Family Cooking Quotes & Sayings

When I came back from Pakistan, I wanted to take computer classes nearby. I asked my brother. I was in my home, cooking for my family, and all our relatives and guests. But I said, "I want to live my life as a woman, but I want to study." But, he told me, "Just study at home, you don't need to go out." He said, "If you go to the courses, what will our relatives say? They will lose respect for us." They told me, "We know you're feeling different, but we cannot do anything about it." — Malina Suliman

Cooking is not about being the best or most perfect cook, but rather it is about sharing the table with family and friends. — Skye Gyngell

For me, cooking is very connected to my family and friends. — Trisha Yearwood

I do all the cooking in our family. I'm a utilitarian cook, rather than an adventurous one - I only have about 15 recipes in my repertoire that I rotate - but I love being able to go down to the river and catch a 30 lb. salmon, then grill it on the barbecue. — Patrick Duffy

My family likes to make fun of me, indicating that being able to cook is part of what makes a woman a woman. I disagree. Getting my period makes me a woman. Cooking just makes me bored. — Sarah Colonna

In growing up in Seattle, I don't know a single family that didn't barbecue or cook on the weekends and make its own kind of simple, pared-down, what I call Pacific Northwest cooking. — Mario Batali

Puerto Rican culture is very lively; very lively people; very warm people; and the food is really great. We're all about cooking a lot of food and having family around, we're kind of loud. It's that sort of vibe and it's great. — David Lambert

I'm the joke of the family with cooking because I've never done it - primarily because I've been surrounded by people who are so good at it. Mum's brilliant. Boyfriends have always been good at it. I'm waiting for my inner chef to be released. — Emilia Fox

If I were to tell you that I'm the one who does all the cooking, you'd interpret it as me trying to be some kind of role model. And if I were to say that my husband does all the cooking, you'd say: "Ah, so that's how it is with family ministers." — Kristina Schroder

That time period is clearly a season of holidays. A holiday season. No matter what faith you belong to or what tradition you follow, everyone is partying. You're shopping, you're cooking, you're getting together with family, you're eating food that's bad for you, you're eating more food that's bad for you, and of course you're eating food that's bad for you. — Jim Gaffigan

There is really a je ne sais quoi about turkey cooking - the air of festivity, the family squabbles, the constant basting - that does not apply to the turkey breast, which is, really, a convenience of food ... A turkey without seasonal angst is like a baseball game without a national anthem, a winter without snow, a birthday party without candles. — Laurie Colwin

It is important to view a recipe book as one that you use daily and what we in our family call "a living book" - a book that you use all the time, not just read once and discard on the shelf. It is in a sense a spell book, a book of magical enchantments, to be consulted, used and altered as needed. — The Silver Elves

I think my family, especially having three teenage sons, keeps my cooking at home grounded and very approachable. I'm definitely not making spumas in my kitchen, that's for sure! — Rick Tramonto

Today's kitchen is all about a well-planned space that makes cooking a completely interactive experience among family and friends. — Candice Olson

When men come home, it is more about being part of the family, being with the children, spending more time with the children, being a strong role model. But I think going as far as cooking and putting the apron on, that takes away the masculinity, and I would miss that. — Penny Lancaster

Food imaginatively and lovingly prepared, and eaten in good company, warms the being with something more than the mere intake of calories. I cannot conceive of cooking for friends or family, under reasonable conditions, as being a chore. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that. — Emeril Lagasse

Once in a while we burned a wok trying to make our churan, and Jima, Bhanu, or another matriarch would banish us from the kitchen. "You should've told us," they'd say. "We would've helped you." You're not getting it, Neela and I thought. This is our party and you're not invited. To this day, the elder women of my household in Chennai still regard Neela or me with suspicion whenever we enter the kitchen to make anything other than tea. No matter that I host a cooking show or that Neela has raised two healthy daughters who clearly haven't starved or been disfigured by a kitchen accident. — Padma Lakshmi

My grandmother was a typical farm-family mother. She would regularly prepare dinner for thirty people, and that meant something was always cooking in the kitchen. All of my grandmother's recipes went back to her grandmother. — Willard Scott

It already smells good," he said, pointing toward the stove. "It smells ... quiet." He looked at her.
"Quiet? Could something smell quiet" She was thinking about the phrase, asking herself. He was right. After the pork chops and steaks and roasts she cooked for the family, this was quiet cooking. No violence involved anywhere down the food chain, except maybe for pulling up the vegetables. The stew cooked quietly and smelled quiet. — Robert James Waller

