Quotes about Cooking

The repetitive phases of cooking leave plenty of mental space for reflection, and as I chopped and minced and sliced I thought about the rhythms of cooking, one of which involves destroying the order of the things we bring from nature into our kitchens, only to then create from them a new order.  We butcher, grind, chop, grate, mince, and liquefy raw ingredients, breaking down formerly living things so that we might recombine them in new, more cultivated forms.  When you think about it, this is the same rhythm, once removed, that governs all eating in nature, which invariably entails the destruction of certain living things, by chewing and then digestion, in order to sustain other living things.  In The Hungry Soul Leon Kass calls this the great paradox of eating:  “that to preserve their life and form living things necessarily destroy life and form.”  If there is any shame in that destruction, only we humans seem to feel it, and then only on occasion.  But cooking doesn’t only distance us from our destructiveness, turning the pile of blood and guts into savory salami, it also symbolically redeems it, making good our karmic debts: Look what good, what beauty, can come of this!  Putting a great dish on the table is our way of celebrating the wonders of form we humans can create from this matter – this quantity of sacrificed life – just before the body takes its first destructive bite.

Icing covers a multitude of sins.

If the Devil's in yer pants make cheese with him.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

Sometimes I find myself thinking, rather wistfully, about Lao Tzu's famous dictum: 'Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.' All around me I see something very different, let us say - a number of angry dwarfs trying to grill a whale.

This kitchen closed because of illness - sick of cooking.

Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better.

A Hundred Years From Now Tell me friend, what will it matter, say a hundred years from now, if you owned a thousand acres or just one old broken plow; If you bought your suits in Paris and your shoes in Italy, Or your clothes were made in patches, like the bed quilts use to be? Whether you lived in a mansion with the finest broadlooms laid, If you had a private chauffeur, Butler, cook, a nurse and maid. Or you lived in a cottage with your health gone on the skids, out of work and out of money just your wife and seven kids. Sure, on earth there makes a difference what we've got and who we know, Whether we are poor and hungry, or we're rolling in the dough And if life down here was only all there was and that was it, then it sure would make a difference for all of us, I must admit. But there there's more to life than livin', more for those who will believe, more in store laid up in heaven if the Saviour we receive. Whether we are lost for ever or to Jesus here we bow, This is what will make a difference in a hundred years from now.

Hell is a place where the motorists are French, the policemen are German, and the cooks are English.

Winny and I lived in a house that ran on static electricity. . . . If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your head. If you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick.

The most indispensable ingredient of all good home cooking: love, for those you are cooking for.

The only thing worse than a husband who never notices what you cook or what you wear, is a husband who always notices what you cook and what you wear.

The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.

The man is a common murderer. A common murderer, possible, but a very uncommon cook.

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

Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.

Men like to barbecue. Men will cook if danger is involved.

The fact is that it takes more than ingredients and technique to cook a good meal. A good cook puts something of himself into the preparation - he cooks with enjoyment, anticipation, spontaneity, and he is willing to experiment.

Worry has been described as a spasm of the emotions, a catalyst for creating a depressed condition within a human being. Banish worry and you will permit the positive emotions of joy and happiness to rise to the surface. Worry is a condition in which the mind spasmodically clutches an idea and won't let it go. That is the reason you are never successful in telling people to quit worrying. They can't quit worrying. Their minds are in an emotional spasm. They are holding onto some obsessive idea and can't let it go. The only way to break the spasm is to insinuate another idea into this spasmodic grip, until the mind lets go of the bad idea and seizes the good idea. Since worry is an irrational thought, you must take worry apart, lay it out, dissect it, cut it up, and look at it piece by piece. Do this with cook,m collective, rational thought, and there won't be mush left of it. There is so much illusionary vapor to worry that, when it is dispelled, the reality that is left will prove to be quite small and you can handle it.

What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.

Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.

When we no longer have good cooking in the world, we will have no literature, nor high and sharp intelligence, nor friendly gathering, nor social harmony.

She did not so much cook as assassinate food.

Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but it only takes one to burn it.

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

The best reply to an atheist is to give him a good dinner and ask him if he believes there is a cook.

Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish - don't overdo it.

I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking.

Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.

Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.