Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.

Laurie Colwin

Categorized in : People Lying Men

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.

Laurie Colwin

cooking-classes food past

The table is a meeting place, a gathering ground, the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction. A person cooking is a person giving: even the simplest food is a gift.

Laurie Colwin

safety cooking giving

A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins.

Laurie Colwin

july summer food

Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed.

Laurie Colwin

sisterhood memorable friendship

The old days were slower. People buttered their bread without guilt and sat down to dinner en famille.

Laurie Colwin

dinner guilt people

It is often to the wary that the events in life are unexpected. Looser types-people who are not busy weighing and measuring every little thing-are used to accidents, coincidences, chance, things getting out of hand, things sneaking up on them. They are the happy children of life, to whom life happens for better or worse.

Laurie Colwin

happiness children hands

People who like to cook like to talk about food....without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.

Laurie Colwin

two long people

And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.

Laurie Colwin

eating talking

Cookbooks hit you where you live. You want comfort; you want security; you want food; you want to not be hungry and not only do you want those basic things fixed, you want it done in a really nice, gentle way that makes you feel loved. That's a big desire, and cookbooks say to the person reading them, 'If you will read me, you will be able to do this for yourself and for others. You will make everybody feel better.'

Laurie Colwin

nice reading food

I do not believe that you have to spend a lot of money to eat well: it is hard to beat a plain old baked potato.

Laurie Colwin

potatoes vegetables believe

When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally.

Laurie Colwin

eggplant vegetables food

Once my jars were labeled, I felt contentedly thrilled with myself, as if I had pulled off a wonderful trick. People feel this way when they bake bread or have babies, and although they are perfectly entitled to feel that way, in fact, nature does most of the work.

Laurie Colwin

doe baby people

In this world of uncertainty and woe, one thing remains unchanged: Fresh, canned, pureed, dried, salted, sliced, and served with sugar and cream, or pressed into juice, the tomato is reliable, friendly, and delicious. We would be nothing without it.

Laurie Colwin

tomatoes would-be friendly

There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.

Laurie Colwin

soup food two

A person cooking is a person giving. Even the simplest food is a gift.

Laurie Colwin

simplest cooking giving

To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.

Laurie Colwin

food night needs

No one who cooks cooks alone.

Laurie Colwin

chefs-cooking cooking-classes home-cooking

We need time to defuse, to contemplate. Just as in sleep our brains relax and give us dreams, so at some time in the day we need to disconnect, reconnect, and look around us.

Laurie Colwin

dream sleep giving

When life is hard and the day has been long, the ideal dinner is not four perfect courses, each in a lovely pool of sauce whose ambrosial flavors are like nothing ever before tasted, but rather something comforting and savory, easy on the digestion - something that makes one feel, if even for only a minute, that one is safe.

Laurie Colwin

life-is-hard perfect long

Many people eat salad dutifully because they feel it is good for them, but more enlightened types eat it happily because it is good.

Laurie Colwin

salad enlightened people