Taste: My Life Through Food Quotes
"Instead, we played in each other's yards or the nearby fields, but mostly in the surrounding woods, throughout the year."
"Now that I am in the autumn of my years, I often wish I could return to those times, that place, and my innocent, curious, energetic self."
"Food, its preparation, serving, and ingesting, was the primary activity and the main topic of conversation in my household growing up."
"I can honestly say that on the four-burner electric stove she used throughout my childhood and on the gas hob that replaced it many years later, she has never cooked a bad meal."
"Cooking for her is at once a creative outlet and a way of feeding her family well."
"Her cooking, like that of any great cook or chef, is proof that culinary creativity may be the most perfect art form."
"When I was young, my mother spent most of her waking time in the kitchen, and she still does to this day."
"My father is a voracious eater, and during dinner, while savoring his food, my father would inevitably utter the rhetorical question 'My God, what does the rest of the world eat?'"
"We, my two sisters and I, would agree as my mother would mutter something about there not being enough salt or something needing more cooking time."
"My father would take a sip of his scotch, slam the glass on the butcher-block counter, and loudly pronounce, 'Buono! Perche io ho une fame che parla con Dio!'"
"This translates as 'Good! Because I have a hunger that speaks with God!'"
"His very sweet mother would respond with 'Cazzi e patate.'"
"This translates directly as 'Dicks and potatoes.' In other words, 'Leave me alone,' or 'Bugger off,' as the Brits might say."
"The reason being, as I said, having eaten at many of our neighbors' homes, we had no desire to revisit their tables."
"Yet, for all of her posturing about insisting we go skulking about the neighborhood to sniff out a better meal when we complained about hers, my mother was very well aware of our individual likes and dislikes."
"It is this latter ragù recipe that was brought to America by my paternal grandfather’s family and was served every Sunday in my home growing up."
"It is proven that our guts are inextricably linked to our brains and hence our moods."
"If our guts are not functioning properly, then we cannot function properly."
"The Actors Fund is a wonderful and necessary thing that helps Equity members through hard times and in their dotage."
"It was a rare occasion that I would buy a lunch the cafeteria provided."
"The usual fare, but it was the sandwiches that were the marvel, and oftentimes made me the envy of my friends."
"The household budget had been stretched to its limit, relegating end-of-the-week meals to simple, inexpensive fare."
"So when my grandparents set up their home in America, they created not only a very large vegetable garden in the backyard but, when my mother was young, a small farmlet."
"Nothing went to waste and luxuries were unheard of. Only what was necessary was… well, needed."
"America held the promise of jobs, for both men and women, outside of the home, yet for many of them this did not mean that the agricultural and manual skills that were basically part of their DNA would no longer be used after they settled down in a new country."
"The Italians have a gift for cultivating and growing some of the best produce in rather extreme geographical settings."
"The hunting, skinning, quartering, and ultimately eating of all sorts of animals were important traditions to be cherished."
"The house that holds that cellar, that kitchen, and those memories was sold long ago, but the flavors and aromas, both tart and sweet, musty and fresh, inhabit my nose, my mouth, and my heart to this day."
"If you've finished your meal, we've done something wrong."
"We Americans feel little obligation to preserve what once was because we choose to see it as less than what is or what could be."
"The only way [recipes] can be lost is if we choose to lose them."
"Who would any of us be if our grandparents and parents had not cherished their familial history and passed it on with reverence?"
"In every Jewish deli the sandwiches are huge amounts of meat or chicken or tuna salad between two pieces of bread."
"Watching someone cook on camera is fascinating."
"The main reason for [the demise of restaurants] is almost always financial."
"New York City is safer and cleaner, but so much of the texture of the past has been lost."
"I must say, coming from the rather white suburbs of Westchester, it was a breath of fresh air to be a part of a place where the ethnic diversity of the staff rivaled that of the United Nations."
"I was also particularly fascinated by how a restaurant’s structure mirrored that of the theater."
"The kitchen was 'backstage,' which, during a lunch or dinner rush, was its own mad biosphere filled with frantic humans barely controlling flames and blades."
"The dining room was 'onstage,' where some of the same humans, after walking through a swinging door, instantaneously became cool, calm, and collected, almost to the point of being benign."
"Many years later, when I was finally able to make a living solely by acting... I began to mull over these experiences and decided to put them down in a form that vaguely resembled a screenplay."
"It was a screenplay that dramatized the struggle between commerce and art, portrayed the Italian immigrant as someone unconnected with the Mafia... and did not have a happy ending."
"Little did we know we were making something that would be so well received or would become a 'food film' cult classic."
"Let it be known that Claudia is very smart, very kind, and very pretty."
"This might have been the simplest dish of pasta I'd ever eaten... the perfect balance of five simple ingredients."
"The cocktail eventually became more and more complex... Drinkers looking for the simpler version would ask for it to be made 'the old-fashioned way,' hence its now-famous moniker."
"Food on set not only feeds people but also has a significant effect on the budget, the structure of a shooting day, and how a cast and crew work together successfully."
"Making Nora Ephron’s film Julie & Julia and playing Julia Child’s husband, Paul, to Meryl’s Julia was an honor and a pleasure."
"When you said roasted potatoes, I thought that you meant—"
"The kitchen was in the basement, and though it was hardly up to date, it was workable enough."
"I first visited Cioppino’s about twenty years ago when I was making a film for which I was well paid and which no one should ever see."
"Whenever I came to visit Felicity in London... we always made it a point to go to L’Anima."
"During one of the first trips Felicity made to visit us in Westchester before we married, she suggested that we throw a party and cook a suckling pig."
"To me, eating well is not just about what tastes good but about the connections that are made through the food itself."
"Whether we know it or not, great comfort is found in these relationships, and they are very much a part of what solidifies a community."
"It is this interaction between customer and purveyor that then makes our connection to whatever it is we are buying stronger."
"No matter how much reassurance we offered, part of them feared that they would have to experience that trauma all over again."
"Only a couple miles away in any direction there are hospitals chock-full of ill and dying patients who are being attended to by overworked and overwhelmed National Health Service doctors, nurses, and support staff."
"But no matter how much reassurance we offered, part of them feared that they would have to experience that trauma all over again."
"Love can and does enter through the mouth."
"If you love someone, you just want them inside of you."
"Cook. Smell. Taste. Eat. Drink. Share. Repeat as necessary."
"Food not only feeds me, it enriches me. All of me. Mind, body, and soul. It is nothing more than everything."