Food Writing Quotes

A pie, like a building, requires construction after all. ~ Janet Clarkson

Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance, as they say in the army - and I always, always want to be ready. Just like Bigfoot. ~ Anthony Bourdain

It is hardly surprising that to this day New England is considered to be the pie capital of America, whose inhabitants traditionally eat (sweet) pie for breakfast. Apple pies in particular became deeply embedded in the history of America - associated with the old country, the new country and the pioneering spirit, and indelibly identified with the sense of nationhood and patriotic sentiment. ~ Janet Clarkson

Japan has somehow managed to achieve the ideal attitude to eating: an obsession with culinary pleasure that is actually conductive to health. ~ Bee Wilson

Dessert pies have moved well beyond fruit and custard, and the line is blurred between pies and cakes with some pies resembling cakes with a crust (pecan pie springs to mind). Some sweet pies are even made with vegetables. ~ Janet Clarkson

The city of Gloucester, by ancient custom, presented a lamprey pie to the sovereign at Christmas time, as a token of loyalty. Lampreys are scaleless freshwater sucker-fish resembling eels, desirable in the past for their oily, gamey flesh. The tradition of gifting lamprey pies to the royal family continued until the end of Queen Victoria's reign, but was revived for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 when a 42-pound pie was cooked by the RAF catering crops. ~ Janet Clarkson

I'll be right here. Until they drag me off the line. I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn't miss it for the world. ~ Anthony Bourdain

Every English village seems to have a particular day when some local tradition is celebrated - and the celebratory food is often pie. ~ Janet Clarkson

The pie-cook and the pie-consumer are both lucky if the smell of the pie 'sells' not only its desirability as biological fuel but also remembrance of pies past. ~ Janet Clarkson

In America, the unqualified word 'pie' unequivocally means a sweet dessert item, whereas in Australia it just as certainly means a meat pie. ~ Janet Clarkson

Look at your waiter's face. He knows. It's another reason to be polite to your waiter: he could save your life with a raised eyebrow or a sigh. ~ Anthony Bourdain

A discussion of the pie in movies would hardly be complete without mention of the classic comic device of custard-pie throwing, now legitimized and made semi-serious as the subversive political act of 'entarting'. 'Entarting' is delivering (by 'lovingly pushing', not throwing) a cream pie into the face of a deserving celebrity, preferably in full view of the world's media, in order to make a point. ~ Janet Clarkson

A writing cook and a cooking writer must be bold at the desk as well as the stove. ~ Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

The town of Lunenburg was built on a hill running down to a sheltered harbour. On one of the upper streets stands a Presbyterian church with a huge gilded cod on its weather vane. Along the waterfront, the wooden-shingled houses are brick red, a color that originally came from mixing clay with cod-liver oil to protect the wood against the salt of the waterfront. It is the look of Nova Scotia - brick red wood, dark green pine, charcoal sea. ~ Mark Kurlansky

As an art form, cooktalk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules, with a rigid, traditional framework in which one may operate. ~ Anthony Bourdain

When Soyer said of pies that they are 'one of our best companions du voyage through life', he was referring consumers, but he might just as well been referring to his professional colleagues, for pies have always been enormously useful to caterers and cooks, particularly at events where a large number must be fed efficiently. In modern times this is usually at sporting events such as football games, but the original experts in mass catering were the military. ~ Janet Clarkson

Practical, versatile, universally esteemed and provided with its own edible, easily decorated gift-box of pastry - small wonder that pie still plays a feature role at many of our favourite celebrations, so much so that it is often symbolic of the very event itself. ~ Janet Clarkson

In the fishing village of Mousehole in Cornwall it is traditional to eat 'stargazy pie' on the evening of 23 December. It is an intriguing pie, made with pilchards placed so that their heads poke through the crust at the centre of the pie, gazing at the stars, as it were. It is made in honour of a local mythical hero, Tom Bawcock ('bawcock' is an old word meaning 'a fine fellow'), whom legend says sent out on a bad night during a bad season, returning with sufficient fish to save the locals from starvation. ~ Janet Clarkson

In theory, food writing is an aid or a prelude to actual meals: you read a recipe, and then you cook. In practice - in a 'paradox' that Michael Pollan, among others, has identified - our current gastronomic fantasies, particularly on TV, have coincided with a decline in home cooking. ~ Bee Wilson

The rule is: the word 'it's' (with apostrophe) stands for 'it is' or 'it has'. If the word does not stand for 'it is' or 'it has' then what you require is 'its'. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave. ~ Lynne Truss

In modern society, where anyone in theory can make money, it is difficult to appreciate that once upon a time wealth was tied absolutely to social class, and therefore social class determined what you ate, even to the extent of determining the type of pastry making up your pie. Farming and household manuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries clearly instructed that the piecrust for the master's family be made from the finest wheat flour, whereas for the servants' piecrust the second milling of wheat or barley was to be used, or maslin (a mix of wheat and rye) or rye. ~ Janet Clarkson

