
“I am the emperor, and I want dumplings.” -Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, fiercely Catholic leader of much of Central & Eastern Europe during the late 1500′s

“I’m chill. I’m chill as a cucumber, man.” -Canadian actor/comedian Seth Rogen as process server Dale Denton in Judd Apatow’s 2008 celebration of stoner hijinks, Pineapple Express

“They’re only noodles Michael.” -Kiefer Sutherland as David, the darkly smug leader of Santa Carla’s vampire gang, in Joel Schumacher’s classic 1987 movie The Lost Boys

“Thank you Mario, but our Princess is in another castle.” -Toad the Mushroom Retainer, guardian of Mushroom Kingdom’s Princess Peach, bumming out 1980′s children everywhere in the wildly popular 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System game Super Mario Bros.

“Ribs? Great…..why don’t you just kick the dentures out of my mouth?” -Late American actress Estelle Getty as pint-sized Sicilian pistol Sophia Petrillo on the brilliant 80′s sitcom The Golden Girls

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it’s impossible to count them accurately.” -Oscar Wilde, 19th century Irish writer, sexually ambiguous lover of beauty, and total brat

“What do you do when the lights are too bright? You dim sum.” -My awesome Daddy, American architect, food/wine nerd, and frequent deliverer of terrible, eye-roll-inducing jokes like this one

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” -John Steinbeck, American novelist and writer of one of my most all-time most favoritest books (I have a lot of those), East of Eden

“On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use….Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. “I want me some lamb chop with handles on ‘em.” -David Sedaris, American story-teller and frequent NPR contributor, in his year 2000 essay collection Me Talk Pretty One Day

“Mmmmm…..unexplained bacon.” -Homer Simpson, Renaissance (Every)Man, beer guzzler, patriarch of The Simpsons family, and die-hard bacon fanatic

“If things start happening, don’t worry, don’t stew, just go right along and you’ll start happening too.” -Dr. Seuss, pseudonym of American writer/illustrator Theodor Seuss Geisel, writer of (hands, like, totally down) my most beloved and revered children’s books ever in the history of…..ever

“Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak, and boy, we’ve got a lot more beef steak than any other country, and that’s why you ought to be glad you’re an American. And people have started looking at these big hunks of bloody meat on their plates, you know, and wondering what on Earth they think they’re doing.” -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., American writer and satirist

“Ghostbusters. Yes, we’re back.” -American actress Annie Potts as quirky, bug-eyed secretary Janine Melnitz in “Ghostbusters 2“ I’m proud to announce that we’re back online, coming to you live and direct from our new headquarters in a renovated firehouse in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. It’s just like Ghostbusters, sort of! The new kitchen is amazing and I [...]

The prospect of directly referencing a recipe that I’ve learned at The French Culinary Institute is a bit of a daunting one. I don’t want to anger the school I adore by violating copyright or anything like that, but at the same time, I want to document what I’m learning for my family, my friends, [...]

“I travel the world, and I’m happy to say that America is still the great melting pot – maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean.” -Philip Glass, American composer