Quotes about cooking

M.F. Moonzajer -

Remember! When you tell a woman that she cooks something very good you will be fucked by eating it three times a day.

Nigel Slater - The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater

Good kitchens are not about size they are about ergonomics and light.

Jamie Oliver -

My first outdoor cooking memories are full of erratic British summers, Dad swearing at a barbecue that he couldn't put together, and eventually eating charred sausages, feeling brilliant.

Tess Gerritsen -

My dad's cooking was magic in the kitchen. But eventually over the years, his personality changed and his ability to remember recipes failed. He became paranoid and thought people were stealing from him, when often he was just misplacing things.

Shania Twain -

I like being at home and cooking.

Apolo Ohno -

I am a believer in nutrient timing and supplementation, through 8Zone. I love eggs, apples, wild fish, leafy greens, brown rice, pasta, oatmeal, home grown Washington Potatoes, and cooking with coconut and olive oils.

Blake Lively -

I love being at home and cooking and baking.

Suresh Raina -

At home in Ghaziabad, everyone is a pure vegetarian. In fact, when I want to cook non-veg there, my mum shoos me out on the terrace where I have my cooking utensils. I'm told categorically that whatever non-veg or egg, etc., that I have to cook, I should do upstairs and not enter her kitchen at all.

Carine Roitfeld -

'Grandmother' doesn't mean that you have gray hair and you retire and stay home cooking cakes for your grandchildren.

Stephen Hawking -

The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to minus 271.3*C - not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it.

Matthew Morrison -

Cooking is always very romantic!

Jeffrey Dean Morgan -

Some nights, a romantic dinner can be killed by having to do dishes afterward, so it probably suits you better to go out for dinner. But I love cooking and always have.

Letitia Baldrige -

An excellent wine, someone's best attempt at cooking, and the candles and flowers on the table can turn the simplest dinner into an unforgettably romantic event.

Alice Jamieson - One Tortured Mind

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain rather than left, or left rather than right. In my mind there were many rooms and, just as I still got lost in the labyrinth of corridors at college, I often found myself lost, with a sense of déjà vu, in some obscure part of my cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that plays a key role in perceptual aw

Criss Jami - Healology

The complete recipe for imagination is absolute boredom.

Nora Ephron - Heartburn

Every so often I would look at my women friends who were happily married and didn't cook, and I would always find myself wondering how they did it. Would anyone love me if I couldn't cook? I always thought cooking was part of the package: Step right up, it's Rachel Samstat, she's bright, she's funny and she can cook!

Jalina Mhyana - Dreaming in Night Vision: A Story in Vignettes

I cut our paper dinner with a pair of scissors borrowed from the front desk of the hotel. I cooked with a spice rack box of crayons – sixteen colors. I seasoned the pumpkin pie with orange crayon, and basted the turkey's crisp skin in brown. I was remorseless with my sketchbook abattoir, playing the part of carnivore just as surely as I was play-acting the role of wife. I may as well have been a wax figure in a dollhouse eating the wax-scented food.

Agus Ekanurdi - Cook Your Way to Love & Harmony

Home cooking is the true embodiment of love. It makes us show patience, kindness, humility, hope, and perseverance.

Lyn Crain -

Inspiration surrounds us, the creation is our responsibility as artists.-Lyn Crain

Helen Brown - After Cleo

In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the apples into tiny bowls, tossed in some dried fruit and sprinkled them with crumble topping. Delicious, they said that night, scraping the bowls so clean they hardly needed to go in the dishwasher. The fools.

Simon Cheshire - Plastic Fantastic

Gran follows recipes by looking at picture—to the eye, delicious; to the tongue, boiled socks. Makes you wanna cry really.

Padma Lakshmi - and What We Ate: A Memoir

Once in a while we burned a wok trying to make our churan, and Jima, Bhanu, or another matriarch would banish us from the kitchen. “You should’ve told us,” they’d say. “We would’ve helped you.” You’re not getting it, Neela and I thought. This is our party and you’re not invited. To this day, the elder women of my household in Chennai still regard Neela or me with suspicion whenever we enter the kitchen to make anything other than tea. No matter that I host a cooking show or that Neela has raised

Michael Pollan - Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

If you stand in a wheat field at this time of year, a few weeks from harvest, it's not hard to imagine you're looking at something out of mythology: all this golden sunlight brought down to earth, captured in kernels of gold, and rendered fit for mortals to eat. But of course this is no myth at all, just the plain miraculous fact.

