...and what could be cheesier than a
long list of Culinary Quotations?
I could say, as Ralph Waldo Emerson did, "I hate quotations"
-- but it would be a lie. Better, perhaps is Peter Anderson's "Quotations are
a columnist's bullpen. Stealing someone else's words frequently spares the embarrassment
of eating your own." So, as a public service, allow me to spare you countless
embarrassments -- well, several hundred, anyway:
"...all the charming and beautiful things, from
the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies
to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour
came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than
mere oxygen and hydrogen." H.L. Mencken
“…cassoulet, like life itself, is not so
simple as it seems.” Paula Wolfert
"...he is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm
to his wit." Shakespeare
"...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 than illicit love." William Allen White
"…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
"...round a table delicately spread, three or four
may sit in choice repast or five at the most. Who otherwise shall dine, are
like a troop marauding for their prey." Archestratus
"...Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated
in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that
they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener —
if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during
the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors,
the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course
of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had
ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the
Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual
annual compliments. The original reason for a Thanksgiving Day has long ago
ceased to exist — the Indians having long ago been comprehensively and
satisfactorily exterminated and the account closed with the Lord, with the thanks
due." Mark Twain
"...the act of eating,which hath by several wise
men been considered as extremely mean and derogatory from the phlosophic dignity,
must be in some measure performed by the greatest prince, hero, or philosopher
upon earth; nay, sometimes Nature hath been so frolicsome as to exact of these
dignified characters a much more exorbitant share of this office than she hath
obliged those of the lowest orders to perform." Henry Fielding
“…the agent provocateur of a good dinner.”
Carême (on soup)
"...the best poet is the man who delivers our daily
bread: the local baker...." Pablo Neruda
"...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness.
Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out." E.M. Foster
"...what is your host's purpose in having a party?
Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose they'd
have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi." P.
J. O'Rourke
"…when the largest mussel ever seen thereabouts
– eighteen inches long if memory serves – was found near the mouth
of the Rhone, a regional newspaper concluded its coverage of the event not with
the announcement of its donation to a museum but with words ‘It was delicious.’"
Jay Jacobs
"A bagel creation that would have my parents turning
over in their graves is the oat-bran bagel with blueberries and strawberries.
It's a bagel nightmare, an ill-conceived bagel form if there ever was one."
Ed Levine
"A bagel is a doughnut with the sin removed."
George Rosenbaum
"A banquet is probably the most fatiguing thing
in the world except ditchdigging. It is the insanest of all recreations. The
inventor of it overlooked no detail that could furnish weariness, distress,
harassment, and acute and long-sustained misery of mind and body." Mark
Twain
"A Bearnaise sauce is simply an egg yolk, a shallot,
a little tarragon vinegar, and butter, but it takes years of practice for the
result to be perfect." Fernand Point
"A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than
all the books in the world." Louis Pasteur
"A cabbage is a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about
as large and wise as a man's head." Ambrose Bierce
"A carbonated wine foisted upon Americans (who else
would drink it?) by winery ad agencies as a way of getting rid of inferior champagne
by mixing it with inferior burgundy." John Ciardi, on cold duck
“A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may
be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward
immortality.” Clifton Fadiman
"A chop is a piece of leather skillfully attached to
a bone and administered to the patients at restaurants." Ambrose Bierce
”A clever cook can make good meat of a whetstone.”
Erasmus
"A cocktail is to a glass of wine as rape is to love."
Paul Claudel
"A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook."
H.H. Munro (Saki)
"A complete lack of caution is perhaps one of the
true signs of a real gourmet: he has no need for it, being filled as he is with
a God-given and intelligently self-cultivated sense of gastronomical freedom."
M.F.K. Fisher
"A cook is creative, marrying ingredients in the way
a poet marries words." Roger Verge
"A Cornish hen in the hand is only enough for one
person." Unknown
“A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty
thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. They are great softeners of
temper and promoters of domestic harmony.” William Cobbett
"A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken
in anxiety." Aesop
"A cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper
and vinegar and then thrown out, as good for nothing," Samuel Johnson, misquoted
by Waverley Root
"A cup of coffee - real coffee - home-browned,
home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to
a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real
cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy
nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils
and will exorcise them all." Henry Ward Beecher
"A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some
of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked
out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish."
W. H. Auden
"A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman
with only one eye." Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
“A diet is when you watch what you eat and wish
you could eat what you watch.” Hermione Gingold
"A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he
isn't still young and believing." Tennessee Williams
"A Finnan haddock has a relish of a peculiar and
delicate flavour, inimitable on any other coast than that of Aberdeenshire.
Some of our Edinburgh philosophers tried to produce their equal in vain. I was
one of a party at dinner where the philosophical haddocks were placed in competition
with the genuine Finnan fish. These were served round without distinguishing
whence they came; but only one gentleman out of twelve present espoused the
cause of philosophy." Sir Walter Scott
"A few years ago it was considered chic to serve Beef
Wellington; fortunately, like Napoleon, it met its Waterloo." Rene Veaux
"A food is not necessarily essential just because
your child hates it." Katherine Whitehorn
"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
"A fully gorged belly never produced a sprightly
mind." Jeremy Taylor
"A good breakfast is no substitute for a large dinner."
Chinese Proverb
"A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness."
Elsa Schiaparelli
"A good cook is not necessarily a good woman with an
even temper. Some allowance should be made for artistic temperament." X.
Marcel Boulestin
"A good dinner is of great importance to good talk.
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." Virginia
Woolf
"A good eater must be a good man; for a good eater
must have a good digestion, and a good digestion depends upon a good conscience."
Benjamin Disraeli
"A good meal ought to begin with hunger." French
Proverb
"A good meal soothes the soul as it regenerates the
body. From the abundance of it flows a benign benevolence." Frederick W.
Hackwood
"A gourmet is just a glutton with brains." Philip
W. Haberman, Jr.
"A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who
looks at her watch." James Beard
"A hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has
for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating
plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening,
with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the morning." Samuel
Johnson
"A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at
a sausage and thinks of Picasso." Alan Patrick Herbert
"A host at a table where a guest is obliged to
ask, is a host dishonored." Baron Brisse
"A house where neither wine nor welcome is served
to friends, soon will have none." Rob Hutchison
"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
"A hundred standing people smiling and talking to one
another, nodding like gooney birds." William Cole (on cocktail parties)
"A little garlic, judiciously used, won't seriously
affect your social life and will tone up more dull dishes than any commodity
discovered to date." Alexander Wright
"A man accustomed to American food and American domestic
cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually
waste away, and eventually die." Mark Twain
"A man can live and 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 Tolstoy
"A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at
a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries."
Samuel Johnson
"A man in the wilderness asked me, How many strawberries
grow in the sea? I answered him, as I thought good, As many as red herrings
grow in the wood." Mother Goose
"A man is in general better pleased when has had
a good dinner upon the table than when his wife talks Greek." Samuel
Johnson
"A man may be a pessimistic determinist before
lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it." Aldous
Huxley
"A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses."
George Bernard Shaw
"A man's own dinner is to himself so important
that he cannot bring himself to believe that it is a matter utterly indifferent
to anyone else." Anthony Trollope
"A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything
than he does of his dinner; and if he cannot get that well dressed, he should
be suspected of inaccuracy in other things." Samuel Johnson
"A man should not form the habit of drinking wine
at midday; for when he drinks wine at midday, the consequence is that he neglects
the study of the whole Torah." The Minor Tractates of the Talmud.
"A man should not so much respect what he eats,
as with whom he eats." Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the
drink takes the man." Sinclair Lewis
"A man taking basil from a woman will love her always."
Sir Thomas Moore
"A man that lives on pork, fine-flour bread, rich
pies and cakes, and condiments, drinks tea and coffee, and uses tobacco, might
as well try to fly as to be chaste in thought." Dr. John Harvey Kellogg
"A man who is careful with his palate is not likely
to be careless with his paragraphs." Clifton Fadiman
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee
into theorems." Paul Erdos
"A messy kitchen is a happy kitchen and this kitchen
is delirious." Anonymous
"A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its
nutriment from cows." George Bernard Shaw
"A mother is a person who, seeing there are only
four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for
pie.” Tenneva Jordan
"A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic
will get you a seat." Old New York Proverb
"A nickel's worth of goulash beats a five dollar
can of vitamins." Martin H. Fischer
"A number of rare or newly experienced foods have been
claimed to be aphrodisiacs. At one time this quality was even ascribed to the
tomato. Reflect on that when you are next preparing the family salad." Jane
Grigson
"A pasty costly-made,
Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay,
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks
Imbedded and injellied." Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"A pâté is nothing more than French meat
loaf that's had a couple of cocktails." Carole Cutler
"A person who can get a good table at Chez Panisse
at the last minute is a very important person indeed. Royalty begins with Alice
Waters." Willard Spiegelman
"A philosopher is a person who doesn't care which side
his bread is buttered on; he knows he eats both sides anyway." Joyce Brothers
"A plenitude of peanut butter and a dearth of hot mustard."
