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As For The House, It Is Scrubbed To The Tiniest Mousehole Before Passover, To Avoid Such Dangers As Even A Forgotten Cake Crumb Might Cause. Passover Dishes Are Probably The Most Interesting Of Any In The Jewish Cuisine Because Of The Lack Of Leaven And The Resulting Challenge To Fine Cooks.... Everything Is Doubly Rich, As If To Compensate For The Lack Of Leaven... [w]oes Are Forgotten In The Pleasures Of The Table, For If The Mosaic Laws Are Rightly Followed, No Man Need Fear True Poison In His Belly, But Only The Results Of His Own Gluttony.

-M. F. K. Fisher

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As For The House,

M. F. K. Fisher

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As For The House, It Is Scrubbed To The Tiniest Mousehole Before Passover, To Avoid Such Dangers As Even A Forgotten Cake Crumb Might Cause. Passover Dishes Are Probably The Most Interesting Of Any In The Jewish Cuisine Because Of The Lack Of Leaven And The Resulting Challenge To Fine Cooks.... Everything Is Doubly Rich, As If To Compensate For The Lack Of Leaven... [w]oes Are Forgotten In The Pleasures Of The Table, For If The Mosaic Laws Are Rightly Followed, No Man Need Fear True Poison In His Belly, But Only The Results Of His Own Gluttony.

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Children And Old People And The Parents In Between Should Be Able To Live Together, In Order To Learn How To Die With Grace, Together. And I Fear That This Is Purely Utopian Fantasy.

At Present, I Myself Do Not Know Of Any Local Witches Or Warlocks, But There Are Several People Who Seem To Have An Uncanny Power Over Food.

Too Few Of Us, Perhaps, Feel That Breaking Of Bread, The Sharing Of Salt, The Common Dipping Into One Bowl, Mean More Than Satisfaction Of A Need. We Make Such Primal Things As Casual As Tunes Heard Over A Radio, Forgetting The Mystery And Strength In Both.

Probably No Strychnine Has Sent As Many Husbands Into Their Graves As Mealtime Scolding Has, And Nothing Has Driven More Men Into The Arms Of Other Women As The Sound Of A Shrill Whine At Table.

Digestion Is One Of The Most Delicately Balanced Of All Human And Perhaps Angelic Functions.

I Wrote Like A Junkie. I Had To Have My Daily Fix.

I Believe That One Of The Most Dignified Ways We Are Capable Of, To Assert And Then Reassert Our Dignity In The Face Of Poverty And War's Fears And Pains, Is To Nourish Ourselves With All Possible Skill, Delicacy, And Ever-increasing Enjoyment.

In Spite Of My Conviction That A Group Of Deliberately Assembled Relatives Can Be One Of The Dullest, If Not Most Dangerous, Gatherings In The World, I Am Smugly Foolhardly Enough To Have Invited All My Available Family, More Than Once, To Dine With Me.

Probably The Most Satisfying Soup In The World For People Who Are Hungry, As Well As For Those Who Are Tired Or Worried Or Cross Or In Debt Or In A Moderate Amount Of Pain Or In Love Or In Robust Health Or In Any Kind Of Business Huggermuggery, Is Minestrone.

Brioches Are A Light, Pale Yellow, Faintly Sweet Kind Of Muffin With A Characteristic Blob On Top, Rather Like A Mushroom Just Pushing Crookedly Through The Ground. Once Eaten In Paris, They Never Taste As Good Anywhere Else.

...i Prefer Not To Have Among My Guests Two People Or More, Of Any Sex, Who Are In The First Wild Tremours Of Love. It Is Better To Invite Them After Their New Passion Has Settled, Has Solidified Into A Quieter Reciprocity Of Emotions. (it Is Also A Waste Of Good Food, To Serve It To New Lovers.)

I Sat In The Gradually Chilling Room, Thinking Of My Whole Past The Way A Drowning Man Is Supposed To, And It Seemed Part Of The Present, Part Of The Gray Cold And The Beggar Woman Without A Face And The Moulting Birds Frozen To Their Own Filth In The Orangerie. I Know Now I Was In The Throes Of Some Small Glandular Crisis, A Sublimated Bilious Attack, A Flick From The Whip Of Melancholia, But Then It Was Terrifying...nameless...

I Honestly Believe That Everything I Know About The Writing Of Non-fiction (or Writing) Could Be Engraved On The Head Of A Pin With A Garden Hoe.