An outstanding historical feature of the pie is that it is a self-contained meal which can be eaten in the hand, without the need of cutlery, crockery or napery. ~ Janet Clarkson

Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting. Please, treat your garlic with respect. ~ Anthony Bourdain

There was no doubt in the minds of nineteenth-century cooks and cookbook writers that there was something about pie - a difficult to grasp something that made it universally esteemed in a way that cake or stew or soup was not. ~ Janet Clarkson

There were a number of reasons for decreeing abstention from meat. In ancient times meat was thought to inflame the passions (thereby distracting the mind from higher thoughts) whereas fish (or rather, creatures that lived in the water, which included whales and 'porpuses') were seen as cooling. It was also believed that the characteristics or habits of everything in the natural world would be transmitted to the eater, so the fact that fish did not have an obvious sex life added to its suitability for days of religious observance. ~ Janet Clarkson

I've sat in restaurants and viewed the food on the plate as I would a half-blooded mongrel. I may feel sorry for it and given time even get to like it a little, but it's never going to really gain my affections. The plate in front of you should tantalize, seduce and enchant you. It should be a cheeky devil, a minx, a hussy even, but never a desperado ~ Karl Wiggins

What most people don't get about professional-level cooking is that it is not all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavours and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking - the real business of preparing the food you eat - is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way. ~ Anthony Bourdain

The life of the cook was a life of adventure, looting, pillaging and rock-and-rolling through life with a carefree disregard for all conventional morality. It looked pretty damn good to me on the other side of the line. ~ Anthony Bourdain

When the pies were taken out of the oven, melted fat was poured in through a hole in the lid to exclude air, thus preserving the contents. Once the pie was cut this airtight seal was broken, leaving the contents prone to rapid spoilage - which perhaps gave rise to the old superstition that it is unlucky to take just one slice from a pie. ~ Janet Clarkson

Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse to make something out of nothing, call it an obsessive-compulsive disorder, call it logorrhea. Have you been in a bookstore lately? Have you seen what these authors are doing, the mountainous piles of the flakes of themselves they're leaving behind, like the neatly labeled jars of shit, piss, and toenail clippings one of John Barth's characters bequeathed to his wife, the ultimate expression of his deepest self? ~ T.C. Boyle

I am free to write: therefore, I am free to be. ~ A.D. Posey

There are lots of ways of answering a letter - and writing doesn't happen to be mine. ~ Edith Wharton

Myself, I'm just a simple country boy who spent time on the streets and developed a style of writing and rapping and a cool sound that people seem to enjoy. ~ Big Smo

No doubt, there are those who believe that judges-and particularly dissenting judges-write to hear themselves say, as it were, I I I. And no doubt, there are also those who believe that judges are, like Joan Didion, primarily engaged in the writing of fiction. I cannot agree with either of those propositions. ~ William J. Brennan

Why do u always post pics of ur food!?
He did it because it made him feel like he was eating his meals with more people. ~ B.J. Novak

She: Do you always enjoy your struggle?

Me: Yes I do! There is no other meaningful way of living my life. My struggle to give voice to my thoughts is exhilarating. My struggle to channelize my thoughts to an audience is amazingly fulfilling. To write my feelings in words is greatly liberating. It is like my mind has all these thoughts and ideas that need to be shared with the esteemed audience!

She: What is your purpose of being a writer?

Me: A writer's life is a lonely life. The loneliness gives me time to be with myself. I am most happy when I am with myself. This loneliness is like my true existence. I don't need to search for a meaning in life. I have my struggle. I have a purpose. My reason for existence is my struggle to be a writer. ~ Avijeet Das

To me, there are 3 parts of the album process: writing, recording, and my favorite part: getting to sing the songs with the fans every night. ~ Eric Hutchinson

avoid food products that make health claims. ~ Erin Moore

I see no reason in morality, why literature should not have as one of its intentions the arousing of thoughts of lust. It is one of the effects, perhaps one of the functions of literature to arouse desire, and I can discover no grounds for saying that sexual pleasure should not be among the objects of desire which literature presents to us, along with heroism, virtue, peace, death, food, wisdom, God, etc. ~ Lionel Trilling

Of course I'm angry," I say. "Two years of disappearance. Never calling and not writing back and making everything worse by not dealing. Now you're all, Ooh, I thought I'd never see you again, and holding my hand and Everyone hugs you but me and half-naked perimeter walking. It's severely suboptimal, Gat. If that's the word you want to use."
His face falls. "Damn. It sounds bad when you put it that way. ~ E. Lockhart

I was writing up a New Mexico snow-storm, I had it coming down thick and heavy, muffling the roads and mounding on adobe walls and windowsills and whitening the piñon and junipers when the tapping came on the door. ~ Wallace Stegner