Erica Bauermeister - The School of Essential Ingredients

While the egg yolks cooled, he directed the beaters at the egg whites, setting the mixer on high speed that sent small bubbles giggling to the side of the bowl, where a few became many until they were a white froth rising up and then lying down again in patters and ridges, leaving an intricate design like the ribs of a leaf in the wake of the beaters

E.A. Bucchianeri - Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

... food is not simply organic fuel to keep body and soul together, it is a perishable art that must be savoured at the peak of perfection.

Joan Reardon - and the Making of a Masterpiece

You have come nearer to mastering a good many aspects of cooking than anyone except a handful of great chefs, and some day it will pay off. I know it will. You will just have to go on working, and teaching, and getting around, and spreading the gospel until it does. (Avis DeVoto to Julia Child)

Sena Jeter Naslund - or The Star-Gazer

I turned from my window. Suddenly it seemed odd for my neighbors on both sides to have visitors while I had none. For the first time, I felt lonely at 'Sconset."Let's cook," Frannie said energetically. "We will smell so good that they'll all come running." She picked up a bowl, filled it with apples from the barrel, and immediately began to cut them up. I put water to boil, got out cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, lard, flour, sugar, salt, saleratus, vinegar, and all the other things for apple pies. We

Nick Harkaway - The Gone-Away World

The sergeants are shunted forward and they blink and stare up at Gonzo as he leans on the edge of his giant mixing bowl. MacArthur never addressed his troops from a mixing bowl--not even one made from a spare geodesic radio emplacement shell--and certainly de Gaulle never did. But Gonzo Lubitsch does, and he does it as if a whole long line of commanders were standing at his shoulder, urging h

Yuhta Nishio - Vol. 1

Using someone else's kitchen feels a little like reading their diary. I'm so anxious.

Robin Sloan - Sourdough

It was a fungal party hellscape.

Julia Glass - The Whole World Over

But people, as Alan had once reflected to Greenie, were not at all like recipes. You could have all the right ingredients, in all the right amounts, and still there were no guarantees. Or perhaps they were like recipes, he pondered now, and the key to success was in finding the ingredients you had to remove, the components that turned all the others bitter, excessively salty, difficult to swallow; even too jarringly sweet. He had seen Greenie clarify butter, wash rice, devein shrimp, and meticul

Suzanne Selfors - Kiss and Spell

Once she'd graduated from Ever After High, she'd open her own chain of bakeries. She'd publish cookbooks and create an entire line of gourmet treats under her label, Ginger's Goodies. By sharing her talents on a larger scale, she'd help make the world a happier place. For Ginger Breadhouse believed, with every ounce, gram, and sprinkle of her soul, that good food was one of the secret ingredients to happiness. Whether in times of celebration or sadness, beautifully prepared goodies had the power

Stanisław Lem - Solaris

Wandering across the vast room, I stopped at a set of shelves as high as the ceiling, and holding about six hundred volumes - all classics on the history of Soalris, starting with the nine volumes of Giese's monumental and already relatively obsolescent monograph. Display for its own sake was improbable in these surroundings. The collection was a respective tribute to the memory of the pioneers. I took down the massive volumes of Giese and sat leafing through them. Rheya had also located som rea

Israelmore Ayivor - Six Words Inspiration

Nobody will buy a half-cooked food!

Alex Prud'Homme - My Life in France

What impressed me most was how hard [Julia Child] worked, how devoted she was to the "rules" of la cuisine française while keeping herself open to creative exploration, and how determined she was to persevere in the face of setbacks. Julia never lost her sense of wonder and inquisitiveness. She was, and is, a great inspiration.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana -

Many a death was precipitated by the food, the job, or the medication whose main function was to postpone it.

Calvin Trillin -

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

H.L. Mencken - A Book of Burlesques

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.

