Fun Quotes and Trivia
FOODIE QUOTES
“Everything ends this way in France - everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, funerals, swindlings, diplomatic affairs - everything is a pretext for a good dinner.”
- Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) French dramatist, screenwriter
“I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm.” - Robert Farrar Capon, Episcopal priest; seminary dean; professor of theology, Greek, and cooking; food writer for the New York Times
“Skinny cooks can’t be trusted.” - American proverb
“He was a bold man who first swallowed an oyster.” - James I
“Kissing don’t last: cookery do.” - George Meredith, English novelist and poet
“All you see, I owe to spaghetti.” - Sophia Loren
“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” - Harriet Van Horne, syndicated columnist
“There is no such thing as a pretty good omelette.” - French proverb
“Only a fool argues with a skunk, a mule or a cook.” - cowboy saying
“Don’t take a butcher’s advice on how to cook meat. If he knew, he’d be a chef.” - Andy Rooney
“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.” - Julia Child
“A good meal makes a man feel more charitable toward the whole world than any sermon.” - Arthur Pendenys (1865-1946)
“‘C’ is for cookie, it’s good enough for me; oh cookie cookie cookie starts with ‘C.’” - Cookie Monster
“The alimentary canal is 32 feet long. You control only the first 3 inches of it. Control it well.” - Kin Hubbard, early 20th-century cartoonist and journalist
“I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well made.” - James Bond, “Casino Royale”
“My mother’s menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.” - Buddy Hackett
“Novelle cuisine, roughly translated, means: I can’t believe I paid $96 and I’m still hungry.” - Mike Kalin
“I’m at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I’ve just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.” - Rodney Dangerfield
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” - Virginia Woolf
“We never repent of having eaten too little.” - Thomas Jefferson
“Bachelor’s food: bread and cheese, and kisses.” - Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
“The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” - Benjamin Mays, PhD, education leader, minister, author
“Happy and successful cooking doesn’t rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate, and needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life.” - Georges Blanc, Ma Cuisine des Saisons
“A smiling face is half the meal.” - Latvian proverb
“You first parents of the human race, who ruined yourselves for an apple…what might you have done for a truffled turkey?” - Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1775-1826), French lawyer, magistrate and politican who wrote Physiologie du Gout (The Physiology of Taste)
“And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.” - William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.” - Proverbs 31:6
“Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin.” - P.G, Wodehouse (1881-1975), English novelist
“When I think of Indonesia - a country on the equator with 180 million people, a median age of 18, and a Muslim ban on alcohol - I feel I know what heaven looks like.” - Coca Cola official
“An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.” - Dylan Thomas, Welsh author and poet
“Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish.” - Henry Miller, American writer (1891-1980)
“Another peculiarity of this country is the absence of napkins, even in the homes of the wealthy. Napkins, as a rule, are never used and one has to wipe one’s mouth on the tablecloth, which in consequence suffers in appearance.” - Baron Louis de Closen (on American eating habits, 1780)
“Never eat more than you can lift.” - Miss Piggy
*
*
FUN TRIVIA
Intimate dinner, anyone?
Beijing’s Peking Duck Restaurant, run by the same family for five generations, has a seating capacity of 9,000 – nearly half the seating capacity of the entire MCI Center. No table is left unoccupied for more than a few minutes.
There is actually a term for the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth: “arachibutyrophobia.” Now try saying that with peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth.
Hands off my chocolate stash, buddy.
- The Swiss lead the world in chocolate consumption per capita – roughly 22 lbs of chocolate per person per year. Americans eat roughly 10 lbs of chocolate per person per year.
- Chocolate was first manufactured in the U.S. in 1765 by the John Harmon Company.
- The country that produces the most cocoa? Africa.
- Dark chocolate may lower risk of heart disease for the same reason touted for red wine: each contain substantial amounts of flavonoid phenolics.
- Chocolate is 20% protein, 40% carbohydrate, and 40% fat.
- Cocoa beans were once used as currency in Mexico (used extensively in trade by native Indians).
There actually was a “Chef Boyardee,” an Italian immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1914 when he was 17 years old. (The Italian spelling of his name is actually “Boiardi.”) After working at New York’s Plaza Hotel, Boiardi moved to Cleveland, where customers asked for bottles of his spaghetti sauces to eat at home. Boiardi obliged, added cheeses and pasta to the sauces, and an industry was born. Next time you’re in the grocery and see cans of that now-slimy canned pasta, look for the Chef Boyardee picture – that’s him.
The National Soft Drink Association writes that soft drinks now account for nearly 30% of Americans’ beverage consumption. That is equivalent to more than 576 12-ounce servings per year, translating into more than 4,300 teaspoons of sugar. Now that’s just gross.