Patrick Dean (on American food)
"A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local,
but prized elsewhere." W.H. Auden
"A porkchop in the kitchen is a porkchop; a porkchop
in Proust is Proust." William Gaso
"A PROCLAMATION FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF COFFEE HOUSES:
Whereas it is most apparent that the multitude of Coffee Houses of late years
set up and kept within this Kingdom...and the great resort of idle and disaffected
persons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous effects; as well for
that many tradesmen and others, do herein misspend much of their time, which
might and probably would be employed in and about their Lawful Calling and Affairs;
but also for that in such houses...divers, false, malitious, and scandalous
reports are devised and spread abroad to the Defamation of His Majesty's Government,
and to the disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm; his Majesty hath
though it fit and necessary, that the said Coffee Houses be (for the Future)
put down and suppressed..." King Charles II of England
"A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care
to drink with -- even if he drank." H.L. Mencken
"A prune is a plum that has seen better days." Anonymous
"A raisin is a worried-looking grape." Anonymous
"A restaurant is a fantasy&emdash;a kind of living fantasy
in which diners are the most important members of the cast." Warner LeRoy
"A significant part of the pleasure of eating is
in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which the food
comes." Wendell Berry
"A small amount of wine such as three or four glasses
is of benefit for the preservation of the health of human beings and an excellent
remedy for most illnesses." Maimonides
"A soup so thick you could shake its hand and stroll
with it before dinner." Robert Crawford
"A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste
as old as cold water." Lawrence Durrell (on olives)
"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
"A tiny radish of passionate scarlet, tipped modestly
in white." Clementine Paddleford
"A true gastronome should always be ready to eat,
just as a soldier should always be ready to fight." Charles Pierre
Monselet
"A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything
that can have children." David Brenner
"A waist is a terrible thing to mind." Tom
Wilson
"A well made sauce will make even an elephant or
a grandfather palatable." Grimod de la Reyniere
"A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet
without violins." Laurie Colwin
"Abstain from beans. There be sundry interpretations
of this symbol. But Plutarch and Cicero think beans to be forbidden of Pythagoras,
because they be windy and do engender impure humours and for that cause provoke
bodily lust." Richard Taverner
"Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would
be difficult." Samuel Johnson
"According to the Spanish proverb, four persons are
wanted to make a good salad: a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a counsellor
for salt and a madman to stir it all up." John Gerard
"Acorns were good till bread was found." Francis
Bacon
"After a perfect meal we are more susceptible to the
ecstasy of love than at any other time." Dr. Hans Bazli
"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
"After dinner sit a while, and after supper walk
a mile." English Saying
"After eating chocolate you feel godlike, as though
you can conquer enemies, lead armies, entice lovers." Emily Luchetti
"Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment
of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone." Jim Fiebig
"Aioli epitomizes the heat, the power, and the joy of
the Provencal sun, but it has another virtue -- it drives away flies." Frederic
Mistral
“Alcohol is a good preservative for everything
but brains.” Mary Pettibone Poole
"Alcohol is a liquid that can put the wreck into recreation."
Anonymous
"Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin." P.G. Wodehouse
"Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament
to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the
morning." George Bernard Shaw
“Alcohol is necessary for a man so that he can
have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed by the facts.” Finley
Peter Dunne
"Alcohol is the prince of liquids and carries the palate
to its highest pitch of exaltation." Brillat-Savarin
"Alcohol may pick you up a little bit, but it lets you
down in a hurry." Betty Ford
"Alcohol removes inhibitions&emdash;like that scared
little mouse who got drunk and shook his whiskers and shouted: 'Now bring on
that damn cat!'" Eleanor Early
"All animals are strictly dry,
They sinless live and swiftly die.
But sinful, ginfull rum-soaked men
Survive three score years and ten.
And some of us -- though mighty few --
Survive until we're ninety-two." Anonymous
"All cooking is a matter of time. In general, the more
time the better." John Erskine
"All cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience
worth cooking for." Andre Simon
"All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast."
John Gunther
"All I ask of food is that it doesn't harm me." Michael
Palin
“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
"All knives and forks were working away at a rate that
was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat
his utmost, in self defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast-time
to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of nature."
Charles Dickens (on American meals)
"All millionaires love a baked apple." Ronald Firbank
"All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque
and there was no meat, I would say, 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat?' I'm trying
to impress people here, Lisa. You don't win friends with salad." Homer
Simpson
"All of Bavaria can be divided into a small group
of butchers and a larger group of people who look like butchers." Heimito
von Doderer
"All sorrows are less with bread." Miguel
de Cervantes
"All that changing of plates and flapping of napkins
while you wait 40 minutes for your food." Hugh Casson (on London restaurants)
"All the best cooking is simple. There is really
nothing new in it. I have 4,000 cookbooks dating back to 1503, and everything
that is in nouvelle cuisine was there 200 years ago." Anton Mosimann
"All the great villainies of history, from the
murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers."
H.L. Mencken
"All the ingenious men and all the scientific
men in the world could never invent anything so curious and so ridiculous as
a lobster." Charles Kingsley
"All the vitamins needed seem to be found in plebian
dishes." William Feather
"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now
and then doesn't hurt." Charles M. Schulz
"Almost every person has something secret he likes
to eat." M.F.K. Fisher
"Als drait zich arum broit un toit (It all comes
down to bread and death)." Yiddish proverb
"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
"Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge
sundaes. It makes people overjoyed, and puts them in your debt." Judith Olney
"America is now the fattest country in the world and
getting fatter every day." unnamed H.J. Heinz Co. executive
"America knows nothing of food, love, or art." Isadora
Duncan
"American Danish can be doughy, heavy, sticky, tasting
of prunes and is usually wrapped in cellophane. Danish Danish is light, crisp,
buttery and often tastes of marzipan or raisins; it is seldom wrapped in anything
but loving care." R.W. Apple, Jr.
"Americans are just beginning to regard food the way
the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before you
do something else. Dinner is the evening." Art Buchwald
"Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it
liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper,
or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish." Henry
Miller
"Americans may be drinking fewer alcoholic beverages,
but they are certainly eating more of them than ever before. Wittingly or un."
Marian Burros
"Americans, more than any other culture on earth, are
cookbook cooks; we learn to make our meals not from any oral tradition, but
from a text. The just-wed cook brings to the new household no carefully copied
collection of the family's cherished recipes, but a spanking new edition of
'Fannie Farmer' or 'The Joy of Cooking'." John Thorne
“An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks
as much as you do.” Dylan Thomas
"An apple is an excellent thing -- until you have tried
a peach." George du Maurier
"An army marches on its stomach." Napoleon
"An egg is always an adventure; the next one may
be different." Oscar Wilde
"An empty belly is the best cook." Estonian
Proverb
“An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.”
Albert Einstein
"An epicure is one who gets nothing better than the
cream of everything but cheerfully makes the best of it." Oliver Herford
"An onion can make people cry, but there has never
been a vegetable invented to make them laugh." Will Rogers
"An optimist is someone who goes after Moby Dick
in a rowboat and takes the tartar sauce with him." John Silas “Zig”
Ziglar
"An orange on the table, your dress on the rug,
and you in my bed, sweet present of the present, cool of night, warmth of my
life." Jaques Prevert
"And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but
eat and drink as friends." William Shakespeare
"And every day when I've been good,
I get an orange after food." Robert Louis Stevenson
"And malt does more than Milton can; To justify God's
ways to man" A.E. Housman
"And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic,
for we are to utter sweet breath." William Shakespeare
"And now, dear Lord,
I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date." John Betjeman
"And then I saw the menu, stained with tea and
beautifully written by a foreign hand, and on top it said -- God I hated that
old man -- it said 'Chips with everything'. Chips with every damn thing. You
breed babies and you eat chips with everything." Arnold Wesker
"And then you bit
onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find
a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler
had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat anything."Terry
Pratchett
"And through the hall there walked to and fro
A jolly yeoman, marshall of the same,
Whose name was Appetite; he did bestow
Both guestes and meate, whenever in they came,
And knew them how to order without blame." Edmund Spenser
"Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink
That is the finest of suppers, I think
When I'm grown up and can have what I please,
I think I shall always insist upon these." Christopher Morley
"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends."