I love cooking for myself and cooking for my family. — Al Roker

Cooking (from scratch) is the single most important thing we could do as a family to improve our health and general well-being. — Michael Pollan

I married a Florentine. We bought a house, had a family, and after a decade in our little Hollywood nest, we said, 'Let's go to Tuscany.' Tell God you can't make him laugh, but the next thing I know, my cooking show has become a hit, and they're asking for more seasons, and they want it to be in the States. — Debi Mazar

I'm not very domestic. For years my family thought mold was a frosting. — Martha Bolton

I love spending time with my friends and family. The simplest things in life give me the most pleasure: cooking a good meal, enjoying my friends. — Cindy Morgan

I toured for about 2 1/2 years on twentythree and then I took about a year off. I really just spent some good quality time by myself at my house, cooking, watching movies, hanging with my friends, and family. I just really needed a chance to get away from the music for a minute and decompress. — Tristan Prettyman

There's just so much love that goes into home cooking, and I think it will really help the American family overall. I'm hoping to maybe get a cookbook out one day because I've got some great family recipes. — Ming-Na Wen

Gran follows recipes by looking at picture - to the eye, delicious; to the tongue, boiled socks. Makes you wanna cry really. — Simon Cheshire

What is word for good together living? Nobody shits in the well?"
I laughed. "Civilization?"
He nodded, splaying his fingers: amusement. "Yes," he said. "Speaking with hands is civilization."
"But smiling is natural," I protested. "Everyone smiles."
"Natural is not civilization," Tempi said. "Cooking meat is civilization. Washing off stink is civilization."
"So in Ademre you always smile with hands?" I wished I knew the gesture for dismay.
"No. Smiling with face good with family. Good with some friend."
"Why only family?"
Tempi repeated his thumb-on-collarbone gesture again. "When you make this." He pressed his palm to the side of his face and blew air into it, making a great flatulent noise. "That is natural, but you do not make it near others. Rude. With family ... " He shrugged. Amusement. " ... civilization not important. More natural with family. — Patrick Rothfuss

It's promising and seductive, that huge Italian family, sitting around the dinner table, surrounded by olive trees. But it's not my family and I am not their family, and no amount of birthing sons, and cooking dinner and raking leaves or planting the gardens or paying for the plane tickets is going to change that. If I don't come back in eleven months, I will not be missed, and no one will write me or call me to acknowledge my absence. Which is not an accusation, just a small truth about clan and bloodline. — Gabrielle Hamilton

The person who decides what shall be the food and drink of a family, and the modes of its preparation, is the one who decides, to a greater or less extent, what shall be the health of that family. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It's one thing to execute dishes on your own time for family and friends, but quite another to perform and be judged in a competition. And that's what cooking in a high profile restaurant is. It's a competition. You're up against every other three-star restaurant in your city, and if you want to stay in business, you'd better deliver. — Joe Bastianich

Growing up around Amish farmland, I enjoyed the opportunity to witness firsthand their love of family, of the domestic arts - sewing, quilting, cooking, baking - as well as seeing them live out their tradition of faith in such a unique way. — Beverly Lewis

In the right circumstances, I'm a big fan of eating alone. Often, on a Sunday evening, I go to a yoga class whose charm is largely that it gives me an alibi to avoid cooking family supper for once. I return to have boiled eggs and soldiers in silence with a book. Bliss. — Bee Wilson

I won't say my nutrition is perfect. If I'm at a restaurant and there's fresh pasta on the menu, I'm going to order it. At home, though, I avoid grains and do a lot of the cooking to control what our family eats. — Gabrielle Reece

Many of the silliest ambiguities in the Internet memes come from newspaper headlines and magazine tag lines precisely because they have been stripped of all punctuation. Two of my favorites are MAN EATING PIRANHA MISTAKENLY SOLD AS PET FISH and RACHAEL RAY FINDS INSPIRATION IN COOKING HER FAMILY AND HER DOG. The first is missing the hyphen that bolts together the pieces of the compound word that was supposed to remind readers of the problem with piranhas, man-eating. The second is missing the commas that delimit the phrases making up the list of inspirations: cooking, her family, and her dog. — Steven Pinker