Bill Watterson - The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin: Why are you crying mom?Mom: I'm cutting up an onion.Calvin: It must be hard to cook if you anthrpomorphisize your vegetables.

W.C. Fields -

I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.

E.A. Bucchianeri - Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?

Linda Henley -

if god had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn't have given us grandmothers.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana -

It is childish to eat primarily or only to please your tongue.

M.F.K. Fisher - How to Cook a Wolf

I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert the reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war's fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy, and ever increasing enjoyment. And with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly of ourselves. Then Fate, even tangled as it is with cold wars as well as hot, cannot harm us.

Terry Pratchett - The Fifth Elephant

He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.

Amy Mowafi - Fe-mail 2

Having it all is just too much hassle. I'm not every-woman. I'm a working woman. And I'm not entirely sure I see the oint of being as dexterous in the kitchen as I am at my desk. If Mr. Y is perfectly satisfied with pre-packaged sushi every night, then far be it from me to raise his hopes with all sorts of homey behavior. The secret, I have discovered, is to manage expectations. If he doesn't expect it, then he's hardly going to be disappointed to discover he may never again eat a home-cooked me

Bee Wilson -

For thousands of years, servants and slaves--or in lesser households, wives and daughters--were stuck with the same pestles and sieves, with few innovations. This technological stagnation reflects a harsh truth. There was very little interest in attempting to save labor when the labor in question was not your own.

Sunaura Taylor - Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

It's not that there are no challenges to becoming a vegetarian or vegan, but in the media, including authors of popular books on food and food politics, contribute to the 'enfreakment' of what is so often patronizingly referred to as the vegan or vegetarian 'lifestyle.' But again, the marginalization of those who care about animals is nothing new. Diane Beers writes in her book For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States that 'several late

Padma Lakshmi - and What We Ate: A Memoir

It’s funny to me that most of the cooking in the world is done by women, and yet when you look at modern Western cuisine, it’s largely based on what a few dead Frenchmen have opined to be the correct way of doing things. It’s funny how these old European men used a label like “mother sauce” when there were no women to be found anywhere near those old professional kitchens. Cooking was something women did to nourish and nurture their families, whereas for men it was largely something they did pro

Suenammi Richards - Charlotte's Chance

She hadn’t known that the ability to make pancakes from scratch made a man brutally hot. Now she did.

Baris Gencel -

Cooking like a Michelin star chef without a recipe requires high intuition but only a little skill, a lot of imagination, and willingness to be curious and innovative.

Julie Powell - Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

If I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much difference, I needn’t have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly crappy life – lots of crowds and overmedication and bland

Ally Blue - Love's Evolution

He kept one eye on Matt as he talked. He could tell Matt was close to orgasm by the way he title his head to the side and bit his lower lip. "And what about your partner, Mr. Tucker?" Troy asked. Chris raised his eyebrows in surprise and Mr. Waters gave him a greasy, unpleasant smile. "Does your partner cook?"Chris grinned as Matt came all over the red leather seat. "Actually, he makes a delicious white sauce.

Vicki Covington - Bird of Paradise

All the men I know add that “hands that prepared it” line. They must know it’s right complimentary, an incentive to keep the women cooking.

Jael McHenry -

I let myself relax into the pattern of the recipe.

Diana Silva - Cooking and Loss

Remember to add the most important ingredient to every recipe you make - your love!

Bill Buford - and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher i

In normal life, "simplicity" is synonymous with "easy to do," but when a chef uses the word, it means "takes a lifetime to learn.

Amy E. Reichert - The Coincidence of Coconut Cake

While Lou loved the raucous music, loud voices, and chaotic movement of a dinner rush, the calm of prep-work soothed her soul and gave her time to think. Some people did downward dog, some burned incense in front of a Buddha statue, some prayed the rosary; Lou chopped the vegetables into tiny squares, filleted fish, and reduced veal stock. Her meditation smelled better, and even if she didn't find a solution, at least she got to eat.

Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia - NMAA Cooks

Assuming mother's absence is only for a short time, don't be too concerned if you find yourself being more relaxed than she is over what the children eat. It is far better to maintain harmony and let mother cope with the problem later. You can use the excuse "You are only having this because Mummy's in hospital!".

