Everything in moderation.

Maybe that's not very interesting, but it helps me keep my perspective when the whole world is eating organic quinoa and white flour is evil and regular non organic beef or chicken or pork is pure cancer on a fork.

Hmmm. The only one I can think of is from when amanda was a vegetarian and Ashley was just picky: "Eat it and shut up". LOL. Usually followed by a sigh and "the cereal is in the pantry".

Annie

Mine is "Recipes are meant to be shared".

~Ann

I love this one in part because it's especially true when I plate my desserts and I can't stand it when people touch MY food making it kind of ironic, don't you think?

Julia Child: It's so beautifully arranged on the plate -- you know someone's fingers have been all over it

Every now and then someone says something that strikes me as funny at the moment and I write it on the kitchen wall. A few are food related, including...

11/8/05 I must have been fretting about what to serve with what I can only guess were hamburgers. Wife's response, "We don't need a side, we have ketchup."

8/14/09 First time canning, and I was making Annie's pepper jelly. I burned myself with boiling water trying to get the jars out. Me: "I guess this is why people buy canning equipment." Wife: "I guess this is why people buy jelly for a dollar fifty in the store."

I like Yogi Berra's comment about a popular restaurant:

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

That's funny, Jim. I like Yogi also. Here's mine...it has to do with my pet food peeve - serving sizes.

"You'd better cut that pizza in four slices 'cause I'm not hungry enough to eat six!" (Yogi Berra)

/tricia

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" - Tom Waits.

Sort of cooking related, or at least eating/drinking related, since bottles are used when cooking.

Lars

"Garlic is the ketchup of intellectuals."

"Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love." (Song of Solomon 2:5 KJV) As I understand it, the modern meaning of that line is "Refresh me with apples, for I am lovesick". Peter deVries used that as a title for one of his novels.

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."
Mark Twain

And don't forget B. Kliban's advice...

Here is a link that might be useful: B. Kliban's advice

Ha, ha Tricia, I don't think Yogi was talking about pet food.

Mine? "Remove plastic wrapper. Heat on high for three minutes. Stir and enjoy."

As my large pasta bowl states on it rim: The cook is not responsible for dog hair in the food.

Hey, its protein.

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."
- by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, author of Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), published in December 1825. Physiologie has never been out of print since, and was first translated into English by M. F. K. Fisher in 1949.

I first read that quote in an issue of Gourmet magazine when I was 11 years old...whoa, that was over 50 yrs ago! In those days people like Fisher, Richard Olney, and even Lucius Beebe were regular contributors.

The only thing I knew how to cook at that age was Japanese steamed rice. But I received an amazing education in gastronomy through those monthly articles for years. My mother saved her money for several years to splurge on the first US edition of the Larousse Gastronomique, which I read cover to cover.

People thought it was either funny or weird that I was running a household at the age of 14 with my own subscription to Gourmet magazine, paid out of my allowance.

Your Brillat-Savarin quote jogged my memory for another quote from him. The imagery on this one is a tad bizarre, though:

"A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye."

Ewwwwww....

In my Italian themed kitchen, I painted a plaque:
"Non c'è amore più grande dell'amore del cibo"
Translated: There is no greater love than the love of food.

Annie took us to a wonderful kitchen store in Grand Rapids. There was a lovely sign that said: "A meal without wine is breakfast".

Here is one of my favorites; I believe it was made by one of the Hints from Heloise writers.

"If you don't know what to make for dinner, fry up some onions because it always smells so hopeful!"

The perennial favorite,

I love to cook with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food.

and,

God gives us the nuts, but we must crack them ourselves.

Steve

I always liked Marcia Adams' ending comment "Essen Gut - Eat Good". Says a lot really. Eating good does not have to mean cage free eggplant or free range salmon or pigs transported in trucks burning organic diesel fuel. Eating good is eating what's good to you.

Comfort foods are called that for a reason.

And of course, Bacon is a spice. More bacon, more better which I plagerized/modified from my Aunt's favorite phrase, "more butter, more better". And "REAL butter, please"!

My girlfriend's cooking improved when I convinced her the smoke alarm is not a timer.

I have a little pin of a turkey carrying a sign: You are what you eat.

I'm sorry your opinion wasn't in the recipe.

A friend has this sign in her kitchen: Sit long. Talk much.

My wife treats me like a god. I get a burnt offering at every meal.
Old cooks never die, they just get deranged.

Only the pure of heart can make good Lefse!

Open the oven, take a look, first to complain is tomorrowâÂÂs cook !

If we are what we eat, then IâÂÂm fast, cheap and easy!

"In large states, public education is mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"I go out to the kitchen to feed the dog, but that's about as much cooking as I do" -Betty White

Here's one from Walt Kelly's Pogo comic strip:

"Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing."

Lars

A few of mine are:

"Food is my favorite thing to eat. Other than that, I'm not picky."

"If it has gravy, sauce or frosting on it, chances are I screwed it up and am hiding something."

"The good news about cookie mishaps is you can eat the evidence."

Cathy, I think it was the same trip that yielded this sign:

"Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever." Aristophanes

Annie

"----- Burp!"

dcarch :-)

Cynic, I love those quotes! They make me happy!

Hey, I thought these were supposed to be OUR quotes?! Well, a few are...

