Casaba Kitchen Quotes

It is easy to lose hope when all is lost. We do not realise that is just the beginning. That is just the catalyst. That is when we have to spread our wings like a butterfly. The rainy days will come but so will 'the botanical drawings' of life. Of kitchen tables, our mother's apron strings, cabbage roses and toys if we want to become the women our mother's were. There are so many careers for women to choose from today. Wherever they find themselves women will always find an abundance. ~ Abigail George

Feeling inspired, I grabbed one of Jay's cookbooks from the kitchen shelf and flicked through until I found a recipe for something I recognised. Lasagna. That was just pasta, and pasta was easy, right? Trying not to be put off by the list of ingredients longer than my small intestine, I scanned the instructions. Chop onions ... I could do that. Brown mince ... trickier but manageable. Probably. Make a roux in the usual way ... I sighed, shut the book with a snap and went off to make dinner in my usual way: pierce film; bung in microwave; wait for bell. ~ J.L. Merrow

I was in bed at my beach house, but could not sleep because of some fried chicken in the icebox that I felt entitled to. I waited till my wife dropped off, and tiptoed into the kitchen. I remembered looking at the clock. It was precisely four-fifteen. I'm quite certain of this, because our kitchen clock has not worked in twenty-one years and is always at that time. I also noticed that our dog, Judas, was acting funny. He was sanding up on his hind legs and singing, 'I Enjoy Being a Girl.' Suddenly the room turned bright orange. At first, I thought my wife had caught me eating between meals and set fire to the house. Then I looked out the window, where to my amazement I saw a gigantic cigar-shaped aircraft hovering just over the treetops in the yard and emitting an orange glow. I stood transfixed for what must have been several hours, though our clock still read four-fifteen, so it was difficult to tell. Finally, a large, mechanical claw extended from the aircraft and snatched the two pieces of chicken from my hand and quickly retreated. When I reported the incident to the Air Force, they told me that what I had seen was a flock of birds. When I protested, Colonel Quincy Bascomb personally promised that the Air Force would return the two pieces of chicken. To this day, I have only received one piece. ~ Woody Allen

I stood here

in this kitchen

elaborating and embellishing this fantasy for some time instead of taking responsibility for what was happening around me because in truth what really tormented me was that all this filth and disorder offended my engineer's sense of structure, everything out of place and proper alignment, everything gathering towards some point of chaos beyond which it would be impossible to restore the place to its proper order and yet I stood looking at it, locked into a silent battle with the house itself and all the things which were slowly vacating their proper place, furniture and dishes and cutlery all over the place, curtains hanging awry and chairs and tables strewn about while books and papers slid across the floor, everything slowly shifting through the house as if they had a meeting to keep somewhere else, possibly in some higher realm where all this chaos would resolve into a refined harmony which had no need of my hand or intervention ~ Mike McCormack

It was true that Al had asked her to move the jars and magazines, and there was probably a word for the way she'd stepped around those jars and magazines for the last eleven days, often nearly stumbling on them; maybe a psychiatric word with many syllables or maybe a simple word like "spite." But it seemed to her that he'd asked her to do more than "one thing" while he was gone. He'd also asked her to make the boys three meals a day, and clothe them and read to them and nurse them in sickness, and scrub the kitchen floor and wash the sheets and iron his shirts, and do it all without a husband's kisses or kind words. If she tried to get credit for these labors of hers, however, Al simply asked her whose labors had paid for the house and food and linens? Never mind that his work so satisfied him that he didn't need her love, while her chores so bored her that she needed his love doubly. In any rational accounting, his work canceled her work. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for each year of his loony age, and watches, with love, their black-and-white moony loudlipped faces tocking the earth away: slow clocks, quick clocks, pendulumed heart-knocks, china, alarm, grandfather, cuckoo; clocks shaped like Noah's whirring Ark, clocks that bicker in marble ships, clocks in the wombs of glass women, hourglass chimers, tu-wit-tuwoo clocks, clocks that pluck tunes, Vesuvius clocks all black bells and lava, Niagara clocks that cataract their ticks, old time weeping clocks with ebony beards, clocks with no hands for ever drumming out time
without ever knowing what time it is. His sixty-six singers are all set at different hours. Lord Cut-Glass lives in a house and a life at siege. Any minute or dark day now, the unknown enemy will loot and savage downhill, but they will not catch him napping. Sixty-six different times in his fish-slimy kitchen ping, strike, tick, chime, and tock. ~ Dylan Thomas

