
“It was a meal that we shall never forget; more accurately, it was several meals that we shall never forget, because it went beyond the gastronomic frontiers of anything we had ever experienced, both in quantity and length. It started with homemade pizza – not one, but three: anchovy, mushroom, and cheese, and it was obligatory to have a slice of each.” -Peter Mayle, British writer and ex-advertising industry drone, in his famous book A Year in Provence

“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

“He puts some MacAttack Mac & Cheese in the microwave and dons headphones and takes out a video game so he won’t be bored during the forty seconds it takes his lunch to cook.” -George Saunders, awesome American writer/satirist, from his 2006 short story collection In Persuasion Nation

“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

“All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbecue and there was no meat, I would say “Yo Goober! Where’s the meat?” I’m trying to impress people, here, Lisa. You don’t win friends with salad.” -Homer Simpson, lovable carnivore and patriarch of The Simpsons family

“Miracles are like meatballs, because nobody can exactly agree on what they’re made of, where they come from, or how often they should appear.” -Lemony Snicket, pseudonym of Daniel Handler, the wonderful author of perfectly un-PC, slightly topsy-turvy children’s stories

“Nobody calls me chicken, Needles. Nobody.” -The magically non-aging Michael J. Fox as the excitable time-traveller Marty McFly in Back to the Future, Part II

“Bib and napkin, knife and fork, is the only way that I’ll touch pork.” -Kermit the Frog to Miss Piggy, as he rejects her constant advances yet again

“The chili I ate made for an explosive bathroom experience. I don’t know how to put this delicately, but I missed the toilet entirely.” -Seth Green, American actor and comedian

“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

“The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.” -Henry David Thoreau, American transcendentalist and writer

“I think somebody should come up with a way to breed a very large shrimp. That way, you could ride him, then after you camped at night, you could eat him. How about it, science?” -Jack Handey, the endlessly quotable creator of Saturday Night Live’s “Deep Thoughts”

“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 [...]

“I’ll have the smiley face breakfast special. Uhh, but could you add a bacon nose? Plus bacon hair, bacon moustache, five-o’clock shadow made of bacon bits, and a bacon body.” -Homer Simpson, endlessly quotable, lovable, dense (yet strangely wise and prolific) father to one of the greatest television families of all time, The Simpsons.

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 have always wished that I had gotten a chance to know my Uncle Jim better. I know him mostly through stories that my father would tell me about his big brother, as we never lived in the same city and he died tragically from cancer when I was a teenager. According to my father, [...]