George Bernard Shaw
"Another peculiarity of this country is the absence
of napkins, even in the homes of the wealthy. Napkins, as a rule, are never
used and one has to wipe one's mouth on the tablecloth, which in consequence
suffers in appearance." Baron Louis de Closen (on American eating habits)
"Anti-alcoholics are unfortunates in the grip of
water, that terrible poison, so corrosive that out of all substances it has
been chosen for washing and scouring, and a drop of water added to a clear liquid
like Absinthe, muddles it." Alfred Jarry
"Any fool can count the seeds in an apple. Only God
can count all the apples in one seed." Robert Schuller
"Any healthy man can go without food for two days
- but not without poetry." Charles Baudelaire
"Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have
beef." Samuel Johnson
"Any part of the piggy
Is quite all right with me
Ham from Westphalia, ham from Parma
Ham as lean as the Dalai Lama
Ham from Virginia, ham from York,
Trotters Sausages, hot roast pork.
Crackling crisp for my teeth to grind on
Bacon with or without the rind on
Though humanitarian
I'm not a vegetarian.
I'm neither crank nor prude nor prig
And though it may sound infra dig
Any part of the darling pig
Is perfectly fine with me." Noel Coward
"Anybody can make you enjoy the first bite of a
dish, but only a real chef can make you enjoy the last." François
Minot
"Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart
is through his stomach flunked geography." Robert Byrne
"Anybody who hates dogs and loves whiskey can't
be all bad." W.C. Fields
"Anyhow, the hole in the doughnut is at least digestible."
H.L. Mencken
"Anyone who eats three meals a day should understand
why cookbooks outsell sex books three to one." L. M. Boyd
"Anything that's white is sweet; anything that's brown
is meat; anything that's gray don't eat." Hermione Gingold, on airplane food
"Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders
a pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies." Milton Berle
"Appetite comes with eating." Francois Rabelais
"Appetite, a universal wolf." Shakespeare
"Appetizers are those little bits you eat until you
lose your appetite." Anonymous
"Apple-pie is used through the whole year, and when
fresh apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening
meal of children. House-pie, in country places, is made of apples neither peeled
nor freed from their cores, and its crust is not broken if a wagon wheel goes
over it." Dr. Acrelius
"Approaching the stove, she would don a voluminous
apron, toss some meat on a platter, empty a skillet of its perfectly cooked
a point vegetables, sprinkle a handful of chopped parsley over all, and then,
like a proficient striptease artist, remove the apron, allowing it to fall to
the floor with a shake of her hips." Bert Greene
"Aqua vitae was first used in this country, Ireland,
as a medicine, considered as a panacea for all disorders, and the physicians
recommended it to patients indiscriminately for preserving health, dissipating
humours, strengthening the heart, curing colic, dropsy, palsy, quartan fever,
stone, and even prolonging existence beyond the common limits." Morewood
"Around here, grillin's grillin' and barbecue is, well--sigh,
sweat--what dinin' in heaven's got to be all about." Jane Garvey
"Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more
at the finish than at the start of dinner." Lord Chesterfield
"As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices:
take it or leave it." Buddy Hackett
"As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than
chemists." Joan Gussow
"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
"As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness
about it that was very pleasurable -- until I realized it wasn't a nectarine
at all, but A HUMAN HEAD!!" Jack Handy
"As if a cookbook had anything to do with writing."
Alice B. Toklas
"As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall
not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions, and by far
-- much greater than Hell, the radio or the bichloride tablet." H.L. Mencken
"As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is
a general commotion. Ideas begin to move... similes arise, the paper is covered.
Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle." Charles Maurice
de Talleyrand
"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
"As you get older, you shouldn't waste time drinking
bad wine." Julia Child
"Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts." Charles
Lamb
"At 5:30 the morning shift of commissary workers arrive
to stock the coffee urns, bring in fresh food and prepare for the daylong job
of feeding the humans." Francis X. Clines (on the Bronx Zoo)
"At 73, no longer a god in the garden or a satyr
in the forest, he is a wolf at table." Prince of Ligne (on Casanova)
"At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not
too well and talk well but not too wisely." W. Somerset Maugham
"At high tide the fish eat ants; at low tide the ants
eat fish." Thai Proverb
"At the beginning of the World God created wine
for man’s health, since it is more precious than any other drink and more
natural to him." Francesc Eiximenis
"Avoid fruit and nuts. You are what you eat."
Jim Davis
"Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses." Jonathan
Swift
"Bad cooks -- and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen
-- have delayed human development longest and impaired it most." Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Bagel: An unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis."
The New York Times
"Bagels are made with love and a little cement." Anonymous
"Bait the hook well. This fish will bite." Shakespeare
"Baked apples are at the core of modern thinking." Naomi
Kobuko
"Bakers of bread rolls and pastry cooks will not buy
grain before eleven o'clock in winter and noon in summer; bakers of large loaves
will not buy grain before two o'clock. This will enable the people of the town
to obtain their supply first. Bakers shall put a distinctive trademark on their
loaves, and keep weights and scales in their shops, under penalty of having
their licenses removed." Cardinal Richelieu
"Banish (the onion) from the kitchen and the pleasure
flies with it. Its presence lends color and enchantment to the most modest dish;
its absence reduces the rarest delicacy to hopeless insipidity, and dinner to
despair." Elizabeth Robbins Pennell
"Be careful not to be the first to put your hands
in the dish. What you cannot hold in your hands you must put on your plate.
Also it is a great breach of etiquette when your fingers are dirty and greasy,
to bring them to your mouth in order to lick them, or to clean them on your
jacket. It would be more decent to use the tablecloth." Desiderius
Erasmus
"Be careful of the words you say, keep them soft and
sweet; You never know from day to day which ones you'll have to eat." Unknown
"Be careful to trust a person, who does not like
wine" Karl Marx
"Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes
properly can do nothing else." Hillaire Belloc
"Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself
in life as at a feast." Epictetus
"Beasts feed. Man eats. Only the man of intellect knows
how to eat." Brillat-Savarin
"'Bee vomit,' my brother said once, 'that's all
honey is,' so that I could not put my tongue to its jellied flame without tasting
regurgitated blossoms." Rita Dove
"Beer has long been the prime lubricant in our social
intercourse and the sacred throat-anointing fluid that accompanies the ritual
of mateship. To sink a few cold ones with the blokes is both an escape and a
confirmation of belonging." Rennie Ellis
"Beer is made by men, Wine by God." Martin
Luther
"Beer is not a good cocktail party drink, especially
in a home where you don't know where the bathroom is." Billy Carter
"Beer is the Danish national drink, and the Danish national
weakness is another beer." Clementine Paddleford
"Before dinner men meet with great inequality of
understanding." Samuel Johnson
"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
"Before Noah, men having only water to drink, could
not find the truth. Accordingly...they became abominably wicked, and they were
justly exterminated by the water they loved to drink. This good man, Noah, having
seen that all his contemporaries had perished by this unpleasant drink, took
a dislike to it; and God, to relieve his dryness, created the vine and revealed
to him the art of making le vin. By the aid of this liquid he unveiled more
and more truth." Benjamin Franklin
"Being sober for so many years is getting interesting."
Peter O'Toole
"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted
ox and hatred with it." Proverbs 15:17
"Better that the belly burst than food be left
on the table." Neapolitan proverb
"Between the ages of twenty and fifty, John Doe
spends some twenty thousand hours chewing and swallowing food, more than eight
hundred days and nights of steady eating. The mere contemplation of this fact
is upsetting enough." M.F.K. Fisher
"Birthdays are nature's way of telling us to eat
more cake." Anonymous
"Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel,
sweet as love." Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (on coffee)
"Blessed be he that invented pudding, for it is
a manna that hits the palates of all sorts of people; a manna better than that
of the wilderness, because the people are never weary of it." Francoise
Maximilien Mission
"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
Neil Connor (columnist "Cassandra")
"Brandy and water spoils two good things." Charles
Lamb
"Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room,
is ambrosia eating under a tree." Elizabeth Russell
"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
"Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely
the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the
vegetables, the salad... but bread is king." Louis Bromfield
"Bread is the warmest, kindest of words. Write it always
with a capital letter, like your own name." Anonymous
"Bread that must be sliced with an axe is bread that
is too nourishing." Fran Lebowitz
"Breakfast cereals that come in the same colors
as polyester leisure suits make oversleeping a virtue." Fran Lebowitz
"Breaking a glass in the northwest is rather like belching
in Arabia, for it appears to be done as a mark of appreciation or elation."
