A Quote by Vincent Schiavelli
What makes cookbooks interesting is to find out about the people and the culture that invented the food.
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I often wonder if it makes me a less interesting person, because it really is music that I geek out about exclusively. It's just everything to me. Those other things too a much lesser extent - photography, food, people - I geek out about people.
I love cookbooks. I certainly have my fair share at home, but I'm a really funny cookbook person: I don't really ever cook out of cookbooks. I like cookbooks for the commentary or the pictures or the history.
When I wake up, I'm like, 'I gotta go to Whole Foods.' I'm constantly reading cookbooks; I bring hardcover cookbooks with me on the plane and tag pages. I just have this crazy food obsession.
Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down.
Secretly in my heart, I believe food is a doorway to almost every dimension of our existence. ... Food never was just food. From the time a cave person first came out from under a rock, food has been a little bit of everything: who we are spiritually as well as what keeps us alive. It's a gathering place, and in the best of all worlds it's possible that when people of one country sit down to eat another culture's food it will open their minds to the culture itself. Food is a doorway to understanding, and it can be as profound or as facile as you would like it to be.
Cookbooks hit you where you live. You want comfort; you want security; you want food; you want to not be hungry and not only do you want those basic things fixed, you want it done in a really nice, gentle way that makes you feel loved. That's a big desire, and cookbooks say to the person reading them, 'If you will read me, you will be able to do this for yourself and for others. You will make everybody feel better.'
I have strong feelings about cookbooks because I am a lover of them and student of them and devourer of them and collect them. I find them to be a great source of inspiration. When I was a cook and not making much money, I always used to spend most of what I had on cookbooks.
Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult.
Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive-it's such an interesting world.
Food is interesting to me because it's a way of understanding culture and societies and history. I would never write about food just as food. Just like I would never write about baseball just as baseball.
Nobody in Singapore drinks Singapore Slings. It's one of the first things you find out there. What you do in Singapore is eat. It's a really food-crazy culture, where all of this great food is available in a kind of hawker-stand environment.
People take pride in being Irish-American and Italian-American. They have a particular culture that infuses the whole culture and makes it richer and more interesting. I think if we can expand that attitude to embrace African-Americans and Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, then we will be in a position where all our kids can feel comfortable with the worlds they are coming out of, knowing they are part of something larger.
I write about people I think are interesting, and then I discuss it with my editor, and she decides if she thinks it will be interesting to children as well. If I have no great interest in the subject, I find the work to be terribly boring. And if I find the person interesting, I love the research part and, by extension, the writing as well.
Food, for me, is society, and food is very political. Food is part of culture, and culture relies on art and creativity. If there is no art, there is no food, and there is no city.
I have one room off my kitchen filled with nothing but cookbooks and recipes that are sent to me from around the world. Every two years, I have to go through them and pick out ones to send to the local schools. There's a need for books, especially cookbooks.
I always say the diversity, and culture is the one thing I love the most about the U.S. How you can travel across one borderline and you end up with this whole new set of people that I find super-interesting and great on tour.
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