There are many memories. but I'll tell you the one I like to think of best of all. It's just a homely everyday thing, but to me it is the happiest of them all. It is evening time here in the old house and the supper is cooking and the table is set for the whole family. It hurts a mother, Laura, when the plates begin to be taken away one by one. First there are seven and then six and then five...and on down to a single plate. So I like to think of the table set for the whole family at supper time. The robins are singing in the cottonwoods and the late afternoon sun is shining across the floor... The children are playing out in the yard. I can hear their voices and happy laughter. There isn't much to that memory is there? Out of a lifetime of experiences you would hardly expect that to be the one I would choose as the happiest, would you? But it is. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for
so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house? — Ursula K. Le Guin

It's true that while instructors and schools offer courses in everything from cooking and how to wear a kimono to yoga and Zen meditation, you'll be hard-pressed to find classes on how to tidy. The general assumption, in Japan at least, is that tidying doesn't need to be taught but rather is picked up naturally. Cooking skills and recipes are passed down as family traditions from grandmother to mother to daughter, yet one never hears of anyone passing on the family secrets of tidying, even within the same household. — Marie Kondo

You probably don't think twice about going into your kitchen and turning a few knobs to prepare a meal for yourself and your family on an electric or gas range. But for nearly 3 billion people in developing countries who depend on solid fuels to cook their food, the simple act of cooking results in 4 million premature deaths every year from exposure to toxic smoke. — Kathy Calvin

There are some things in life that shouldn't be given so much importance, if they don't change what is essential. — Laura Esquivel

Would it really be so bad if you slowed your life down even a teensy bit? If you took charge of the ingredients of your food instead of letting corporations stuff you and your family, like baby birds, full of sugar, corn products, chemicals, and meat from really, really unhappy animals? — Catherine Friend

Americans, more than any other culture on earth, are cookbook cooks; we learn to make our meals not from any oral tradition, but from a text. The just-wed cook brings to the new household no carefully copied collection of the family's cherished recipes, but a spanking new edition of 'Fannie Farmer' or 'The Joy of Cooking'. — John Thorne

In fact, people who posses not magic at all can instill their home-cooked meals with love and security and health, transforming ingredients and bringing disparate people together as family and friends. There's a reason that when opening one's home to guests, the first thing you do is offer food and drink. Cooking is a kind of everyday magic. — Juliet Blackwell

Several hundred years ago, the only thing that slave families had was cooking and their family meals. — George Tillman Jr.

Cooking for my family is always a pleasure when I'm able to do it. My favorite thing to make is really whatever my kids ask for on any given day. It's more about being with them and doing something together. — Joe Bastianich

Spending more time with friends and family costs nothing. Nor does walking, cooking, meditating, making love, reading or eating dinner at the table instead of in front of the television. Simply resisting the urge to hurry is free. — Carl Honore

I was not such a great student, .. So, when I graduated high school, I went to work cooking. I cooked a little at home, but back then, cooking wasn't really a profession that you aspired to, unless your family was in the business. I looked at it as a job. My first job was at Joe Allen's, and I remember there was a photo over the bar of the Triple Dead Heat from the 1944 Carter Handicap. — Bobby Flay

I beg of you, you who could and should be bearing and rearing a family: Wives, come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from the factory, the cafe. No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother
cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one's precious husband and children. Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and, unembarrassed, help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously await. — Spencer W. Kimball

You're shopping, you're cooking, you're getting together with family, you're eating food that's bad for you, you're eating more food that's bad for you, and of course you're eating food that's bad for you. Holidays are also an opportunity for — Jim Gaffigan

A good kitchen should be sufficiently remote from the principal apartments of the house, that the members, visitors, or guests of the family, may not perceive the odour incident to cooking, or hear the noise of culinary operations. — Isabella Beeton

In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the apples into tiny bowls, tossed in some dried fruit and sprinkled them with crumble topping. Delicious, they said that night, scraping the bowls so clean they hardly needed to go in the dishwasher. The fools. — Helen Brown

My dad loves to cook. I'm half Thai, and growing up, that's all we ate in my house. My dad was very big on the idea that dinnertime and cooking time was also family time. — Brenda Song

At Christmas, individuals are apportioned their roles in the family script - you're either the funny one or the sensitive one; or you either do the cooking or the washing up. And those roles aren't easy to change. — Tom Hiddleston

My husband is the chef of the family; he's a brilliant cook. Actually, it makes you quite lazy when you have somebody that's so good at cooking under the same roof. It's all beans or spaghetti when I'm left to run it. — Keeley Hawes

