Laurie Colwin
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 cooks present, and the wisdom of cookbook writers.Collection: Wisdom
Provision as much pure and organic food as you can, and let the rest go by.Collection: Food
The table is a meeting place, a gathering ground, the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction. A person cooking is a person giving: Even the simplest food is a gift.Collection: Food
We know that without food we would die. Without fellowship, life is not worth living.Collection: Food
We need time to defuse, to contemplate. Just as in sleep our brains relax and give us dreams, so at some time in the day we need to disconnect, reconnect, and look around us.Collection: Dreams
The sharing of food is the basis of social life.
There is nothing like roast chicken. It is helpful and agreeable, the perfect dish no matter what the circumstances. Elegant or homey, a dish for a dinner party or a family supper, it will not let you down.
The thing about homebodies is that they can usually be found at home. I usually am, and I like to feed people.
One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.
I come from a coffee-loving family, and you can always tell when my sister and I have been around, because both of us collect all the dead coffee from everyone's morning cup, pour it over ice, and drink it. This is a disgusting habit.
The fact is that modern life has deprived us of life's one great luxury: time.
My idea of a good time abroad is to visit someone's house and hang out, poking into their cupboards if they will let me.
It is not just the Great Works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.
Cooking is like love. You don't have to be particularly beautiful or very glamorous, or even very exciting to fall in love. You just have to be interested in it. It's the same thing with food.
Cooking is like anything else: some people have an inborn talent for it. Some become expert by practicing, and some learn from books.
The best way to feel at ease in the kitchen is to learn at someone's knee.
Not everyone can write a book or paint a picture or write a symphony, but almost anyone can fall in love. There is something almost miraculous in that.
I love to eat out, but even more, I love to eat in.
Certainly, cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest.
When it comes to cakes and puddings, savouries, bread and tea cakes, the English cannot be surpassed.
Somehow or other, I always end up in a kitchen feeding a crowd.
Unlike some people who love to go out, I love to stay home.
As everyone knows, there is only one way to fry chicken correctly. Unfortunately, most people think their method is best, but most people are wrong. Mine is the only right way, and on this subject I feel almost evangelical.
I am not a fancy cook or an ambitious cook. I am a plain old cook.
I myself am not particularly interested in restaurant cooking. I don't really want to learn how to make a napoleon. I'd much rather learn how to make a very good lemon cake, which you can make in your own home. I like plain, old-fashioned home food.
It is my opinion that Norman Rockwell and his ilk have done more to make already anxious people feel guilty than anyone else.
When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally. I fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold. It was cheap and filling and was delicious in all manner of strange combinations. If any was left over, I ate it cold the next day on bread.
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 cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.Collection: Food
A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins.Collection: Summer
People who like to cook like to talk about food....without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.Collection: Two
When life is hard and the day has been long, the ideal dinner is not four perfect courses, each in a lovely pool of sauce whose ambrosial flavors are like nothing ever before tasted, but rather something comforting and savory, easy on the digestion - something that makes one feel, if even for only a minute, that one is safe.Collection: Long
And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.Collection: Talking
Both happy and sad people can be cheered up by a nice meal.Collection: Nice
Cookbooks hit you where you live. You want comfort; you want security; you want food; you want to not be hungry and not only do you want those basic things fixed, you want it done in a really nice, gentle way that makes you feel loved. That's a big desire, and cookbooks say to the person reading them, 'If you will read me, you will be able to do this for yourself and for others. You will make everybody feel better.'Collection: Nice
A person cooking is a person giving. Even the simplest food is a gift.Collection: Giving
The old days were slower. People buttered their bread without guilt and sat down to dinner en famille.Collection: People
To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.Collection: Food
Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed.Collection: Friendship
Unlike some people, who love to go out, I love to stay home.Collection: Home
No one who cooks cooks alone.Collection: Cooking Classes
I will never eat fish eyeballs, and I do not want to taste anything commonly kept as a house pet, but otherwise I am a cinch to feed.Collection: Food
It is often to the wary that the events in life are unexpected. Looser types-people who are not busy weighing and measuring every little thing-are used to accidents, coincidences, chance, things getting out of hand, things sneaking up on them. They are the happy children of life, to whom life happens for better or worse.Collection: Happiness
There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.Collection: Food
Woe to those who get what they desire. Fulfillment leaves an empty space where your old self used to be, the self that pines and broods and reflects. You furnish a dream house in your imagination, but how startling and final when that dream house is your own address. What is left to you? Surrounded by what you wanted, you feel a sense of amputation. The feelings you were used to abiding with are useless. The conditions you established for your happiness are met. That youthful light-headed feeling whose sharp side is much like hunger is of no more use to you.Collection: Success
Once my jars were labeled, I felt contentedly thrilled with myself, as if I had pulled off a wonderful trick. People feel this way when they bake bread or have babies, and although they are perfectly entitled to feel that way, in fact, nature does most of the work.Collection: Baby
I do not believe that you have to spend a lot of money to eat well: it is hard to beat a plain old baked potato.Collection: Believe
In this world of uncertainty and woe, one thing remains unchanged: Fresh, canned, pureed, dried, salted, sliced, and served with sugar and cream, or pressed into juice, the tomato is reliable, friendly, and delicious. We would be nothing without it.Collection: Friendly
Fulfillment leaves an empty space where longing used to be.Collection: Space
When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally.Collection: Food
Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures.Collection: Dinner