Quotes by Kate Christensen

Friendship is a strange animal. It only thrives in voluntary enjoyment of each others company, in the pleasure of nonobligatory connection. I repeat: You owe me nothing.

My sudden, unforeseen capitulation had knocked me backward, and I had nothing to hold on to. My internal weather was eerily calm, as if in a tornados aftermath, birdsong, sunshine, supersaturated colors, wreckage all around, and myself, dazed and limping.

Let nothing human be foreign to me

Everything that has ever happened to me is still all with me.

It happened every single day in Brooklyn: awaken to fresh glory, fall asleep to blight and ruin.

Now that Im 50 and respectably settled in New England and markedly happier and more contented than I was in my youth, I modestly hope theres time to realize some of my youthful goals before I croak, but Ill take what I can get.

Country ham is baked whole, usually with a glaze, sometimes studded with cloves, and served as the centerpiece of Christmas and Easter feasts.

David Levi is a teacher as well as a chef, and, like most teachers, he loves to talk.

I procrastinate all morning. Thats when I get my office work done and answer e-mails and see whats on the Internet and do laundry.

Theres a certain time of day after sunset when people naturally seem to feel the urge to gather by a fire or a stove or a hibachi or another common source of heat and food, and hunker down together to eat and drink. Call it the blue hour.

The New Nordic diet originated in 2004, when the visionary chefs Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer called a symposium of regional chefs to address the publics increasing consumption of processed foods, additives, highly refined grains, and mass-produced poultry and meat.

Reminded of what a diet really is, I began eating more slowly, being more conscious of when I was full. I started to enjoy my buckwheat bread with goat cheese and pureed butternut-squash soup as a response to real hunger.

After my experiences with the 5:2 diet, I wasnt interested in a short-term fix that would fail later. I wanted a way of eating that made me lose weight without feeling deprived.

Famously cancer fighting, laden with vitamins, minerals, soluble fiber, and phytonutrients, broccoli and its relatives are among the healthiest ingredients of the human diet.

Whenever possible, I use local, fresh ingredients, just because it tastes and feels better to eat an egg or a tomato or a hamburger that wasnt flown halfway around the world, that didnt travel on a truck and get stuck in traffic jams, that hasnt been sitting in a supermarkets refrigerator case for days.

In the winter of 2012, as my fiftieth birthday approached, I began to write what turned into my autobiography, a look at my own life through the lens of food.

My 50th birthday approaching felt like a big milestone to me. Ive lived half a century. If I write about food and use my life as a fulcrum to move the story along, maybe Ive lived long enough to fashion a narrative that has a happy ending.

Ive cooked plenty of meals when I was sad, lonely, depressed, angry, bored, and/or under the weather. My primary aim in these circumstances is generally to cheer myself up, to fill my stomach with something warm so I can feel comforted and fed, usually just with a quick soup or an omelet.

Eating by myself in my own apartment, single and alone again for the first time in many years, I should have felt, but did not feel, sad. Because I had taken the trouble to make myself a real dinner, I felt nurtured and cared for, if only by myself. Eating alone was freeing, too; I didnt have to make conversation.

It gives me immense pleasure to be trustworthy, faithful, and true - to have the kind of romantic bond that inspires this.