And not only did this great consolidated ecclesiasticism assume to lord it over men's earthly treasures, but they lorded it over men's minds, prescribing what men should think and read and write. ~ George W Truett

She continued weeping until the heat of her tear water, the sheer velocity of its flow, finally obscured the already vague circumstances of its origins. ~ Tom Robbins

What's interesting to me is how many vampire/urban fantasy authors are writing young adult series as well, often set in the same world as their adult books, but focused on a younger audience. ~ Carrie Vaughn

Writing does for me what giving milk does for a cow. ~ H.L. Mencken

It's nice to really have the freedom to write what I want. ~ Bonnie McKee

Mr. Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. 'For that,' Mr. Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, 'is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,' with another sniff, 'as it might be, strong of old pairs of bellows. ~ Charles Dickens

Writing is a discipline: it's almost all about holding back. ~ Rachel Cusk

It's interesting going between small parts and then bigger roles where you carry the film. If the writing is good, and if the people involved have integrity, then you'll do it, even if it's only five minutes on screen. ~ Brendan Gleeson

I have always wanted to be a published author. I write baseball books because I love the sport. ~ Jonathan Weeks

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult. ~ Adam Mansbach

The food industry has led us to believe that its products are going to make us healthy, happy, sexy, and young. These promises are as empty as the food and drinks they're trying to sell us. The truth is we've never been fatter or in worse health. ~ James Colquhoun

How will it be with us in the future life, when everything that has gratified us in this world: riches, honors, food and drink, dress, beautifully furnished dwellings, and all attractive objects-how will it be, I say, when all these things leave us-when they will all seem to us a dream, and when works of faith and virtue, of abstinence, purity, meekness, humility, mercy, patience, obedience, and others will be required of us? ~ John Of Kronstadt

In her spare time she scribbled her thoughts, wishes and dreams, life and times. It kept her sane despite her loneliness. ~ Aporva Kala

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map. ~ Seth Godin

Being a writer is like being in a relationship. If you're not 100% committed to your writing, you will fail to be the best that you can be. ~ Patti Roberts

An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character ... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory. ~ Timothy Foote

In 1998, Vanity Fair asked me to write a big piece for them on the 50th anniversary of the New York City Ballet. My life, to a great extent, had been spent at and with the New York City Ballet, and I decided to try it. It was very scary, writing about something I loved so much and had such strong opinions about. ~ Robert Gottlieb

People who shop in health food stores never look healthy. ~ Amy Sedaris

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.
[The Writer's Digest Interview: Stephen King & Jerry B. Jenkins (Jessica Strawser, Writer's Digest, May/June 2009)] ~ Stephen King

I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place. ~ Steven Millhauser

The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind. ~ Hortense Calisher

I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,' he resumed presently. 'They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. ~ Saki

I realized early on in writing the book that it needed to be from a family point of view, and that nobody outside the family would weigh in. And then well into writing it, the question became how to balance the perspectives; how to switch between chapters. ~ Mary Kay Zuravleff

I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air. ~ Steve Martin

Nestor said to me. "A
row of Hussars on horseback will come to take me. What will it be for you?"
I remembered don Juan telling me once that death might be behind anything imaginable, even
behind a dot on my writing pad. He gave me then the definitive metaphor of my death.
I had told him that once while walking on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles I had heard
the sound of a trumpet playing an old, idiotic popular tune. The music was coming from a
record shop across the street.
Never had I heard a more beautiful sound. I became enraptured by it. I had to sit down on the
curb. The limpid brass sound of that trumpet was going directly to my brain. I felt it just
above my right temple. It soothed me until I was drunk with it.
When it concluded, I knew that there would be no way of ever repeating that experience, and I
had enough detachment not to rush into the store and buy the record and a stereo set to play it
on.
Don Juan said that it had been a sign given to me by the powers that rule the destiny of men.
When the time comes for me to leave the world, in whatever form, I will hear the same sound
of that trumpet, the same idiotic tune, the same peerless trumpeter. ~ Carlos Castaneda

Shakespeare in Love ... such smart writing of an alternative view of history, and such beautiful acting. Like most Americans, I'm a sucker for the accent. ~ Anita Diament

Still, I kept writing. I had no guarantee that I would someday win awards for writing. Heavens, the only person during that time who seemed to think I could write something worth publishing was my loyal husband. But I always remembered the professor from graduate school who urged me to write and who recommended me for that first writing assignment in 1964. When I protested to Sara Little that I didn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world, she gently reminded me that if I didn't dare mediocrity, I would never write anything at all. ~ Katherine Paterson

People who live in the luxury of a steady paycheck and food in their bellies get too caught up in right and wrong, moral and immoral, good and bad, heroes and villains, even truth and lies. As if we're all either one or the other. As if we all have a choice. As if I have a choice. But I don't believe in choices. I believe in survival. ~ Katie McGarry