to the secular modern Western mind - to people who calmly organize daily hecatombs of beasts, and who are among the most death-dealing carnivores the world has ever seen. -Margaret Visser: The Rituals of Dinner

In England, there are sixty different religions—and only one sauce. -Attributed to Voltaire, 1694-1778

It can jump off the plate at you but it doesn't have to chase you out of the restaurant.- Marshall Rosenthal, on fusion cuisine The Art of the Plated Dessert, Boyle and Moriarty, 1997

The first zucchini I ever saw I killed it with a hoe. - John Gould, Monstrous Depravity, 1963

Whosoever says truffle, utters a grand word, which awakens erotic and gastronomic ideas.... -Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

The most learned men have been questioned as to the nature of this tuber, and after two thousand years of argument and discussion their answer is the same as it was on the first day: we do not know. The truffles themselves have been interrogated, and have answered simply: eat us and praise the Lord. - Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)

Do not overcook this dish. Most seafoods...should be simply threatened with heat and then celebrated with joy. Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet

A bagel is a doughnut with the sin removed. -George Rosenbaum

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to it's liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.' Thomas Jefferson, 1785

What does cookery mean? It means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe, and of Calypso, and Sheba. It means knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, and balms and spices... It means the economy of your great-grandmother and the science of modern chemistry, and French art, and Arabian hospitality. It means, in fine, that you are to see imperatively that everyone has something nice to eat. John Ruskin (1819-1900)

If your regrets linger, if you cannot find inspiration in solitude, then you still have much to learn from the writers and poets and the cooks on becoming the artist of your own life… you can never re-create the past. But you can shape your own future. And you can make a cake. - Jacqueline Duval, in 'Reckless Appetite a Culinary Romance icon'

 If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony. -Fernand Point

I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation. -Madame Benoit

Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements. -Marcel Boulestin

Happy and successful cooking doesn't rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate and
needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life. Georges Blanc, from 'Ma Cuisine des Saisons'

Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power, has that ability to comfort. -Norman Kolpas

Cuisine is only about making foods taste the way they are supposed to taste. -Chef Charlie Trotter

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

The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star. -Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well one must love and respect food. -Craig Claiborne

Nothing rekindles my spirits, gives comfort to my heart and mind, more than