“I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start.”

“Instead of going out to dinner, buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy, it's more important to make yourself feel good.”

“The thing about all my food is that everything is a remembered flavor. Maybe it's something I had as a child or maybe it's something I had in Milan, but I want it to taste better than you ever thou...”

“I love to take something ordinary and make it really special.”

“If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken.”

“I absolutely adore Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I insist on making myself.”

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”

“One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / th...”

“It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.”

“I am the perfect version of me.”

“But if you tame me, then weshall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, Ishall be unique in all the world.”

“I don't want the world to keep turning without me on it.”

“What is it about human nature that when we are touched in a way that is life changing we want to share the experience with others. I have to think it is about bringing gifts from spirit back to the...”

“Anthropocentric as [the gardener] may be, he recognizes that he is dependent for his health and survival on many other forms of life, so he is careful to take their interests into account in whatev...”

“In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens -- a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree -- the act of leaving parts of th...”