“Cooking without remuneration" and "slaving over a hot stove" are activities separated mostly by a frame of mind. The distinction is crucial. Career women in many countries still routinely apply passion to their cooking, heading straight from work to the market to search out the freshest ingredients, feeding their loved ones with aplomb. [...] Full-time homemaking may not be an option for those of us delivered without trust funds into the modern era. But approaching mealtimes as a creative opportunity, rather than a chore, is an option. Required participation from spouse and kids is an element of the equation. An obsession with spotless collars, ironing, and kitchen floors you can eat off of---not so much. We've earned the right to forget about stupefying household busywork. But kitchens where food is cooked and eaten, those were really a good idea. We threw that baby out with the bathwater. It may be advisable to grab her by her slippery foot and haul her back in here before it's too late.”

“Lilith returned to her cooking. She didn't let herself think about anything but preparing the food, one ingredient at a time, a pinch of this into a bowl of that, a vial of this into a jug of that, and so it went, while the sweat ran off her in rivulets and her hair and dress clung to her, and the kitchen hummed with the droning of flies.”

“There are two kinds of people in this world: the ones who don't cook out of and have NEVER cooked out of THE I HATE TO COOK BOOK, and the other kind...The I HATE TO COOK people consist mainly of those who find other things more interesting and less fattening, and so they do it as seldom as possible. Today there is an Annual Culinary Olympics, with hundreds of cooks from many countries ardently competing. But we who hate to cook have had our own Olympics for years, seeing who can get out of the kitchen the fastest and stay out the longest." - Peg Bracken”

“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.”

“Following the food from market to the kitchen made a huge difference. to this day, this is how I cook.”

“Huh - Why is Max in the kitchen?"Dr.Martinez: "We're cooking."Gazzy: "She's just keeping you company, right?"Dr.Martinez: "No, she's cooking."Nudge: "Cooking...food?"Max: "Yes, I'm cooking food, and it's great, and you're going to eat it, you twerps!”