“in the abstract art of cooking,ingredients trump appliances,passion supersedes expertise,creativity triumphs over technique,spontaneity inspires invention,and wine makes even the worst culinary disaster taste delicious.”

“Raw ingredients trump recipes every time; farmers and ranchers who coax the best from the earth can make any of us appear to be a great cook.”

“You pull a book from the shelf and there was an invention... Almost like cooking, I thought sleepily. Instead of heat transforming the ingredients, there's pure invention, the spark, the hidden element. What resulted was more than the sum of parts... At one level it was obvious enough how these separarte parts were tipped in and deployed. The mystery was in how they were blended into somthing cohesive and plausible, how the ingredients were cooked into something so delicious. As my thought scattered and I drifted toward the borders of oblivion, I thought I almost understood how it was done.”

“Miss Marva's driving technique was at best creative, and at worst she was an accident waiting to happen.”

“The worst gift I was given is when I got out of rehab that Christmas; a bottle of wine. It was delicious.”

“A culinary triumph: the ingenious use of food as an offensive weapon.”