When it was time for me to leave, I thanked Mrs. Odom, climbed on Lenny's bike, and set off for home. As I pedaled up the road, I turned and glanced back at the Odoms' house. I remembered that first day on the school bus when I had seen it and thought it was so sad-looking. Then I pictured all those boys in that little kitchen getting loved on by their mama and that house didn't look one bit sad anymore. ~ Barbara O'Connor

I was afraid of other people's houses. After school sometimes a friend might talk me into going to his house or apartment to do our homework together. It was a shock, the way people lived, other people, those who weren't me. I didn't know how to respond, the clinging intimacy of it, kitchen slop, pan handles jutting from the sink. Did I want to be curious, amused, indifferent, superior? Just walking past a bathroom, a woman's stocking draped over the towel rack, pill bottles on the windowsill, some open, some capsized, a child's slipper in the bathtub. It made me want to run and hide, partly from my own fastidiousness. The bedrooms with unmade beds, somebody's socks on the floor, the old woman in nightclothes, barefoot, an entire life gathered up in a chair by the bed, hunched frame and muttering face. Who are these people, minute to minute and year after year? It made me want to go home and stay there. ~ Don DeLillo

When I'm home, the heart and soul of our family is in the kitchen. Growing up, my parents both worked, so dinnertime was for family - the TV was off. I think it's important to grab that time and really make it special, even after a tough day. ~ Cat Cora

NOURISH YOUR HAIR:
1. There are a number of 'kitchen recipes' for feeding hair. It needs the contents of your refrigerator just as much as your skin does. Right back to mayonnaise! Olive oil, eggs, and lemon juice. Massage the mixture into your hair, let it stay on for ten or fifteen minutes, then rinse it off with cool water. Cool - or you'll have scrambled eggs on your head.
2. For years I washed my daughter' hair with raw eggs, never soap or shampoo. I wet their hair fist and then rubbed in six whole eggs, one by one - a trick I learned from Katherine. Hepburn. (Four eggs will do for short hair, but theirs was long.) Some people use eggs beaten up with a jigger of rum; others mix an egg with red wine.
3. Hot oils is good for dry hair. Apply it with the fingertips and then wrap your head in a warm towel. Keep changing the oil for an hour, to keep it hot and penetrating. Then shampoo.
4. I believe in brushing. I made my girls give their hair the old-fashioned hundred strokes every night, using two brushes, and bending forward from the waist. It stimulates hair grows, and the rush of blood to the face is an added benefit. I pull my hair gently to encourage growth too. ~ Joan Crawford

I have lots of shoes, but I have to be comfortable. Lately, I've stolen my husband's big, ugly Uggs to wear around the kitchen. I want to have them on, then slide into a fabulous heel later. Truth is, I often forget the heel. ~ Debi Mazar

To cook is not just to prepare food for someone or for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. You should allow yourself plenty of time; you should work on it with nothing in your mind, and without expecting anything. You should just cook! ~ Shunryu Suzuki

V had been keeping his eye on the guy. After they'd spent hours alone together, they'd parted awkwardly and taken separate showers. Fortunately, though, the hot water had been a reset for them both, and when they'd met up again in the Pit's kitchen, it had been business as usual. And shit remained that way ~ J.R. Ward

But once, a cardinal alighted on the kitchen windowsill and he found himself squinting long after it had flown away again, trying hard to hold on to its beauty. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

When I was in fourth grade, a novelist came to talk to my English class. She told us that being an author meant sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas, drinking tea with the dogs at your feet. ~ J. Courtney Sullivan

He found his aunt in the kitchen, and he grabbed her by the waist of her pants ~ Jeanne DuPrau

My wife and I like to cook, so we actually prepare our own meals often and can hold our own in the kitchen. ~ Donald Trump, Jr.

