“When you're cooking with food as alive as this -- these gorgeous and semigorgeous fruits and leaves and flesh -- you're in no danger of mistaking it for a commodity, or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener ... this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on each other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight.”

“Indigenous foods die when no one learns to cook them.”

“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!”

“...the most crucial thing to keep in mind when you cook is the people who are going to eat your food - their tastes, their desires, their likes and dislikes, what will satisfy them, what will move them, what will make them want it again.”

“Our most important job as vegetable gardeners is to feed and sustain soil life, often called the soil food web, beginning with the microbes. If we do this, our plants will thrive, we’ll grow nutritious, healthy food, and our soil conditions will get better each year. This is what is meant by the adage ”Feed the soil not the plants.”

“The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.”