
“Here, taste my tuna casserole and tell me if I put in too much hot fudge.” -Legendary American film-maker Woody Allen as Larry Lipton in his 1993 film Manhattan Murder Mystery

“I’m a wild man. I live in these tunnels eating roots and mushrooms. I’m crazy. I could do anything!” -Norwegian Blue Lion pilot Sven, in the depths of madness while marooned on Planet Doom, in the popular mid-80′s Japanese animated series Voltron

“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.

“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

“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

“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

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, [...]