Old Age Is More Bearable If It Can Be Helped By An Early Acceptance Of Being Loved And Of Loving.

... Most Bereaved Souls Crave Nourishment More Tangible Than Prayers: They Want A Steak. What Is More, They Need A Steak. Preferably They Need It Rare, Grilled, Heavily Salted, For That Way It Is Most Easily Digested, And Most Quickly Turned Into The Glandular Whip Their Tired Adrenals Cry For.

A Potato Is A Poor Thing, Poorly Treated. More Often Than Not It Is Cooked In So Unthinking And Ignorant A Manner As To Make One Feel That It Has Never Before Been Encountered In The Kitchen.

The Smell Of Good Bread Baking, Like The Sound Of Lightly Flowing Water, Is Indescribable In Its Evocation Of Innocence And Delight

Family Dinners Are More Often Than Not An Ordeal Of Nervous Indigestion, Preceded By Hidden Resentment And Ennui And Accompanied By Psychosomatic Jitters.

I Am More Modest Now, But I Still Think That One Of The Pleasantest Of All Emotions Is To Know That I, I With My Brain And My Hands, Have Nourished My Beloved Few, That I Have Concocted A Stew Or A Story, A Rarity Or A Plain Dish, To Sustain Them Truly Against The Hungers Of The World.

Sharing Our Meals Should Be A Joyful And A Trustful Act, Rather Than The Cursory Fulfillment Of Our Social Obligations.

Cheese Has Always Been A Food That Both Sophisticated And Simple Humans Love.

An Oyster Leads A Dreadful But Exciting Life.

In Spite Of All The Talk And Study About Our Next Years, All The Silent Ponderings About What Lies Within Them...it Seems Plain To Us That Many Things Are Wrong In The Present Ones That Can Be, Must Be, Changed. Our Texture Of Belief Has Great Holes In It. Our Pattern Lacks Pieces.

One Martini Is Just Right. Two Martinis Are Too Many. Three Martinis Are Never Enough.

There Are Many People Like Me Who Believe Firmly, If Somewhat Incoherently, That Pockets On This Planet Are Filled With What Humans Have Left Behind Them, Both Good And Evil, And That Any Such Spiritual Accumulation Can Stay There Forever, Past Definition Of Such A Stern Word.

. . . Gastronomical Perfection Can Be Reached In These Combinations: One Person Dining Alone, Usually Upon A Couch Or A Hill Side; Two People, Of No Matter What Sex Or Age, Dining In A Good Restaurant; Six People . . . Dining In A Good Home.

Dictionaries Are Always Fun, But Not Always Reassuring.

I Can No More Think Of My Own Life Without Thinking Of Wine And Wines And Where They Grew For Me And Why I Drank Them When I Did And Why I Picked The Grapes And Where I Opened The Oldest Procurable Bottles, And All That, Than I Can Remember Living Before I Breathed.

[bachelors'] Approach To Gastronomy Is Basically Sexual, Since Few Of Them Under Seventy-nine Will Bother To Produce A Good Meal Unless It Is For A Pretty Woman.

Write One Good Clean Sentence And Put A Period At The End Of It. Then Write Another One.

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It Is Puzzling To Me That Otherwise Sensitive People Develop A Real Docility About The Obvious Necessity Of Eating, At Least Once A Day, In Order To Stay Alive. Often They Lose Their Primal Enjoyment Of Flavors And Odors And Textures To The Point Of Complete Unawareness. And If Ever They Question This Progressive Numbing-off, They Shrug Helplessly In The Face Of Mediocrity Everywhere. Bit By Bit, Hour By Hour, They Say, We Are Being Forced To Accept The Not-so-good As The Best, Since There Is Little That Is Even Good To Compare It With.

On The Other Hand, A Flaccid, Moping, Debauched Mollusc, Tired From Too Much Love And Loose-nerved From General World Conditions, Can Be A Shameful Thing Served Raw Upon The Shell.

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Almost Every Person Has Something Secret He Likes To Eat.

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There Is A Mistaken Idea, Ancient But Still With Us, That An Overdose Of Anything From Fornication To Hot Chocolate Will Teach Restraint By The Very Results Of Its Abuse.

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Most Bereaved Souls Crave Nourishment More Tangible Than Prayers: They Want A Steak.

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Wine And Cheese Are Ageless Companions, Like Aspirin And Aches, Or June And Moon, Or Good People And Noble Ventures.