Jonathan Aitken
"Brewing espresso...unlike other methods of brewing
coffee...IS rocket science..." Kevin Knox and Julie Sheldon Huffaker
"Bright red meat is good for you. Fuzzy green meat is
not good for you." seen on a bumper sticker
"Bring me an order of escargots, but hold the slugs."
Orson Bean
"Britain is the only country in the world where the
food is more dangerous than the sex." Jackie Mason
"Burgundy makes you think of silly things, Bordeaux
makes you talk of them, and Champagne makes you do them." Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
"But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goat's flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton;
And, when a holiday upon them smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on." Lord Byron
"But doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat
in his youth that he cannot endure in his age." William Shakespeare
"But I always felt that I'd rather be provincial hot-tamale
than soup without seasoning." F. Scott Fitzgerald
"But I, when I undress me
Each night, upon my knees
Will ask the Lord to bless me
With apple-pie and cheese." Eugene Field
"But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in
our irritation, from... the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star
Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled
carrots and Beluga caviar, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take
care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them." J.B. Priestley
"But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery
was delightfully explained. Oh! sweet friends, hearken to me. It was made of
small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship
biscuits and salted pork cut up into little flakes! the whole enriched with
butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.....we dispatched it with
great expedition." Herman Melville (in Moby Dick)
"But when the time comes that a man has had his
dinner, then the true man comes to the surface." Mark Twain
"By making this wine known to the public, I have
rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the
national debt." Thomas Jefferson
"By reason of its soporigous quality, lettuce ever
was, and still continues the principal foundation of the universal tribe of
Sallets, which is to cool and refresh, besides its other properties ... including
beneficial influences on morals, temperance, and chastity." John Evelyn
"Cabbage is best after it is reheated seven times."
Slovakian proverb
"Cabbage twice cooked is death." Greek
proverb
"Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining
from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state
of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought
his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale
bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little
before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter
when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could
his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away
his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and
serums from mortal wounds?" Plutarch
"Cantonese will eat anything in the sky but airplanes,
anything in the sea but submarines and anything with four legs but the table."
Amanda Bennett
"Carnation Milk is the best in the land
Here I sit with a can in my hand
No teats to pull, no hay to pitch
You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch." Unknown
"Carve a ham as if you were shaving the face of
a friend." Henri Charpentier
"Cassoulet, that best
of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome,
though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting
firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba."
Julia Child
"Cat... the other white meat." seen on a bumper sticker
"Catering is the cottage industry of New York. All a
caterer needs is a Cuisinart, some pots and pans and a couple of food magazines
to start out. They get jobs, though they don't necessarily get repeats." Donald
Bruce White
"Cauliflower is cabbage with a college education."
Mark Twain
"Caviar is to dining what a sable coat is to a girl
in evening dress." Ludwig Bemelmans
"Cheese that is compelled by law to append the
word 'food' to its title does not go well with red wine or fruit." Fran
Lebowitz
"Chef: Any cook who swears in French." Henry
Beard and Roy McKie
"Chemicals, n: Noxious substances from which modern
foods are made." Author Unknown
“Chewing gum! A new and superior preparation of
Spruce Gum.” advertisement for the first commercial chewing gum; Chicago
Daily Democrat, October 25, 1850
"Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy." William
Shakespeare
"Chicken may be eaten constantly without becoming
nauseating." Andre Simon
"Chili represents your three stages of matter:
solid, liquid, and eventually gas." character Dan Conner, on Roseanne
"Chop: A piece of leather skillfully attached
to a bone and administered to the patients at restaurants." Ambrose
Bierce
"Chocolate, of course, is the stuff of which fantasies
are made. Rich, dark, velvety-smooth fantasies that envelop the senses and stir
the passions. Chocolate is madness; chocolate is delight." Judith Olney
"Chowder breathes reassurance. It steams consolation."
Clementine Paddleford
"Clam chowder is one of those subjects, like politics
or religion, that can never be discussed lightly. Bring it up even incidentally,
and all the innumerable factions of the clam bake regions raise their heads
and begin to yammer." Louis P. De Gouy
"Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men. But
he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy." Samuel Johnson
"Clearly it is not the lovelorn sufferer who seeks
solace in chocolate, but rather the chocolate-deprived individual, who, desperate,
seeks in mere love a pale approximation of bittersweet euphoria." Sandra
Boynton
"Cockroaches and socialites are the only things
that can stay up all night and eat anything." Herb Caen
"Coexistence... what the farmer does with the turkey
-- until Thanksgiving." Mike Connolly
"Coffee and cigarettes, you know? That's, like,
the breakfast of champions." Jim Jarmusch, in "Blue in the Face"
"Coffee isn't my cup of tea." Samuel Goldwyn
"Coffee leads men to trifle away their time, scald
their chops, and spend their money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty,
bitter, stinking nauseous puddle water." The Women's Petition Against
Coffee, 1674
"Coffee: Induces wit. Good only if it comes through
Havre. After a big dinner party it is taken standing up. Take it without sugar
-- very swank: gives the impression you have lived in the East." Edward
VII
"Comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love." Song
of Solomon 2:5
"Condensed milk is wonderful. I don't see how
they can get a cow to sit down on those little cans." Fred Allen
"Conversation is the enemy of food and good wine."
Alfred Hitchcock
"Condiments are like old friends--highly thought of,
but often taken for granted." Marilyn Kaytor
"Cookbooks bear the same relation to real books that
microwave food bears to your grandmother's." Andrei Codrescu
"Cookery is an old art, as it goes back to Adam."
Marquis de Cussy
"Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are
gentlemen." Robert Burton
"Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires
instinct and taste rather than exact measurements." Marcel Boulestin
"Cookery means... much testing and no wasting; it means
English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and,... it means
that you are to be perfectly and always ladies -- loaf givers." John Ruskin
"Cookies are made of butter and love." Norwegian
Proverb
"Cooking is a creation. As a creation, it is a personalized
view of the way we like to express our feelings. It is how we share our sense
of art, our knowledge, and our taste with other people. Food, after all, is
not merely a product. It is necessary to our sustenance. Food is the support
of life and is the center of the way we live when we take a moment to sit down
and share life, share conversation, and share joy. That is the joy of cooking,
which is a cliche, and yet is it the ultimate way we really fulfill ourselves
and those around us. When people come to us and reach out to us, we must reach
out with a very personalized and individual way of expressing our beliefs."
Piero Selvaggio
"Cooking is a lot like making love. It just takes a
little longer to clean up." Michael Tucker
"Cooking is an art and patience a virtue... Careful
shopping, fresh ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need.
There is one more thing -- love. Love for food and love for those you invite
to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist -- not
perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like
Gauguin, the naive, or Van Gogh, the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine
taste of happiness and love." Keith Floyd
"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
"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with
abandon or not at all." Harriet Van Horne
"Cooking is one of the oldest arts and one which
has rendered us the most important service in civic life." Jean Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin
"Cooking Rule... If at first you don't succeed,
order pizza." Anonymous
"Cooking Tip: Wrap turkey leftovers in aluminum foil
and throw them out." Nicole Hollander
"Cooks are in some ways very much like actors;
they must be fit and strong, since acting and cooking are two of the most exacting
professions. They must be blessed - or cursed, whichever way you care to look
at it - with what is called the artistic temperament, which means that if they
are to act or cook at all well, it cannot be for duds or dummies." Andre
Simon
"Crabs walk sideways to keep from tripping over their
own legs. Having ten legs, eight for walking and two pincers for picking up
food, crabs have too many limbs to sort out in order to walk straight forward."
from a trivia collection
"Cuisine is only about making foods taste the way they
are supposed to taste." Charlie Trotter
"Custard: A detestable substance produced by a
malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow and the cook." Ambrose Bierce
"Cutting stalks at noontime. Perspiration drips
to the earth. Know you that your bowl of rice each grain from hardship comes?"
Chang Chan-Pao
"Dear gourmands! my bowels yearn towards them as a father's
toward his children. They are so good natured! They have such sparkling eyes!"
Brillat-Savarin
"Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to
thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt
a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection...
nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and
we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family." Berke
Breathed
"Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner."
