Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education.
I feel like old age in America is a very sad thing. I have been many different places around the world where getting older is something you look forward to.
If I weren’t involved with food, I’d be working in architecture. Design is that critical to me.
We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.
The problem with living in a fast-food nation is that we expect food to be cheap.
I feel it is an obligation to help people understand the relation of food to agriculture and the relationship of food to culture.
Food culture is like listening to the Beatles – it’s international, it’s very positive, it’s inventive and creative.
I don’t want food that comes from animals that are caged up and fed antibiotics. I am really suspicious of that kind of production of meat and poultry.
The biggest thing you can do is understand that every time you’re going to the grocery store, you’re voting with your dollars. Support your farmers’ market. Support local food. Really learn to cook.
Food isn’t like anything else. It’s something precious. It’s not a commodity.
I really like having someone who knows about food and what goes well together make a meal for me.
This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive.
I can remember the three restaurant experiences of my childhood. All I wanted to do on my birthday was to go to the Automat in New York… but I don’t know if you consider that a real restaurant.
The decisions you make are a choice of values that reflect your life in every way.
If we don’t preserve the natural resources, you aren’t going to have a sustainable society. This is not something for Chez Panisse and the elite of San Francisco. It’s for everyone.