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If Time, So Fleeting, Must Like Humans Die, Let It Be Filled With Good Food And Good Talk, And Then Embalmed In The Perfumes Of Conviviality.

Gastronomy Is And Always Has Been Connected With Its Sister Art Of Love.

A Writing Cook And A Cooking Writer Must Be Bold At The Desk As Well As The Stove.

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I Wrote From The Time I Was Four. It Was My Way Of Screaming And Yelling, The Primal Scream. I Wrote Like A Junkie, I Had To Have My Daily Fix.

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Hunger Is More Than A Problem Of Belly And Guts, And ... The Satisfying Of It Can And Must And Does Nourish The Spirit As Well As The Body.

The Things Men Come To Eat When They Are Alone Are, I Suppose, Not Much Stranger Than The Men Themselves.... A Writer Years Ago Told Me Of Living For Five Months On Hen Mash.

It Is Impossible To Think Of Any Good Meal, No Matter How Plain Or Elegant, Without Soup Or Bread In It

Or You Can Broil The Meat, Fry The Onions, Stew The Garlic In The Red Wine...and Ask Me To Supper. I'll Not Care, Really, Even If Your Nose Is A Little Shiny, So Long As You Are Self-possessed And Sure That Wolf Or No Wolf, Your Mind Is Your Own And Your Heart Is Another's And Therefore In The Right Place.

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I Live With Carpe Diem Engraved On My Heart.

In America We Eat, Collectively, With A Glum Urge For Food To Fill Us. We Are Ignorant Of Flavour. We Are As A Nation Taste-blind.

I Cannot Count The Good People I Know Who To My Mind Would Be Even Better If They Bent Their Spirits To The Study Of Their Own Hungers.

It Was There [dijon], I Now Understand, That I Started To Grow Up, To Study, To Make Love, To Eat And Drink, To Be Me And Not What I Was Expected To Be. It Was There That I Learned It Is Blessed To Receive, As Well As That Every Human Being, No Matter How Base, Is Worthy Of My Respect And Even My Envy Because He Knows Something That I May Never Be Old Or Wise Or Kind Or Tender Enough To Know.

Life Is Hard, We Say. An Oyster's Life Is Worse. She Lives Motionless, Soundless, Her Own Cold Ugly Shape Her Only Dissipation.

I Like Old People When They Have Aged Well. And Old Houses With An Accumulation Of Sweet Honest Living In Them Are Good. And The Timelessness That Only The Passing Of Time Itself Can Give To Objects Both Inside And Outside The Spirit Is A Continuing Reassurance.

For Me, A Plain Baked Potato Is The Most Delicious One....it Is Soothing And Enough.

A Complete Lack Of Caution Is Perhaps One Of The True Signs Of A Real Gourmet: He Has No Need For It, Being Filled As He Is With A God-given And Intelligently Self-cultivated Sense Of Gastronomical Freedom.

Cooks Must Feed Their Egos As Well As Their Customers.

Good Wine, Well Drunk, Can Lend Majesty To The Human Spirit.

. . . Word-sniffing . . . Is An Addiction, Like Glue -- Or Snow -- Sniffing In A Somewhat Less Destructive Way, Physically If Not Economically. . . . As An Addict, I Am Almost Guiltily Interested In Converts To My Own Illness . . .

All Men Are Hungry. They Always Have Been. They Must Eat, And When They Deny Themselves The Pleasures Of Carrying Out That Need, They Are Cutting Off Part Of Their Possible Fullness, Their Natural Realization Of Life, Whether They Are Rich Or Poor.

When I Write Of Hunger, I Am Really Writing About Love And The Hunger For It, And Warmth And The Love Of It And It Is All One.

As For The House, It Is Scrubbed To The Tiniest Mousehole Before Passover, To Avoid Such Dangers As Even A Forgotten Cake Crumb Might Cause. Passover Dishes Are Probably The Most Interesting Of Any In The Jewish Cuisine Because Of The Lack Of Leaven And The Resulting Challenge To Fine Cooks.... Everything Is Doubly Rich, As If To Compensate For The Lack Of Leaven... [w]oes Are Forgotten In The Pleasures Of The Table, For If The Mosaic Laws Are Rightly Followed, No Man Need Fear True Poison In His Belly, But Only The Results Of His Own Gluttony.

There's A Communion Of More Than Our Bodies When Bread Is Broken And Wine Drunk.

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Sharing Food With Another Human Being Is An Intimate Act That Should Not Be Indulged In Lightly.

When Shall We Live If Not Now?

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