Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.
We sink too easily into stupid and overfed sensuality, our bodies thickening even more quickly than our minds.
First we eat, then we do everything else.
Central heating, French rubber goods and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man’s ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and, of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful.
It is all a question of weeding out what you yourself like best to do, so that you can live most agreeably in a world full of an increasing number of disagreeable surprises.
Too few of us, perhaps, feel that breaking of bread, the sharing of salt, the common dipping into one bowl, mean more than satisfaction of a need. We make such primal things as casual as tunes heard over a radio, forgetting the mystery and strength in both.
I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.
Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.
Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.
Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they’ve lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat – and drink! – with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.
No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread.
Sharing our meals should be a joyful and a trustful act, rather than the cursory fulfillment of our social obligations.
Almost every person has something secret he likes to eat.
There is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.
When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.
I think that when two people are able to weave that kind of invisible thread of understanding and sympathy between each other, that delicate web, they should not risk tearing it. It is too rare, and it lasts too short a time at best...
A well-made Martini or Gibson, correctly chilled and nicely served, has been more often my true friend than any two-legged creature.
It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.
Cheese has always been a food that both sophisticated and simple humans love.
When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.