LAURIE COLWIN

I come from a coffee-loving family, and you can always tell when my sister and I have been around, because both of us collect all the dead coffee from everyone's morning cup, pour it over ice, and drink it. This is a disgusting habit.

When it comes to cakes and puddings, savouries, bread and tea cakes, the English cannot be surpassed.

It is my opinion that Norman Rockwell and his ilk have done more to make already anxious people feel guilty than anyone else.

I myself am not particularly interested in restaurant cooking. I don't really want to learn how to make a napoleon. I'd much rather learn how to make a very good lemon cake, which you can make in your own home. I like plain, old-fashioned home food.

The sharing of food is the basis of social life.

I love to eat out, but even more, I love to eat in.

It is not just the Great Works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.

The best way to feel at ease in the kitchen is to learn at someone's knee.

The thing about homebodies is that they can usually be found at home. I usually am, and I like to feed people.

Provision as much pure and organic food as you can, and let the rest go by.

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, and the wisdom of cookbook writers.

I am not a fancy cook or an ambitious cook. I am a plain old cook.

We know that without food we would die. Without fellowship, life is not worth living.

One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.

Somehow or other, I always end up in a kitchen feeding a crowd.

My idea of a good time abroad is to visit someone's house and hang out, poking into their cupboards if they will let me.

The table is a meeting place, a gathering ground, the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction. A person cooking is a person giving: Even the simplest food is a gift.

The fact is that modern life has deprived us of life's one great luxury: time.

There is nothing like roast chicken. It is helpful and agreeable, the perfect dish no matter what the circumstances. Elegant or homey, a dish for a dinner party or a family supper, it will not let you down.

Unlike some people who love to go out, I love to stay home.

When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally. I fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold. It was cheap and filling and was delicious in all manner of strange combinations. If any was left over, I ate it cold the next day on bread.

Certainly, cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest.

Cooking is like love. You don't have to be particularly beautiful or very glamorous, or even very exciting to fall in love. You just have to be interested in it. It's the same thing with food.

As everyone knows, there is only one way to fry chicken correctly. Unfortunately, most people think their method is best, but most people are wrong. Mine is the only right way, and on this subject I feel almost evangelical.

Cooking is like anything else: some people have an inborn talent for it. Some become expert by practicing, and some learn from books.