At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the children, sending money to my sister or kissing Henry's tiny head as he slept in the nursery before I left. I thought of every detail and afterwards I felt better. Hellfire and brimstone have never appealed to me and I admit I become easily confused thinking of right and wrong. But I do understand kindness. — Sara Sheridan

I think we all live in a world that is so fast-paced, it's threatening and absolutely saturated with change and novelty and insecurity. Therefore, the ritual of cooking and feeding my family and friends, whoever drops in, is what makes me feel that I'm in a universe that is contained. — Nigella Lawson

You should feel good about making your home nicer for your family and your friends. You should feel great about cooking a good dinner and making a dress for a granddaughter, creating a beautiful birthday party. It's all part of life. — Martha Stewart

One of your three mothers did the cooking? How traditional,Naomi said with a smirk. — James S.A. Corey

Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we have made it; and while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateur's work. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Work is so much fun that it doesn't really seem like downtime when I'm not. But cooking, spending time with my family, friends and dog are what I'm usually doing when I'm not working on something. — Bailee Madison

I've got to be able to get my time off whether it's just enjoying my house or the peace and quiet of my family and being there and cooking for them. I love doing that. I also love doing leisure things. I ride horses. I love to shop. I love to drive! — LisaRaye McCoy-Misick

Life in New Orleans is all about making the present--this moment, right now--as pleasant as possible. So New Orleanians, by and large, aren't tortured by the frenzy to achieve, acquire, and manage the unmanageable future. Their days are built around the things that other Americans have pushed out of their lives by incessant work: art, music, elaborate cooking, and--most of all--plenty of relaxed time with family and friends. Their jobs are really just the things they do to earn a little money; they're not the organiing principle of life. While this isn't a worldview particularly conducive to getting things done, getting things done isn't the most important thing in New Orleans. Living life is. Once you've tasted that, and especially if it's how you grew up, life everywhere else feels thin indeed. — Dan Baum

I realize that the times I have known some sort of inner peace in my life, those have always been times when I focused on helping others more than myself ... babysitting, cooking dinner for my family, cleaning up the house, talking to a friend on the phone and just listening to them vent about something or other without offering an opinion or judging. Those have been the moments when I get to stop obsessing about myself and really feel a sense of liberation. 'Freedom from the bondage of self ... — Nic Sheff

A family of four needs to transport around 200 pounds of water each and every day to meet its most minimal drinking, cooking, and cleaning needs. To manage such an impossible weight, two trips to the well each day by mother and children are not uncommon. Carrying water for basic subsistence devours school time for children and places a dispiriting burden on the enterprising will of parents to struggle out of their material privation. That the water carrying falls traditionally on women adds the insult of gender inequity to the tragedy. — Steven Solomon

...one family's most beloved recipes can become a delicious cornerstone as humanity builds a more pluralistic world where the best pieces of every culture can be enjoyed. — Karen Anderson

Lucy paused, hands full of green beans, her memory flashing back to the giant pots of crawfish on the stove. Her Mama's green eyes would squint into the steam, hair pulled back, a frown of concentration on her face. The salted water was flavored and ready to receive the "mudbugs" out of their burlap sacks. Other than an onion or maybe an ear of corn, if it wasn't alive when you threw it in, then it shouldn't be in the pot, she'd say. Did her Mama mind that Lucy didn't cook those old family recipes? Was she turning her back on her culinary heritage as surely as Paulette was?
She snapped the ends of the beans faster, glancing at the clock. This whole dinner was breaking her Mama's cardinal rule: don't hurry. She thought if a cook was in a hurry, you might as well just make a sandwich and go on your way. — Mary Jane Hathaway

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States entered into World War II to protect our way of life and to help liberate those who had fallen under the Axis occupation. The country rallied to produce one of the largest war efforts in history. Young men volunteered to join the Armed Forces, while others were drafted. Women went to work in factories and took military jobs. Everyone collected their used cooking grease and metals to be used for munitions. They rationed gas and groceries. Factories now were producing airplanes, weapons, and military vehicles. They all wanted to do their part. And they did, turning America into a war machine. The nation was in full support to help our boys win the war and come home quickly.
Grandpa wanted to do his part too. — Kara Martinelli