Jane Austen - Love and Friendship

Dear Eloisa (said I) there’s no occasion for your crying so much about such a trifle. (for I was willing to make light of it in order to comfort her) I beg you would not mind it – You see it does not vex me in the least; though perhaps I may suffer most from it after all; for I shall not only be obliged to eat up all the Victuals I have dressed already, but must if Henry should recover (which however is not very likely) dress as much for you again; or should he die (as I suppose he will) I shall

Amy E. Reichert - The Coincidence of Coconut Cake

Do not hide who you are. These are a nurturer's hands. Cooking is hard and sometimes painful work, but you do it to share your gift with us. Your cooking improves our lives. Don't ever be ashamed of who you are.

Alice Jamieson - One Tortured Mind

During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe their first experiments with marijuana and booze. This buzzword perfectly described a picture in my mind of me, Alice, hovering just below the ceiling like a balloon and looking down at my own small bed where a big man lay heavily on a little girl I couldn’t quite see or recognize. It wasn’t me. I was spaced o

Nalini Singh - Branded by Fire

Sentinel meeting tonight,” Ria told her. “At Lucas's place.” “Time?” ...“Seven. Sascha's doing dinner.” “God save us all.” Sascha had decided she liked cooking. Unfortunately, cooking didn't like her back.

Karen Karbo - Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life

Had she been a more instinctive, "natural" cook, she might have felt less compelled to parse each recipe, to tackle each one as though getting it right were a matter of life and death.

Anthony Lane - Nobody's Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker

Cookbooks, it should be stressed, do not belong in the kitchen at all. We keep them there for the sake of appearances; occasionally, we smear their pages together with vibrant green glazes or crimson compotes, in order to delude ourselves, and any passing browsers, that we are practicing cooks; but in all honesty, a cookbook is something you read in the living room, or in the bathroom, or in bed.

Kiera Cass - The Siren

I got the groceries and lugged them all the way to Akinli’s dorm, running slightly behind because I couldn’t get into the building on my own. The university required ID cards to get into the dorms after six, and since I wasn’t an actual student, I had to wait for someone else to come along and scan his so I could piggyback in.“You need some help?” the boy asked, his eyes lingering on my mouth.I shook my head no.“Aww, come on. That’s way too heavy for you.”He came closer, and again I cursed our n

Erica Bauermeister - The Lost Art of Mixing

She looked at the produce stalls, a row of jewels in a case, the colors more subtle in the winter, a Pantone display consisting only of greens, without the raspberries and plums of summer, the pumpkins of autumn. But if anything, the lack of variation allowed her mind to slow and settle, to see the small differences between the almost-greens and creamy whites of a cabbage and a cauliflower, to wake up the senses that had grown lazy and satisfied with the abundance of the previous eight months. W

Deb Caletti - The Queen of Everything

It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán - La Soledad Del Manager

To begin cooking duck at one in the morning is one of the finest acts of madness that can be undertaken by a human being who is not mad.

Emma Thompson - The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

The fire alarm went off. Fire engines came racing; we all rushed out on the gravel drive, everyone thinking it was us. In fact, one of the elderly residents of Saltram had left a pan on the oven in her flat. Apparently this happens all the time. The tenant in question is appearing as an extra -- playing one of the cooks.

Alice Thomas Ellis - The Inn at the Edge of the World

. . to cook well and with imagination you have to be in a cheerful and contented frame of mind, and thus inclined to be generous.

Criss Jami - Killosophy

A god who gave us everything we wanted would be the most malevolent god of all. With an infantile curiosity, we insist on tasting the cockroach on the floor while our father is preparing a magnificent feast for us.

Robert Farrar Capon -

The feet-on-the-stove stance of this book is a deliberate attempt to cure myself, and anyone else who will listen, of the nasty habit of worrying the world to pieces like a terrier with a rag. What we are up to here is not the hasty shaking loose of a culinary result, but a patient rumination on cooking itself. There are more important things to do than hurry.

Miles Hassell MD -

Food commonly eaten for more than 150 years should be innocent until proven guilty, and food invented in the last 150 years is guilty until proven innocent.

