The way one eats is the way one works.
And some, like me, are just beginning to guess at the powerful religion of ordinary life, a spirituality of freshly mopped floors and stacked dishes and clothes blowing on the line.
Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.
What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick!
There is a famous document of Christian mysticism called Practicing the Presence, in which a monk would experience his union with the Christ in doing very simple things — baking bread, washing dishes, cleaning the floor, and so on. In new-age circles this sometimes gets misinterpreted. The assumption is that the act itself is the practicing of the presence, as in “My practice is baking bread.” This can be a good thing to do in a skillful way, but what makes something a practice is not just the ordinary doing of it. It is the sense that in this moment we are giving ourselves, in love, to the universe through this action. . . . If I am washing this dish, I wash it with the sense that I am caressing the consciousness of a multitude of beings, that I am touching my beloved.
If I could learn the word for yes it could teach me questions.
Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snow in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grapenuts on principle.
That’s something I’ve noticed about food: whenever there’s a crisis if you can get people to eating normally things get better.
The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth.
Edible. 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.
Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish.
If sometimes our poor people have had to die of starvation, it is not that God didn’t care for them, but because you and I didn’t give, were not an instrument in the hands of God, to give them that bread, to give them that clothing; because we did not recognize him, when once more Christ came in distressing disguise, in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the homeless child, and seeking for shelter.
I eat to live, to serve, and also, it happens, to enjoy, but I do not eat for the sake of enjoyment.
Let the number of guests not exceed twelve . . . so chosen that their occupations are varied, their tastes similar, the dining room brilliantly lighted, the cloth pure white, the temperature between 60 and 68; the men witty and not pedantic, the women amiable and not too coquettish; the dishes exquisite but few, the wines vintage; the coffee hot; the drawing room large enough to give those who must have it a game of cards while leaving plenty of room for after-dinner talk; the tea not too strong, the toast artistically buttered; the signal to leave not before eleven, and everyone in bed at midnight.