For me, the start of a party only means a change from the tangible, boring, but satisfactory work of cooking, cleaning, and decorating to the unpredictable and far more difficult task of keeping several hundred neighbors and family members from injuring each other or driving me crazy before the end of the evening. — Donna Andrews

I love anything to do with cooking, from watching the Food Network to reading recipe books by Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and Levi Roots. My favourite types of cuisine are Asian and Caribbean, and I love cooking new recipes for my family. — Jourdan Dunn

A lot of men think they are doing women a favour by asking for her hand in marriage, but lets think about this :
She changes her name, changes her home, leaves her family, moves in with you, builds a home with you, gets pregnant for you, pregnancy changes her body, she gets fat, almost gives up in the labour room due to the unbearable pains of child birth, even the kids she delivers bear your name..
Till the day she dies ... Everything she does, (cooking, cleaning your house, taking care of your parents, bringing up your children, earning, advising you, ensuring you can be relaxed, maintaining all family relations, everything that benefit you ... Sometimes at the cost of her own health, hobbies and beauty..
So who is really doing whom a favor? Dear men appreciate the women in your lives always, because it is not easy to be a woman.
*Being a woman is priceless * — Anonymous

When I was growing up in Mississippi - it was good Southern food ... but I also grew up with a Greek family; when other kids were eating fried okra, we were eating steamed artichokes. So I think it played a big part in my healthy cooking. — Cat Cora

They projected an illusion of warmth with their home-cooking and hand-stitched quilts, yet underneath the facade was an institutional rigidity, as if they were running an orphanage where children would be fed and cared for but never loved. Love was such a key ingredient in molding humans, yet it was inaccessible to kids inside of the system. — Renee Carlino

My love for cooking began when I was young. Because my parents were in the army, they were both really busy. A lot of times I'd have to cook for the family; I'd rotate with my siblings. It started out as a chore, but as I got older, my mom started to see that I was really good at it. I became her sous chef. — Tia Mowry

I love being at home now, improving my cooking. I've got a really bad memory, so my first attempts were a disaster - I'd forget what ingredients to put in. But I do a lasagna that's a crowd-pleaser, and a good lemon drizzle cake, which I take to my mom's for the Sunday roast to fatten the family up. — Katy B

Even when couples share more equitably in the work at home, women do two-thirds of the daily jobs at home, like cooking and cleaning up
jobs that fix them into a rigid routine. Most women cook dinner and most men change the oil in the family car. But dinner needs to be prepared every evening around six o'clock, whereas the car oil needs to be changed every six months, any day around that time, any time that day ... Men thus have more control over when they make their contributions than women do. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

I am from Spain, but my family and I have made America our home. For the last 17 years, I have been cooking Spanish food in Washington, D.C. — Jose Andres

[Our family is] a wonderfully messy arrangement, in which relationships overlap, underlie, support, and oppose one another. It didn't always come together easily nor does it always stay together easily. It's known very good times and very bad ones. It has held together, often out of shared memories and hopes, sometimes out of the lure of my sisters' cooking, and sometimes out of sheer stubbornness. And like the world itself, our family is renewed by each baby. — Margaret Kennedy

Boxing is individual, although there's a team concept because you need a great corner, you need a great trainer, you need a great prep man, you need all of these things, but it's more of a Mano a Mano; it's more you versus me. I miss that time in training camp and Dad and Mom cooking meals. It was one big family. — Sugar Ray Leonard

YouTube and other sites will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and much, much more. — Chad Hurley

The mental disposition of the one who prepares the food is transmitted to all those who consume it. Therefore, as far as possible the mothers should do the cooking for the entire family. If it is done while chanting the mantra, the food will benefit everyone in a spiritual way. — Mata Amritanandamayi

I have always loved food. I began cooking for my family as a young girl, and to this day, it's one of my greatest pleasures in life. — Suzanne Somers

I keep going back to foundation, heritage cooking techniques from my family in Naples and Abruzzi. There are a lot of traditional dishes from those regions that I want to educate my kids' palates about, to pass down that heritage and that lineage. I think my mom would have been pleasantly surprised and absolutely thrilled to have seen all the cookbooks and all the restaurants and all the television I've done. — Rick Tramonto

Cooking is an important part of a good, stable family life. I like to get the family together; there's a huge nurturing element in it. — Jade Jagger

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. — Calvin Trillin

I like cooking - I make a good stir-fry and the family likes it when I make stewed chicken and macaroni and cheese. — Marion Jones