William Thackeray
"Dessert is probably the most important stage
of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they
pass out all over the table." The Anarchist Cookbook
"Destruction lurks within the poisonous dose, a
fatal fever or a purpled nose." Soame Jenyns (on drinking)
"Dietetic meals are like an opera without the orchestra."
Paul Bocuse
"Diets are for those who are thick and tired of
it." Unknown
"Dining out is a vice, a dissipation of spirit
punished by remorse. We eat, drink, and talk a little too much, abuse all our
friends, belch out our literary preferences and are egged on by accomplices
in the audience to acts of mental exhibitionism. Such evenings cannot fail to
diminish those who take part in them. They end on Monkey Hill." Cyril
Connolly
"Do give books for Christmas. They're never fattening..."
Lenore Hershey
"Do not be afraid of simplicity. If you have a
cold chicken for supper, why cover it with a tasteless white sauce which makes
it look like a pretentious dish on the buffet table at some fancy dress ball?"
Marcel Boulestin
"Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?" Unknown
"Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's
made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!"
Roald Dahl
"Doctor, do you think it could have been the sausage?"
last words of Paul Claudel
"Doing strange things in the name of art, and stranger
things in the name of chocolate." Christina M. Callihan
"Don't eat too many almonds; they add weight to the
breasts." Colette
"Don't forget that the flavors of wine and cheese
depend upon the types of infecting micro-organisms." Martin H. Fischer
"Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never
does with mine." Anthony Trollope
“Don't take a butcher's advice on how to cook
meat. If he knew, he'd be a chef." Andy Rooney
"Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for
thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities." I Timothy 5:23
"Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I'll not look for wine." Ben Jonson
"Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are
such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony." Robert Benchley
"Drunkenness is deplorably destructive, but her
demurer sister Gluttony destroys a hundred to her one." William Kitchiner
"Dyspepsia is the remorse of a guilty stomach."
A. Kerr
"Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning
and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day." Unknown
"Eat as much as you like -- just don't swallow
it." Steve Burns
"Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince,
and dinner like a pauper." Adelle Davis
"Eat little, sleep sound." Iranian Proverb
"Eat nothing that will prevent you from eating." Ibn
Tibbon
"Eat standing, eat walking." Samoan Proverb
[eat the pie]"while it is yet florescent, white or creamy
yellow, with the merest drip of candied juice along the edges, (as if the flavor
were so good to itself that its own lips watered!) of a mild and modest warmth,
the sugar suggesting jelly, yet not jellied, the morsels of apple neither dissolved
nor yet in original substance, but hanging as it were in a trance between the
spirit and the flesh of applehood...then, O blessed man, favored by all the
divinities! eat, give thanks, and go forth, 'in apple-pie order!'" Rev. Henry
Ward Beecher
"Eat until the lips protrude." Filipino Proverb
“Eating alone is your privilege but remember your
pain will be even greater.” Congolese proverb
"Eating an artichoke is like getting to know someone
really well." Willi Hastings
"Eating and mating are human instincts." Vietnamese
Proverb
"Eating at a new, highly recommended restaurant is like
a Very Important Blind Date, a contract with uncertainty you enter into with
great expectation battling the cynicism of experience. You sit waiting, wondering
about the upcoming moments of revelation. Somewhere in the back of your head
is the dour warning that disappointment is inevitable but you don't really believe
it or you wouldn't be there. The best eaters are always optimists." Stuart
Stevens
"Eating food with a knife and fork is like making love
through an interpreter." Anonymous
"Eating is Heaven." Korean Proverb
"Eating rice cakes is like chewing on a foam coffee
cup, only less filling." Dave Barry
"Eating takes a special talent. Some people are much
better at it than others. In that way, it is like sex, and as with sex, it's
more fun with someone who really likes it. I can't imagine having a lasting
friendship with anyone who is not interested in food." Alan King
"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
"Eggs are very much like small boys. If you overheat
them or over beat them, they will turn on you and no amount of future love will
right the wrong." Irena Chalmers
"Eggs of an hour, bread of a day, wine of a year,
a friend of thirty years." Italian Proverb
"England is merely an island of beef swimming in
a warm gulf stream of gravy." Katherine Mansfield
"English Cooking: You just put things in hot water and
take them out again after a while." Anonymous French Chef
"Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces
everything. It is honour." Emily Post
"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious
confections, children tend to be sticky." Fran Lebowitz
"Ever since Eve started it all by offering Adam
the apple, woman’s punishment has been to supply a man with food then
suffer the consequences when it disagrees with him." Helen Rowland
"Every country possesses, it seems, the sort of
cuisine it deserves, which is to say the sort of cuisine it is appreciative
enough to want. I used to think that the notoriously bad cooking of the English
was an example to the contrary, and that the English cook the way they do because,
through sheer technical deficiency, they had not been able to master the art
of cooking. I have discovered to my stupefaction that the English cook that
way because that is the way they like it." Waverly Root
"Every man will have to give an account of himself
for every good thing which he would have liked to eat, but did not." Hillel
"Every morning one must start from scratch with nothing
on the stove. This is cuisine!" Larousse Gastronomique
"Every sweet has its sour." Ralph Waldo
Emerson
"Everybody loves to have things which please the
palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation." Samuel Johnson
"Everyone has a right to a university degree in America,
even if it's in Hamburger Technology." Clive James
"Everyone must believe in something, I believe
I'll have another drink." WC Fields
"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
"Everything in a pig is good. What ingratitude
has permitted his name to become a term of opprobrium?" Grimod de la
Reyniere
"Excellent potatoes, smoking hot, and accompanied
by melted butter of the first quality, would alone stamp merit on any dinner."
Thomas Walker
"Failure is the condiment that gives success its
flavor." Truman Capote
"FAME is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate,
Whose table once a Guest, but not
The second time, is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect,
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer's corn;
Men eat of it and die." Emily Dickinson
"Fame is a food that dead men eat.
I have no stomach for such meat." Henry Austin Dobson
"Family dinners are more often than not an ordeal
of nervous indigestion, preceded by hidden resentment and ennui and accompanied
by psychosomatic jitters." M.F.K Fisher
"Fast food doesn't satisfy your appetite, it just kills
it." Tom Fitzmorris
"Feast, and your halls are crowded; fast, and the
world goes by." Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Fettucini alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults."
Mitch Hedberg
"Few things are more revolting than the spectacle
of a normally reasonable father and husband gowned in one of those hot, massive
aprons inscribed with disgustingly corny legends, presiding over a noisome brazier
as he destroys huge hunks of good meat and fills the neighborhood with greasy,
acrid smoke: a Boy Scout with five o'clock shadow." NY Herald Tribune,
1961
"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
"First then to speak of sallets, there be some simple,
some compounded, some only to furnish out the table, and some both for use and
adoration." Gervaise Markham
"First we eat, then we do everything else." M.F.K.
Fisher
"Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled
once it smells like what it is." P. J. O'Rourke
"Fish should smell like the tide. Once they smell like
fish, it's too late." Oscar Gizelt
"Fish should swim thrice: first it should swim
in the sea….then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should
swim in good claret." Jonathan Swift
"Fish, to taste right, must swim three times -
in water, in butter, and in wine." Polish Proverb
"Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented.
And reinvented." Joyce Carol Oates
"Food for thought is no substitute for the real
thing." Walt Kelly
"Food history is as important as a baroque church.
Governments should recognize cultural heritage and protect traditional foods.
A cheese is as worthy of preserving as a sixteenth-century building." Carlo
Petrini
"Food is a central activity of mankind and one
of the single most significant trademarks of a culture." Mark Kurlansky
"Food is an implement of magic, and only the most
coldhearted rationalist could squeeze the juices of life out of it and make
it bland. In a true sense, a cookbook is the best source of psychological advice
and the kitchen the first choice of room for a therapy of the world." Thomas
More
"Food is an important part of a balanced diet." Fran
Leibowitz
"Food is our common ground, a universal experience."
James Beard
"Food is the most primitive form of comfort." Sheila
Graham
"Food is to eat, not to frame and hang on the wall."
William Denton (on nouvelle cuisine)
"Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food
is a ghost; united and well matched they are as body and soul, living partners."
Andre Simon
"Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power,
has that ability to comfort." Norman Kolpas
"Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans
eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its
appearance and delay its putrefaction." John Cage
"Food: Part of the spiritual expression of the French,
and I do not believe that they have ever heard of calories." Beverley Baxter
"For a bad night, a mattress of wine." Spanish
proverb
"For many a pasty have you robbed of blood,
And many a Jack of Dover have you sold
That has been heated twice and twice grown cold.