My plans are not to open a restaurant, but what I would like to do is open a kitchen somewhere in D.C. proper and have a chef's table where people can come and taste my food without having to have a catered event. ~ Carla Hall

You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese. ~ Anthony Bourdain

I FLEW over the rooftops of the city, listened to some jazz at Preservation Hall, drank rainwater down in Pirate's Alley, ducked into a kitchen on Dauphine and Orleans and was fed by an old couple who was sure I was both tame and owned by a neighbor. It was the great thing about the city: nothing really surprised anyone. They expected to see things out of the ordinary. A black panther eating gumbo was normal. ~ Mary Calmes

That will solve nothing, my lord." His wife strode into the kitchen, stiff pride shining in her eyes. "I told you to keep her in hand." Brodick glared at his cousin, wondering just when his life had turned inside out. Druce scowled at the sweet smile Brodrick's wife cast toward him. He lifted his finger and pointed at her. "She bit me. ~ Mary Wine

I think the worst thing is the way you lose part of yourself." I roll on to my back and stare up at the dark, speckled roof. "There's so much that only Lief knew about me. So many memories that we shared – mostly of things we shouldn't have been doing – but now I'm the last one who remembers them. Times we woke in the night and stole honeycomb from the jars in the kitchen. Times we used to jump into the hay on the farm. No one will ever know me like that again. And what if I forget things? What happens then? ~ Melinda Salisbury

She's already making the feast, Aaron. She's ... perfect."
[ ... ]
"Really? Jen! Get your ass in the kitchen and start making dinner. Julia is three hours behind you and she's already started!"
I laughed out loud again when I heard Jenna's response in the background. "You get your ass dressed. The turkey will be served at McFarland's Corner of 15th and Nichols. Bring your wallet, asshole. ~ Kahlen Aymes

Courtney, I had this all planned out, and I wanted to make it so special for you, but something just came over me, and I ... well, shit ... I couldn't wait another minute. I love you, Courtney. I want to love you for the rest of my life. I want to wake up to you every morning and lie down next to you every night. I want to make love to you on our kitchen island as much as we want to. I want to sit with you on the back porch and watch you while you're lost in one of your books. I want to see your stomach getting bigger with our kids, and hell, I even want to fight with you and then have make-up sex. I want the world for both of us, and more than anything, I want to make all your dreams come true. I want to be your Prince Charming, Courtney. I want to be your everything. Will you marry me? ~ Kelly Elliott

Between the kitchen and the destroyed chapel a door led into an oval-shaped library. The space inside seemed safe except for a large hole at portrait level in the far wall, caused by mortar-shell attack on the villa two months earlier. The rest of the room had adapted itself to this wound, accepting the habits of weather, evening stars, the sound of birds. ~ Michael Ondaatje

I've usually never felt comfortable shooting until things were kind of claustrophobic, but ballet dancers need a lot of space, so the sets that I designed had to be big. Normally, I'd design a kitchen that was half the size of a normal kitchen, just to make everything feel kind of womb-like, but the kitchen in a ballet would have to be like 100 feet wide and just as long. ~ Guy Maddin

Bottoming doesn't make you a submissive any more than standing in my kitchen makes you a cook. By the way, while you're there, please make me a sandwich. ~ Michael Makai

When I was 13 or 14, my parents had a bit of a windfall so bought a lovely new kitchen, but I burnt it down. I was making cheese on toast when flames escaped from the grill. My father stopped the fire with blind panic and excessive water. I was forgiven, but it put me off cooking for years. ~ Erin O'Connor

