Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

I say to my industrialist friends, when you have guests from out of town, I don't care how important they are, you should feed them the essence of Italian culture: spaghetti, bread and olive oil.

Perhaps our Irish friends should not so completely turn their backs on their historical dishes, no matter how many jokes they might have to endure.

I'm still very much a Northerner. I try to have chips and gravy twice a week.

There is a history to Italian food that goes back thousands of years, and there's a basic value of respecting food. America is young and doesn't have that.

Culinary tradition is not always based on fact. Sometimes it's based on history, on habits that come out of a time when kitchens were fueled by charcoal.

I like to cook Puerto Rican food. That's what I grew up on: rice, beans, meat, some Italian-American food. I know my way around the kitchen.

I can make dressing - or stuffing. Y'all call it stuffing up here, we call it dressing down there. It's really good dressing. That family recipe was passed on, and I love to make that.

My grandmother on my father's side, a nightclub singer, was a Jewish refugee from Prussia who ended up in Jerusalem, where she met my grandfather - a British army officer. I remember as a child having bowls of chicken soup made by her. There were lots of interesting components, like feet and necks.

I don't come from any great culinary tradition - I'm from London!

Near Marseilles in the south of France, bouillabaisse is a cult food. In Toulouse and Carcassonne, the bean-based stew cassoulet is a cult food. Spain has paella and a number of others. Italy has so many, its cuisine is practically defined by them.

I don't think people should be fed mesclun salad and chicken breast. My grandmother would serve grits and oxtail stew at a formal dinner, and if you didn't like it, well then you ate more beans or you went home and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Anytime someone orders a pastrami sandwich on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies.

For breakfast I have grits, because I'm a Southern girl!

Here's the irony in what I do: When I go out to eat, I like classic French food. I like amazing Japanese food that has such a history that it goes back hundreds of years. And I also like really innovative food as well.

My most memorable meal is every Thanksgiving. I love the food: the turkey and stuffing; the sweet potatoes and rice, which come from my mother's Southern heritage; the mashed potatoes, which come from my wife's Midwestern roots; the Campbell's green-bean casserole; and of course, pumpkin pie.

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon - all served with black beans and rice. It's festive but different.

My favourite dish is from Congo, the native country of my father. It's called Poulet a la Dakatine and is made from chicken, peanut butter and spinach.

I'm Japanese, but restaurants in my hometown served the most sanitized versions of California rolls. I grew up eating a lot of Japanese food at home that my parents or grandparents made.

Just because something is English does not necessarily mean it is good. We make the best cheddar; we make great pasties. But we can't make very good brie or baguettes - and the French can't make pork pies.

When we get civilised, I believe children will go by number until they get old enough to choose their own names.

Becky Renee Apple - can you believe her mom named her that and then had all of her sweaters monogramed with 'BRA'?

We need to define what culture is. Every human being lives within a culture, and culture means "To grow in." It means to literally fall, and this is exactly what I believe is happening all around us right now.

A name is so important. A surname connects you to your past, to your family. Even a given name has meaning - why did your parents pick that particular one?

Mercy is not a proper Indian name."..........."Rash Coyote Who Runs With Wolf. We could shorten it to Dinner Woman.

My name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.