From many a pilgrim have you had Christ's curse,
For of your parsley they yet fare the worse,
Which they have eaten with your stubble goose;
For in your shop full many a fly is loose." Geoffrey Chaucer
"For this is every cook's opinion,
No savoury dish without an onion;
But lest your kissing should be spoiled,
Your onions should be thoroughly boiled." Jonathan Swift
"Forget love... I'd rather fall in chocolate!"
Author Unknown
"Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of
putting dead animals into the mouth." Ambrose Bierce
"Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why?
To find one good you must a hundred try." Claude Mermet
"From wine... what sudden friendship springs!"
John Gay
"Garlic is as good as ten mothers." Les Blank
"Garlic is the 'vanilla' of Provence." French
proverb
"Garlick maketh a man wynke, drynke, and stynke."
Thomas Nash
"Garnishing of dishes has also a great deal to do with
the appearance of a dinner-table, each dish garnished sufficiently to be in
good taste without looking absurd." Hugo Ziemann
"Gazing at the typewriter in moments of desperation
I console myself with three thoughts. Alcohol at six, dinner at eight, and to
be immortal you've got to be dead." Gyles Brandreth
"Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach
him how to fish and you can get rid of him of the entire weekend." Zenna
Schaffer (and several other women)
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach
a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial
shortage of fish and he will eat steak." Jay Leno
"Give me a platter of choice finnan haddie, freshly
cooked in its bath of water and milk, add melted butter, a slice or two of hot
toast, a pot of steaming Darjeeling tea, and you may tell the butler to dispense
with the caviar, truffles and nightingales' tongues." Craig Claiborne
"Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and
a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know." John Keats
"Give me the provisions and whole apparatus of
a kitchen, and I would starve." Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish,
and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts." Proverbs 31:6
“Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel,
they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.” Shakespeare, Henry
V, III, 7
"Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups
that spoons will not sink in and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise
up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with... Give
us pasta with a hundred fillings." Robert Farrar Capon
"Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign that something
is eating us." Peter De Vries
"Gluttony is not a secret vice." Orson Wells
"Goat cheese... produced a bizarre eating era when sensible
people insisted that this miserable cheese produced by these miserable creatures
reared on miserable hardscrabble earth was actually superior to the magnificent
creamy cheeses of the noblest dairy animals bred in the richest green valleys
of the earth." Russell Baker
"God bless my soul! No apple pie." Robert Oliver
"God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them."
Franz Kafka
"God made only water, but man made wine."
Victor Hugo
"Good apple pies are a considerable part of our
domestic happiness." Jane Austen
"Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying
of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts."
James Beard
"Good cooking is when things taste of what they
are." Curnonsky
"Good for diseases of the liver and to make blood.
A decoction of the leaves and branches of Sage made and drunk, saith Dioscorides,
provokes urine and causeth the hair to become black. It stayeth the bleeding
of wounds and cleaneth ulcers and sores. Three spoonsful of the juice of Sage
taken fasting with a little honey arrests spitting or vomiting of blood in consumption.
It is profitable for all pains in the head coming of cold rheumatic humours,
as also for all pains in the joints, whether inwardly or outwardly. The juice
of Sage in warm water cureth hoarseness and cough. Pliny saith it cureth stinging
and biting serpents. Sage is of excellent use to help the memory, warming and
quickening the senses. The juice of Sage drunk with vinegar hath been of use
in the time of the plague at all times. Gargles are made with Sage, Rosemary,
Honeysuckles and Plantains, boiled in wine or water with some honey or alum
put thereto, to wash sore mouths and throats, as need requireth. It is very
good for stitch or pains in the sides coming of wind, if the place be fomented
warm with the decoction in wine and the herb also, after boiling, be laid warm
thereto." Nicholas Culpepper
"Good Hock (Hochheimer) keeps off the Doc."
Queen Victoria
"Good Manners: The noise you don't make when you're
eating soup." Bennett Cerf
"Good taste [in cooking] is innate, and knowing with
certainty when and how to break the rules -- and when not to -- is a talent
few possess." Michael McLaughlin
"Good Whisky, as a beverage, is the most wholesome
spirit in the world." A. Barnard
"Good wine is a necessity of life for me."
Thomas Jefferson
"Govern well thy appetite, lest Sin Surprise thee, and
her black attendant Death." John Milton
"Governing a great nation is much like cooking
a small fish." Lao Zi
"Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable
of anything else that is great." Henry IV of France
"Great food is like great sex. The more you have
the more you want." Gael Greene
"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
"Grub first, then ethics." Bertolt Brecht
"Half the cookbooks tell you how to cook the food
and the other half tell you how to avoid eating it." Andy Rooney
"Half of the receipts in our cookbooks are mere
murder to such constitutions and stomachs as we grow here. ...in America, owing
to our brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have developed an acute, nervous
delicacy of temperament far more akin to that of France than of England."
Catherine Beecher
"Ham's substantial, ham is fat.
Ham is firm and sound.
Ham's what God was getting at
When He made pigs so round." Roy Blount, Jr.
"Happiness is a bowl of cherries and a book of
poetry under a shade tree." Astrid Alauda
"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
"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
"having examined
three thousand haiku poems --
two persimmons" Masaoka Shiki
"He added that a Frenchman in the train had given
him a great sandwich that so stank of garlic that he had been inclined to throw
it at the fellow's head." Ford Maddox Ford
"He chopped up peppers, mixed them with vinegar and
Avery Island salt, put the mixture in wooden barrels to age and funneled the
resulting sauce into secondhand cologne bottles." James Conaway (on the invention
of Tabasco)
"He gave her a look you could have poured on a
waffle." Ring Lardner
"He is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm
to his wit." Shakespeare
“He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula
on a slice of angel food.” Raymond Chandler
"He may live without books - what is knowledge
but grieving?
He may live without hope - what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love - what is passion but pining?
But where is the man who can live without dining?" Edward Bulwer-Lytton
"He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs
to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart."
C.S. Lewis
"He that eateth well drinketh well,
he that drinketh well sleepeth well,
he that sleepeth well sinneth not,
he that sinneth not goeth straight through Purgatory to Paradise." William
Lithgow
"He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the
skill of the physician." Chinese proverb
"He that travels in theory has no inconveniences;
he has shade and sunshine at his disposal, and wherever he alights finds tables
of plenty and looks of gaiety. These ideas are indulged till the day of departure
arrives, the chaise is called, and the progress of happiness begins. A few miles
teach him the fallacies of imagination. The road is dusty, the air is sultry,
the horses are sluggish. He longs for the time of dinner that he may eat and
rest. The inn is crowded, his orders are neglected, and nothing remains but
that he devour in haste what the cook has spoiled, and drive on in quest of
better entertainment. He finds at night a more commodious house, but the best
is always worse than he expected." Samuel Johnson
"He was a very valiant man who first adventured
on eating oysters." James I
"He was an innovator, an experimenter, a missionary
in bringing the gospel of good cooking to the home table." Craig Claiborne
(on James Beard)
"He was for all the world like a forked radish with
a head fantasically carved upon it with a knife." Shakespeare
"He who distinguishes the true savor of his food
can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise." Henry
David Thoreau
“He who eats alone chokes alone.” Arab
Proverb
"He whose belly is full believes not him who is fasting."
Japanese proverb
"Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos
taste a hell of a lot better." Robert Redford
"Heart attacks... God's revenge for eating his little
animal friends." Anonymous
"Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple
dumpling." Herman Melville
"Hell is probably quite similar to most Paris bistros
... a bit overheated, somewhat too crowded, and a little too noisy for my tastes.
The waiters will surely treat you rudely and the cashiers will always add a
few extra francs to your bill but ... and this is the important part ... the
food will be marvelous." Henry Miller
"Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock.
For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider:
about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and
the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken."
Sylvia Townsend Warner
"Here is a rural fellow that will not be denied your
Highness' presence: he brings you figs." Shakespeare
"Hey, who took the cork off my lunch?" W.C.
Fields
"High-tech tomatoes. Mysterious milk. Supersquash.
