cook pot stories

‎This is my advice to people: Learn how to cook, try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun. -Julia Child

“Life itself is the proper binge.”  – Julia Child

Da Capo Take the used-up heart like a pebble 
and throw it far out. Soon there is nothing left.
 Soon the last ripple exhausts itself 
in the weeds. Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
 Glaze them in oil before adding 
the lentils, water, and herbs. Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt. 
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat. You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.
 Begin again the story of your life. — Jane Hirshfield

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of present, the wisdom of cookbook writers. - Laurie Colwin

I am not a glutton. I am an explorer of food. - Erma Bombeck

Coolness of the melons 
flecked with mud 
in the morning dew.


 Matsuo Basho Translated by Robert Hass

How can I describe it? Good food is like music you can taste, color you can smell. There is excellence all around you. You need only to be aware to stop and savor it. - Chef Auguste Gusteau, Ratatouille, 2007

"If you're afraid of butter use cream." - Julia Child Sounds like good advice for life in general. Fear one thing? Use something else just as rich.

“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.” ― C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

"Mosquitoes remind us that we are not as high up on the food chain as we think." - Tom Wilson

“And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart: Your seeds shall live in my body, And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, And your fragrance shall be my breath, And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.” ― Kahlil Gibran

In general, I think, human beings are happiest at table when they are very young, very much in love or very alone. - M.F.K. Fisher, An Alphabet for Gourmets

Perhaps the World Ends Here Joy Harjo The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on. We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it. It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women. At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers. Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table. This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun. Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory. We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here. At ...

My only regret in life is that I did not drink more champagne. - John Maynard Keynes

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, the Devil's Dictionary

“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”  ―  David Mamet ,  Boston Marriage

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

“Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn't been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour.” ― Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

“Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” ― Julia Child

“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...