Nancy Philips -

Save the Planet...Buy Organic

Terry Pratchett - Monstrous Regiment

A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish or the woman

Gary Thorp - Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks

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

Arlene Stafford-Wilson - Lanark County Calendar

Warm familiar scents drift softly from the oven,And imprint forever upon our heartsThat this is homeand that we are loved.

Jeanne Birdsall - The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

[The kitchen] was also messy--delightfully so, thought Jane--and it didn't look as though lots of cooking went on there. There was a laptop computer on the counter with duck stickers on it, the spice cabinet was full of Ben's toy trucks, and Jane couldn't spot a cookbook anywhere. This is the kitchen of a Thinker, she decided, and promised herself that she'd never bother with cooking, either.

Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot

When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up.

Julia Child -

In the 1970s we got nouvelle cuisine, in which a lot of the old rules were kicked over. And then we had cuisine minceur, which people mixed up with nouvelle cuisine but was actually fancy diet cooking.

Vivienne Westwood -

I eat only vegetables and fruit, and to me it's the most aspirational diet because it's so easy. It's quite simple, the cooking I do.

Michael Pollan -

I think cooking is really key because it's the only way you're going to take back control of your diet from the corporations who want to cook for us. The fact is, so far, corporations don't cook that well. They tend to use too much salt, fat, and sugar - much more than you would ever use at home.

Antony Gormley -

My best travelling experience lasted several years: between 1971 and 1974 when I bummed around the East. All I had with me was a cooking pot, a stove, a map and blankets and a couple of dhotis.

Paula Deen -

In order to have good fried chicken, you should wash and season the bird the morning you're preparing it for dinner. Don't wait and do it right before you start cooking. Throw it in the refrigerator, seasoned, that morning, and give it a chance to soak up all the salt and pepper and goodness.

Jacob Dalton -

My eighth-grade year, I was home-schooled. I'd basically wake up, go to the gym in the morning, do a little bit of school, go to practice, do a little more school, then go back to practice. My mom had a crockpot and a mini traveling oven, so we'd be cooking and eating dinners at the gym.

Tamron Hall -

I quite enjoy cooking. I love cooking for my friends. It's communal, it reminds me of being with family, and it's also a form of therapy; it heals you from the inside out.

Al Roker -

I love cooking for myself and cooking for my family.

Marcus Samuelsson -

I would love to take a cooking class from Gandhi. Maybe I could teach him how to cook, and he could teach me his message. I wouldn't mind learning how to make couscous from scratch from a North African woman, either.

Rene Redzepi -

There's no media training. In cooking school, there's not even manager training. You learn the fundamentals of cooking. Everything else is learning by doing.

Ranveer Singh -

Someday, I plan to buy a house in Goa, do only one movie a year, and spend the rest of time painting, learning how to cook, cooking for friends, and doing yoga.

Billy Campbell -

Most sailing ships take what they call trainees, who pay to be part of the crew. The Picton Castle takes people who are absolutely raw recruits. But you can't just ride along. You're learning to steer the ship, navigation; you're pulling lines, keeping a lookout; in the galley you're cooking.

Inbee Park -

Whenever I'd go to restaurants, the main chef came out and was cooking for me, and he's asking me how the food is. I get, like, VIP service, so it's weird.

Alma Guillermoprieto -

I love food and I love everything involved with food. I love the fun of it. I love restaurants. I love cooking, although I don't cook very much. I love kitchens.

Brenda Song -

When I was first approached for 'Pass the Plate,' I was thrilled because I love to cook. And I love to cook healthy. The reason I started cooking was because I would go to restaurants and have just amazing food but feel so heavy and gross. I would go home and try to cook the same thing, but a healthy version.

Steve Albini -

Many rock musicians are excellent cooks, I've found, and those that are prefer to eat their own cooking in the studio. I encourage this behavior as I also enjoy the benefits of fresh food.

Anne Burrell -

Taste as you go. When you taste the food throughout the cooking process you can make adjustments as you go.

Tom Brady -

My sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room, and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce, some warm French bread - works all the time. I think I've been eating pasta for 26 years.

Yotam Ottolenghi -

The smells of slow cooking spread around the house and impart a unique warmth matched only by the flavour of the food.