Alice Waters
This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive.Collection: Power
If I weren't involved with food, I'd be working in architecture. Design is that critical to me.Collection: Design
You do need some dispensation for local farmers, because the fast food industry will promote the unsanitary conditions of farming. With vegetables, you have to be careful where they come from; you have to know the farmers and trust them. If you buy from the farmers' market, it's already been investigated.Collection: Trust
I believe there should be breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, all for free and for every child that goes to school. And all food that is good, clean and fair.Collection: Food
I don't want food that comes from animals that are caged up and fed antibiotics. I am really suspicious of that kind of production of meat and poultry.Collection: Food
Basically, the person in the White House should be principled, should have a philosophy about food that relates directly to organic agriculture. I will continue to push for that.Collection: Food
Usually, cheap food is not nutritious. You're feeding people, but you're not really feeding people something that is good for them.Collection: Food
I don't think it ever works to tell people what they can't eat. They can do it for so long, and then they fall off. You have to bring them into a new relationship with food.Collection: Relationship
A whole set of values comes with fast food: Everything should be fast, cheap and easy; there's always more where that came from; there are no seasons; you shouldn't be paid very much for preparing food. It's uniformity and a lack of connection.Collection: Food
I came to all the realizations about sustainability and biodiversity because I fell in love with the way food tastes. That was it. And because I was looking for that taste I feel at the doorsteps of the organic, local, sustainable farmers, dairy people and fisherman.Collection: Food
Food can be very transformational, and it can be more than just about a dish. That's what happened to me when I first went to France. I fell in love. And if you fall in love, well, then everything is easy.Collection: Food
Buy foods from nearby farms and have that food served in the cafeteria.Collection: Food
My kitchen has a wood-burning oven, a large worktable, and windows all around, including one above the sink. I think whoever is washing the dishes needs to have a lot of beauty around.Collection: Beauty
I feel like old age in America is a very sad thing. I have been many different places around the world where getting older is something you look forward to.Collection: Sad
The act of eating is very political. You buy from the right people, you support the right network of farmers and suppliers who care about the land and what they put in the food.Collection: Food
I think America's food culture is embedded in fast-food culture. And the real question that we have is: How are we going to teach slow-food values in a fast-food world? Of course, it's very, very difficult to do, especially when children have grown up eating fast food and the values that go with that.Collection: Food
I think health is the outcome of finding a balance and some satisfaction at the table.Collection: Health
We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.Collection: Relationship
I know once people get connected to real food, they never change back.Collection: Food
I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.Collection: Food
Food culture is like listening to the Beatles - it's international, it's very positive, it's inventive and creative.Collection: Positive
It's around the table and in the preparation of food that we learn about ourselves and about the world.Collection: Food
I think you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday, and I'm buying for family and friends, I'm thinking about what I'm going to eat on the weekend but also about what I'm going to make for the following week.Collection: Family
The way we subsidize food makes it cheaper to go to McDonald's and get a hamburger than a salad, and that's insane. It's pure government policy.Collection: Government
I really am at a place where I think we need to feed every child at school for free and feed them a real school lunch that's sustainable and nutritious and delicious. It needs to be part of the curriculum of the school in the same way that physical education was part of the curriculum, and all children participated.Collection: Education
First, kids should be involved in the production of their own food. They have to get their hands in the dirt, they have to grow things. They also have to become sensually stimulated, and the way to begin is with a bakery.Collection: Food
I'm focused on the next generation, because I think it's very hard to break the habit of adults who've got salt and sugar addictions and just ways of being in this world. It's very hard even for the most enlightened people at famous universities that are very wealthy to spend the money that it takes to feed the students something delicious.Collection: Famous
I can remember the three restaurant experiences of my childhood. All I wanted to do on my birthday was to go to the Automat in New York... but I don't know if you consider that a real restaurant.Collection: Birthday
I am an optimist of the first order.
My mother made a lot of things because she thought they'd be healthy for us. There were some very unfortunate experiences with whole wheat bread and bananas. I always tried to get rid of that sandwich and eat one of my friends' lunches.
I was a very picky eater.
I really appreciate the many neighbourhoods of Berkeley. There is still the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. And it has the University of California, which is the greatest gift, to my mind, to be close to it. It keeps the place alive.
The fact that most kids aren't eating at home with their families any more really means they are eating elsewhere. They are eating out there in fast food nation.
I can't imagine leaving the restaurant. It's hard for me to separate my life from my work; I'm really thinking about what we're doing every day.
Create a garden; bring children to farms for field trips. I think it's important that parents and teachers get together to do one or two things they can accomplish well - a teaching garden, connecting with farms nearby, weave food into the curriculum.
I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing.
I do feel like food should cost more, because we aren't paying farmers a living wage. It has to cost more.
I am disappointed because nobody is talking about food and agriculture. They're talking about the diets of children, but they're talking about Band-Aids. We're not seeing a vision.
Whenever I want to know how to cook something, I can't ask one chef - I have to ask six.
The biggest thing you can do is understand that every time you're going to the grocery store, you're voting with your dollars. Support your farmers' market. Support local food. Really learn to cook.
When you don't have much money, cooking can be incredibly reassuring. You feel like you're doing meaningful work.
A lot of equipment can get in the way of the connection with food, with touching and feeling.
It's hard to come into a new relationship with food unless you're engaged in an interactive way at an early age; it's hard to change your values.
If we want children to learn to tend the land and nourish themselves and have conversations at the table, we need to communicate with them in ways that are positive.
If I've gone to the market on Saturday, and I go another time on Tuesday, then I'm really prepared. I can cook a little piece of fish; I can wilt some greens with garlic; I can slice tomatoes and put a little olive oil on. It's effortless.
Organize yourself so you aren't struggling to shop at the last minute. When you have real food, it's very easy to cook.
We've been so disconnected agriculturally and culturally from food. We spend more time on dieting than on cooking.
I really like having someone who knows about food and what goes well together make a meal for me.
Food should be cheap, and labor should be cheap, and everything should be the same no matter where you go; whether it's a McDonald's in Germany or one in California, it should be the same. And this message is destroying cultures around the world. Needless to say, agriculture goes with it.
When you have good ingredients, cooking doesn't require a lot of instruction because you can never go very wrong.