(dcarch - I could swear I smelled garlic when I read yours. And not in a good way, LOL)

These are wonderful! Yes, I did mean your own personal quote - something that those around you are likely to hear or something you would say to yourself.

Just the other night while I was picking out the mushrooms from an otherwise delicious spinach lasagna, I had a moment of clarity in that I really don't care for mushrooms, even after years of trying to like them. But, I do like stuffed mushrooms.....? Go figure...

Now I'll always think of ketchup as a side thanks to FOAS!

Keep 'em coming!
Teresa

This has been heard in my house on several occasions, typically following some cursing and a thud from food being thrown in the garbage can... "Ok, where do you want to go for dinner?"

FOAS, "(dcarch - I could swear I smelled garlic when I read yours. And not in a good way, LOL)"

Actually that is a real quote.

I was told, in some cultures, which I have forgotten, burping is viewed as good manner, and is appreciated by the host.

dcarch

I still say these two from my grandmother:

"Never bake an orphan."
"Don't throw good food after bad."

I e-mailed DD to ask her and evidently ones I've said many times are:

"Will this REALLY improve our quality of life?" (a family mantra before almost any purchase but particularly for kitchen gadgets and small appliances)

"Cooking without an apron is like driving a car without windshield wipers."

"The sweetest meat is closest to the bone."

I grew up hearing lots of PA Dutch sayings/proverbs and always liked this one:

"Kissin' wears out; cookin' don't."

A friend of mine always says "Life's too short. Don't eat bad food. Don't use cheap toilet paper."

I thought the opposite - I thought that the quotes were supposed to be from famous people. Anyway, so here are some from my supervisor, Dennis Peron (aka herbalist/activist) from when I was a pastry chef at a hippy restaurant in San Francisco in the mid 1970s:

On my first day, I asked Dennis what he wanted me to do, and he said,

"Make as much as you can of whatever you want with whatever ingredients you can find."

"If you have a flop, put a sign that says 'Organic' on it."

I never had flops, and so I never used that sign. The restaurant was owned by a couple of communes who needed a place to eat their meals and launder money, although I was unaware of the latter part of it until they got busted, which fortunately happened after I had quit. When I told Dennis that I wanted something a bit more specific about what to make, he said, "We like chocolate." So I made double chocolate brownies once a week, and they always sold out, and I made larger batches of those. Ingredients were not all that easy to find because other workers moved them around constantly, and there were always new, seasonal ingredients arriving that I did not expect, such as pineapples, or other fruits. I got tired of the job because it was graveyard - 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM, or whenever I finished.

Lars

When in doubt, throw it out.

Better out than in. (Referring to diet busters)

I'm not a fast cook, or a slow cook.
I'm a half-fast cook...

"ya can't say ya HATE something you've never tried"!! BUGS me when kids say they "hate" something they've NEVER even tasted... makes me a bit CRAZY when and ADULT says the same thing? NOT a good trait in front of kids learning about different flavors.

When I was traveling for a living I maintained the four basic food groups were sandwiches, burgers, pizza and beer.

If I ever get to Italy, I will be going on the PPPGWC diet:
pasta, pannini, pizza, gelato, wine, cappucino.

Teresa

"I'm Italian, if it ever flew, walked, swam, slithered or grew I'll eat it"

Teresa, You nailed it!

Cynic,
For years, I claimed the four basic food groups were cream, butter, chocolate, and garlic. Add caffeine for variety.

What does "never bake an orphan" mean? Don't heat up the entire oven to bake one potato?

When my son was a teenager, I served broccoli, which grows in our are so it was very fresh, "How do you know you don't like broccoli? You haven't even tasted it."
His reply....."There is nothing wrong with my sense of smell."
(He is coming to visit for a week tomorrow with his children.....he is now 48.)
And tonight I cooked some really fresh broccoli......he was correct. The odor is a little strong but it certainly was tasty.

Ded, although she didn't pack the oven so full that heat wouldn't circulate properly, my grandmother thought it was a waste of energy to bake just one item. If I bake a cake, I add a couple of potatoes to make twice baked potatoes or an acorn squash for the following night's dinner. My mom would always pair a meat loaf with a baked custard or rice pudding.

Following the adage "waste not; want not " was her generation's way of reducing their carbon footprints before they ever heard of carbon footprints.

Love all the funny quotes!

How about, "I like to eat Italian food...but the problem is, 2 or 3 days later, you're hungry again."

That's a good one, Annie D!

Jim

Speaking of broccoli:

Roy Blount Jr. once had some food poems. This one covered the subject:

The supermarket is out of broccoli.
Luccali.

But the most famous comment is the one in the 1928 New Yorker cartoon at the link.

Here is a link that might be useful: broccoli cartoon

What a great thread!
while these aren"t family quotes, I love them anyway...

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.
~Harriet Van Horne
Practice love, like cooking, with reckless abandon
~Life's Little Instruction Book by H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
~ Mark Twain

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
~Virginia Woolf

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
~Voltaire

A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat.
~New York Yiddish Proverb

There are two choices for dinner, take it or leave it.

Another burnt offering. I treat you guys like gods.

(I've used that one a few times lately)

No you can't have ___________. This isn't Alice's Restaurant.