Are we supposed to eat this stuff? Or is it going to eat us?" Annita
Manning
"His idea of heaven is eating pâté
de foie gras to the sound of trumpets." Sydney Smith
"History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet
our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive. It knows
the names of the king's bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This
is the way of human folly." Jean-Henri Fabre
"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." Guy Clark
"Honey comes out of the air … At early dawn
the leaves of trees are found bedewed with honey. … Whether this is the
perspiration of the sky or a sort of saliva of the stars, or the moisture of
the air purging itself, nevertheless it brings with it the great pleasure of
its heavenly nature. It is always of the best quality when it is stored in the
best flowers." Pliny
"Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for
me: they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through, wondering what
the next course is going to be like -- and during the rest of the menu one wishes
one had eaten more of the hors d'oeurves." Saki
"Hospitality: The virtue which induces us to feed
and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging." Ambrose
Bierce
“How about slipping out of those wet things and
into a dry Martini?” Noel Coward
"How can people say they don't eat eggplant when
God loves the color and the French love the name? I don't understand."
Jeff Smith
"How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not
for more than 60 years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?" Logan
Smith
"How can you eat anything with eyes?" Will
Kellogg
"How sweet the butter our own hands have churned."
Charles Reade
"Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food."
Mary Catherine Bateson
"Humans are the only animals that have children
on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs." P.
J. O'Rourke
"Hunger finds no fault with the cookery."
Henry George Bohn
"Hunger is never delicate." Samuel Johnson
"Hunger is the best sauce in the world." Cervantes
"Hunger makes you restless. You dream about food
-- not just any food, but perfect food, the best food, magical meals, famous
and awe-inspiring, the one piece of meat, the exact taste of buttery corn, tomatoes
so ripe they split and sweeten the air, beans so crisp they snap between the
teeth, gravy like mother's milk singing to your bloodstream." Dorothy
Allison
"Hunger: One of the few cravings that cannot be
appeased with another solution." Irwin Van Grove
"Hungry men think the cook lazy." Anonymous
"I'd discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension
about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a
certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly,
you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly
brought up. They will think you are original and very witty." Sylvia Plath
"I'm a man. Men cook outside. Women make the three-bean
salad. That's the way it is and always has been, since the first settlers of
Levittown. That outdoor grilling is a manly pursuit has long been beyond question.
If this wasn't firmly understood, you'd never get grown men to put on those
aprons with pictures of dancing wienies and things on the front..." William
Geist
"I'm at the age where food has taken the place
of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table."
Rodney Dangerfield
"I'm fond of anything that comes from the sea,
and that includes sailors." Janet Flanner
"I'm Frank Thompson, all the way from 'down east.'
I've been through the mill, ground, and bolted, and come out a regular-built
down-east johnny-cake, when it's hot, damned good; but when it's cold, damned
sour and indigestible; --and you'll find me so." Richard Henry Dana
"I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they
revolt me. That white round thing without any holes. Have you ever seen anything
more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid. Blood
is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I've never tasted it." Alfred
Hitchcock
"I'm not so think as you drunk I am." John
Squire
"I've found without question that the best way
to lead others to a more plant-based diet is by example - to lead with your
fork, not your mouth." Bernie Wilke
"I've got brown sandwiches and green sandwiches
- it's either very new cheese or very old meat." Oscar Madison, in
The Odd Couple
"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
"I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight
and never to refuse a drink after dark." H.L. Mencken
"I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says
'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good
cooks drink." James Abbott McNeill Whistler
"I always wondered why babies spend so much time
sucking their thumbs. Then I tasted baby food." Robert Orben
"I am a strong partisan of second causes, and I
believe firmly that the entire gallinaceous order (fowl) has been merely created
to furnish our larders and our banquets." Brillat-Savarin
"I am convinced that digestion is the great secret
of life." Sydney Smith
"I am not a glutton; I am an explorer of food."
Erma Bombeck
"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals;
I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." A. Whitney Brown
"I am the emperor of Germany, but you are the emperor
of chefs." Emperor William II of Germany (to Georges-Auguste Escoffier)
"I am utterly against those confused Olios, into
which men put almost all kinds of meats and Roots." John Evelyn
"I appreciate the potato only as a protection against
famine, except for that, I know of nothing more eminently tasteless." Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin
"I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism,
I might manage if there were enough tarragon around." James Beard
"I come from a family where gravy is considered
a beverage." Erma Bombeck
"I confess that nothing frightens me more than
the appearance of mushrooms on the table, especially in a small provincial town."
Alexandre Dumas
"I consider the discovery of a dish which sustains our
appetite and prolongs our pleasures as a far more interesting event than the
discovery of a star." Henrion de Pensey
"I crawled into the vegetable bin, settled on a
giant onion and ate it, skin and all. It must have marked me for life for I
have never ceased to love the hearty flavor of onions." James Beard
"I detest... anything over-cooked, over-herbed,
over-sauced, over elaborate. Nothing can go very far wrong at table as long
as there is honest bread, butter, olive oil, a generous spirit, lively appetites
and attention to what we are eating." Sybille Bedford
"I devoured hot-dogs in Baltimore 'way back in
1886, and they were then very far from newfangled...They contained precisely
the same rubber, indigestible pseudo-sausages that millions of Americans now
eat, and they leaked the same flabby, puerile mustard. Their single point of
difference lay in the fact that their covers were honest German Wecke made of
wheat-flour baked to crispiness, and not the soggy rolls prevailing today, of
ground acorns, plaster-of-Paris, flecks of bath-sponge, and atmospheric air
all compact." H.L. Mencken
"I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book...
The recipes were to be the routine ones: how to make dry toast, instant coffee,
hearts of lettuce and brownies. But as an added attraction, at no extra charge,
my idea was to put a fried egg on the cover. I think a lot of people who hate
literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right." Groucho
Marx
"I didn't have paprika so I used another spice.
I didn't have potatoes so I substituted rice.
I didn't have tomato sauce so I used tomato paste;
(A whole can, not a half can; I don't believe in waste).
A friend gave me this recipe and said 'you just can't beat it.'
There must be something wrong with her, I can't even eat it!" unknown
"I didn't work my way to the top of the food chain to
eat vegetables." seen on a bumper sticker
"I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did
it for the health of the chickens." Isaac Bashevis Singer
"I did not say that this meat was tough. I just
said I didn't see the horse that usually stands outside." W.C. Fields
"I do not think anything serious should be done
after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast." George Saintsbury
"I do not want to make my stomach a graveyard of
dead animals." George Bernard Shaw
"I don't cry over spilt milk, but a fallen scoop
of ice cream is enough to ruin my whole day." Terri Guillemets
"I don't even butter my bread. I consider that
cooking." Katherine Cebrian
"I don't go for the nouvelle approach -- serving a rabbit
rump with coffee extract sauce and a slice of kiwi fruit." Jeff Smith
"I don't like gourmet cooking or 'this' cooking or 'that'
cooking. I like good cooking." James Beard
"I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't because
if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it." Clarence Darrow
"I don't like to eat snails. I prefer fast food." Strange
de Jim
"I don't like to say that my kitchen is a religious
place, but I would say that if I were a voodoo priestess, I would conduct my
rituals there." Pearl Bailey
"I don't think a really good pie can be made without
a dozen or so children peeking over your shoulder as you stoop to look in at
it every little while." John Gould
"I don't think the road to heaven is paved with
bean curd." David Shaw
"I doubt whether the world holds for anyone a more
soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice cream." Heywood
Broun
"I eat merely to put food out of my mind."
N.F. Simpson
"I exercise extreme self-control. I never drink
anything stronger than gin before breakfast." W.C. Fields
"I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent
cook can play each time with a variation." Madame Benoit
"I feel like a midget with muddy feet has been
walking over my tongue all night." W.C. Fields
"I feel the end approaching. Quick, bring me my dessert,
coffee and liqueur." Pierette, Brillat-Savarin's great aunt
"I find a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent
cook can play each time with a variation." Madame Benoit
"I forget the name
of the place; I forget the name of the girl; but the wine was Chambertin."
Hilaire Belloc
"I got food poisoning today. I don't know when
I'll use it." Steven Wright
"I had left home (like all Jewish girls) in order to
eat pork and take birth control pills. When I first shared an intimate evening
with my husband I was swept away by the passion (so dormant inside myself) of
a long and tortured existence. The physical cravings I had tried so hard to
deny finally and ultimately sated -- but enough about the pork." Roseanne
"I had rather munch a crust of brown bread and
an onion in a corner, without any more ado, or ceremony, than feed upon turkey
at another man's table." Cervantes
"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts.