Here's the hell of it: madness doesn't announce itself. There isn't time to prepare for its coming. It shows up without calling and sits in your kitchen ashing in your plant. You ask how long it plans to stay; it shrugs its shoulders, gets up, and starts digging through the fridge. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Ann put the oven to heat. She washed the lamb under the tap, turning it around to clean the entire leg. Then it was dried with a paper towel, stretched out on the cutting board to be hammered flat, and rubbed with salt and rosemary she took from the kitchen window. She waited for the oven to reach two hundred. The cleaned scent of the meat and the clatter of the water in the skink, the branches of rosemary, the dogs finding each other's ears in the evening, the children being called indoors, servants standing on the road for the Indian bus, and the rising heat of the oven against the remaining heat of the day made her aware of her own happiness. This happiness was like the sea wind when the temperature of the water and the land reversed and everything was free in new darkness. ~ Imraan Coovadia

The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. ~ Herbert Marcuse

I was living my own future and my brother's lost one as well. I represented him here just as he represented me there, in some unguessable other place. His move from life to death might resemble my stepping into the kitchen - into its soft nowhere quality and foggy hum. I breathed the dark air. If I had at that moment a sense of calm kindly death while my heart beat and my lungs expanded, he might know a similar sense of life in the middle of his ongoing death. ~ Michael Cunningham

Syn checked the lorina's feeder in the kitchen. "Where are the mongrels?"
Nykyrian took a sip of tea before he answered. "They were confused by all the people. Last I saw of them, they were hiding out in my bed."
Darling frowned. "They don't bite, do they?"
Nykyrian scoffed. "I'm the only thing that bites in this house."
-Syn, Nykyrian, & Darling ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I had a dilemma. I could find absolutely no good reason to slap the girl standing in the kitchen doorway. And I really wanted one. ~ Myra McEntire

Dad. I knew that was it. No more holding my hand. No more sitting in my lap. No more throwing your arms around my waist when I walked through the front door or standing on my shoes while we danced around the kitchen. I would be the bank now. The ride to your friend's house. The critic of your biology homework. The signature on the check mailed away with your college application. ~ Karin Slaughter

The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden ~ Edith Sitwell

It's like walking on a 1970 blaze orange shag carpet in a kitchen. ~ Cody Lundin

It's very easy to capture pictures of jubilant people in the street after the nuclear bomb. But there were no pictures of morose people sitting in their kitchens and living rooms. ~ Amartya Sen

Pink Balloons

My name is Olivia King

I am five years old

My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon trickling down her arm, wrapped around her wrist. She was smiling at me as she untied the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand.

"Here Livie, I bought this for you."

She called me Livie.

I was so happy. I'd never had a balloon before. I mean, I always saw balloon wrapped around other kids wrist in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, but I never dreamed I would have my very own.

My very own pink balloon.

I was excited! So ecstatic! So thrilled! I couldn't believe my mother bought me something! She'd never bought me anything before! I played with it for hours. It was full of heliu and it danced and swayed and floated as I drug it around from room to room with me, thinking of places to take it. Thinking of places the balloon had never been before. I took it in the bathroom, the closet, the laundry room, the kitchen, the living room. I wanted my new best friend to see everything I saw! I took it to my mother's bedroom!

My mothers

Bedroom?

Where I wasn't supposed to be?

With my pink

balloon...

I covered my ears as she screamed at me, wiping the evidence off her nose! She slapped me across the face as she told me how bad I was! How much I misbehaved! How I never ~ Colleen Hoover

Mrs Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy. He was a failure, he said. Mrs Ramsay flashed her needles. Mr Ramsay repeated, never taking his eyes from her face, that he was a failure. She blew the words back at him. "Charles Tansley… " she said. But he must have more than that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made furtile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life - the drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must be filled with life. ~ Virginia Woolf

Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. ~ Julia Child