But I can't stop eating peanuts." Orson Welles
"I hate with a bitter hatred the names of lentils
haricots -- those pretentious cheats of the appetite, those tabulated humbugs,
those certified aridites calling themselves human food!" George Robert
Gissing
"I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything
you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people." Ed Bluestone
"I have always maintained that there is nothing
wrong with nursery food now that we are grown up and can have a glass of wine
with it." Elizabeth Ray
"I have been assured by a very knowing acquaintance
in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious,
nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or broiled,
and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasee or ragout." Jonathan
Swift
"I have clearly noticed that often I have one opinion
when I lie down and another one when I stand up, especially when I have eaten
little and when I am tired." G. C. Lichtenberg
"I have enjoyed great health at a great age because
every day since I can remember, I have consumed a bottle of wine -- except when
I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles." Bishop of
Seville
"I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank
my ale, and I always sleep upon ale." George Farquhar
"I have known many meat-eaters to be far more non-violent
than vegetarians." Gandhi
"I have lived temperately...I double the doctor's
recommendation of a glass and a half of wine a day and even treble it with a
friend." Thomas Jefferson
"I have long believed that good food, good eating
is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters
or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an
adventure." Anthony Bourdain
"I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and
regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them." Nora
Ephron
"I have never regretted Paradise Lost since I discovered
that it contained no eggs-and-bacon." Dorothy Sayers
"I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny
of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals,
as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came
in contact with each other." Henry David Thoreau
"I have no truck with lettuce, cabbage, and similar
chlorophyll. Any dietitian will tell you that a running foot of apple strudel
contains four times the vitamins of a bushel of beans." S.J. Perelman
"I have read in one of the Marseille newspapers that
if certain people find aioli indigestible, it is simply because too little garlic
has been included in its confection, a minimum of four cloves per person being
necessary." Richard Olney
"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken
out of me." Winston Churchill
"I heard tell of a lady shrimp who one day scolded her
daughter, saying, 'My Lord, you walk crooked! Can't you go straight?' 'And you,
Mother, how do you walk?' replied the daughter. 'Can I walk straight when everyone
around me walks crooked?' The daughter was right." Pellegrino Artusi "
"I hire tea by the tea bag." Martin Amis
"I just could not stand the idea of eating meat
- I really do think that it has made me calmer.... People's general awareness
is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the
calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us cannot
really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because
it cannot understand why its calf isn't by, it can make you think a lot."
Kate Bush
"I just hate health food." Julia Child
"I know folks all have a tizzy about it, but I like
a little bourbon of an evening. It helps me sleep. I don't much care what they
say about it." Lillian Carter
"I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling
on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating
it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream... I know how the nuts taken
in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales
and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting." Mark Twain
"I learned that love and cooking are the most important,
the most basic, natural and essential, as well as the most entertaining pastimes
in the world." Edward G. Danziger
“I like a Blackpool breakfast, me - 20 ciggies
and a pot of tea.” Lilly Savage
"I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his
own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm."
Robert Farrar Capon
"I like cats, they taste just like chicken." seen
on a bumper sticker
"I like liquor -- its taste and effects -- and that
is just the reason I never drink it." General Stonewall Jackson
"I live on toasted lizards,
Prickly pears, and parrot gizzards,
And I'm really very fond of beetle-pie." Charles Edward Carryl
"I look my age. It is the other people who look
older than they are. What can you expect from people who eat corpses?"
George Bernard Shaw
"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
"I loved my mother very much, but she was not a
good cook. Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother’s tasted
better the day before. In our house Thanksgiving was a time for sorrow."
Rita Rudner
"I never eat in a restaurant that's over a hundred feet
off the ground and won't stand still.." Calvin Trillin
"I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except
vegetarians and people like that." Oscar Wilde
"I never met a Cab I didn't like." Graham Kerr
"I never see any home cooking. All I get is fancy
stuff." Duke of Edinburgh
"I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge.
It is no bread and butter of mine; every man for himself, and God for us all.”
Miguel de Cervantes
"I no longer prepare food or drink with more than
one ingredient." Cyra McFadden
"I once ate a dishonest loaf. It was good, but
afterward I felt so used." Thomas Pickett
"I personally prefer a nice frozen TV Dinner at home,
mainly because it's so little trouble. All you have to do is have another drink
while you're throwing it in the garbage." Jack Douglas
"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.
And I desire that this short inscription
Should be engraved on my tombstone.
Here lies the first poet
Ever to die of indigestion." Marc Antoine Dèsaugiers
"I prefer Hostess fruit pies to pop-up toaster tarts
because they don't require as much cooking." Carrie Snow
"I prefer the Chinese method of eating.... You can do
anything at the table except arm wrestle." Jeff Smith
"I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly.
Tuna fish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock." Barbara
Grizzuti Harrison
"I rose at 5 o'clock in the morning and read a chapter
in Hebrew and 200 verses in Homer's Odyssey. I ate milk for breakfast, I said
my prayers...I danced my dance. I read law in the morning and Italian in the
afternoon. I ate tough chicken for dinner." William Byrd
"I sacrifice to no god save myself
And to my belly, greatest of deities." Euripides
"I said to my wife, 'Where do you want to go for our
anniversary?' She said, 'I want to go somewhere I've never been before.' I said,
'Try the kitchen.'" Henny Youngman
"I saw a cavalry captain buy vegetable soup on horseback.
He carried the whole mess home in his helmet." Aristophanes
"I simply cannot imagine why anyone would eat something
slimy served in an ashtray." Henry Beard, on clams
"I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented
under the banner of pate than any other." Kingsley Amis
"I tell kids they should throw away the cereal
and eat the box. At least they'd get some fiber." Richard Holstein,
D.D.S.
"I think breakfast so pleasant because no-one is
conceited before one o'clock." Sydney Smith
"I think if you want to eat more meat you should kill
it yourself and eat it raw so that you are not blinded by the hypocrisy of having
it processed for you." Margi Clark
"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
"I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to
whom the necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly
painful and revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other condition,
they would relinquish it forever." W.E.H. Lecky
"I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have
been seethed in pig's milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated
thistle root." Kingsley Amis
"I want order and taste. A well displayed meal is enhanced
one hundred per cent in my eyes." Antonin Careme
"I was a vegetarian until I started leaning toward the
sunlight." Rita Rudner
"I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then,
I just ate." Julia Child
"I went home and took my wife and went to my Cosen
Tho. Pepys's and found them just sat down to dinner, which was very good; only
the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome." Samuel
Pepys
"I went into a McDonald's yesterday and said, 'I'd
like some fries.' The girl at the counter said, 'Would you like some fries with
that?'" Jay Leno
"I went to this restaurant last night that was
set up like a big buffet in the shape of an Ouija board. You'd think about what
kind of food you want, and the table would move across the floor to it."
Steven Wright
"I won't eat anything that has intelligent life,
but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician." Marty Feldman
"I will not eat anything that walks, runs, skips, hops
or crawls. God knows that I've crawled on occasion, and I'm glad that no one
ate me." Alex Poulos
"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead --
not sick, not wounded -- dead." Woody Allen
"I will not move my army without onions!"
Ulysses S. Grant
"I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the
representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character... like those
among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often
very lousy... The turkey... is a much more respectable bird, and withal a true
original native of America." Benjamin Franklin
"I won't eat anything that has intelligent life,
but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician." Marty Feldman
"I would like to find a stew that will give me
heartburn immediately, instead of at three o'clock in the morning." John
Barrymore
"I would rather live in Russia on black bread and vodka
than in the United States at the best hotels. America knows nothing of food,
love or art." Isadora Duncan
"Iceberg lettuce is perhaps the most aptly named plant
in the world and should be avoided as though you were the Titanic with a second
chance." Alan Koehler
"Ice cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal."
Voltaire
"If a body could just find oot the exac' proper
proportion and quantity that ought to be drunk every day, and keep to that,
I verily trow that he might leeve for ever, without dying at a', and that doctors
and kirkyards would og oot o' fashion." James Hogg
"If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian
eat?" Author Unknown
"If all the world were apple pie,
And all the seas were ink,
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What would we have for drink?" Mother Goose
"If any man gives you a wine you can't bear, don't
say it is beastly... But don't say you like it. You are endangering your soul
and the use of wine as well... Seek out some other wine good to your taste."
Hillaire Belloc
"If God had intended us to follow recipes, he wouldn't
have given us grandmothers." Linda Henley
"If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without
truffles." Colette
"If I have done the hardest possible day's work, and
then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably --why, then
I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work--for am I not now
at peace? Is not my supper good?" Herman Melville
"If I hear you've gone to Dinty Moore's for that
nasty corned beef and cabbage, Jiggs, I'll brain you!" Maggie
"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of
the television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners." Johnny Carson
"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above
hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." J.R.R. Tolkien
