Ruth Reichl > Quotes

“but when I told her they didn’t cost one penny and were very nutritious (I made that part up, but I’m sure it must be true), she ate them up. She packed them into her lunch pail this morning, and when I looked”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“Don't you just love the idea of cooking flowers? I imagine them bursting into bloom, right in the pan.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“...chasing a lie smaller than her dreams....

from: Save Me the Plums”
― Ruth Reichl

“Hermione was back, holding out a gossamer dress of rainbow chiffon so airy I thought of fireflies on a moonlight night.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“Till I was back in your arms again.” She had a nice voice, and I hummed along”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“The weather was gray, the streets filled with that Sunday morning silence that makes you feel like everybody else is home with people that they love.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“I decided that it wasn’t pretty that I felt, but confident.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“When fortune smiles, you immediately start to worry about how it will end. Why not enjoy the moment?”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel

“Tommy and I put on a radio play to entertain everyone while they unpacked their cookies. It was about a girl who saves up money for a prom dress, but at the last minute she says, "It's only clothes," and buys war bonds instead. The play was a big success, and my whole school pledged to buy war bonds, which should have made me happy. But it gave me a queer feeling; it's easy to write propaganda when everyone agrees with you. Do you understand? I think I'd rather bake cookies; it feels more honest.
Your friend,
Lulu


Sammy looked down at me. "A girl after your own heart!" he said. "In my experience it is a rare female who can say, 'It's only clothes,' and when the war came, you discovered who you really were. Women changed. Children grew up overnight. I wonder what happened to this one.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“Reminded us how exciting it was to abandon security and run toward the life that is waiting.”
― Ruth Reichl, Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

“Change works both ways. You must accept those moments, experience them, and let them go. Because if you allow yourself to get stuck in that minute, nothing will ever change.” “What are you saying?” “I am telling you that if things can change for the worse, the opposite is also true. But only if you open yourself to the possibilities. As Lulu did. It is what one finds so appealing about her.” It”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“I just can’t imagine somebody else in the White House. I’m sure President Truman is a good man, but even the words feel peculiar in my mouth. A world without President Roosevelt seems like a strange and scary place.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“were unaware that the room was crowded with ghosts who were about to propel us into the present and force us to face the future.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“Everything here is true, but it might not be entirely factual.”
― Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

“We're in a transient state - why hate our present selves? Let's save the energy for when we are eighty, when we are perhaps above, or beyond, changing. Then we can hate, if hate we must.”
― Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

“We slid along water reds and greens, the changing lights captured in the canvas of wet tar.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“CAKE whole black peppercorns whole cloves whole cardamom 1 cinnamon stick 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt 3 large eggs 1 large egg yolk 1 cup sour cream 1½ sticks (6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 cup sugar 2 large pieces fresh ginger root (¼ cup, tightly packed, when finely grated) zest from 2 to 3 oranges (1½ teaspoons finely grated) Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a 6-cup Bundt pan. Grind your peppercorns, cloves, and cardamom and measure out ¼ teaspoon of each. (You can use pre-ground spices, but the cake won’t taste as good.) Grind your cinnamon stick and measure out 1 teaspoon. (Again, you can use ground cinnamon if you must.) Whisk the flour with the baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt in a small bowl. In another small bowl, whisk the eggs and egg yolk into the sour cream. Set aside. Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer until the mixture is light, fluffy, and almost white. This should take about 3 minutes. Grate the ginger root—this is a lot of ginger—and the orange zest. Add them to the butter/sugar mixture. Beat the flour mixture and the egg mixture, alternating between the two, into the butter until each addition is incorporated. The batter should be as luxurious as mousse. Spoon batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 40 minutes, until cake is golden and a wooden skewer comes out clean. Remove to a rack and cool in the pan for 10 minutes. SOAK ½ cup bourbon 1½ tablespoons sugar While the cake cools in its pan, simmer the bourbon and the sugar in a small pot for about 4 minutes. It should reduce to about ⅓ cup. While the cake is still in the pan, brush half the bourbon mixture onto its exposed surface (the bottom of the cake) with a pastry brush. Let the syrup soak in for a few minutes, then turn the cake out onto a rack. Gently brush the remaining mixture all over the cake.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“That's what I like so much about old libraries - they smell the way we'd like to imagine the past.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“Dear Mr. Beard,

On the radio last spring, President Roosevelt said that each and every one of us here on the home front has a battle to fight; We must keep our spirits up. I am doing my best, but in my opinion Liver Gems are a lost cause, because they would take the spirit right out of anyone.
So when Mother says it is wrong for us to eat better than our brave men overseas, I tell her that I don't see how eating disgusting stuff helps them in the least. But, Mr. Beard, it is very hard to cook good food when you're only a beginner! When Mother decided it was her patriotic duty to work at the airplane factory, she should have warned me about the recipes. You just can't trust them! Prudence Penny's are so revolting. I want to throw them right into the garbage.
Mrs. Davis from next door lent me one of her wartime recipe pamphlets, and I read about liver salmi, which sounded so romantic. But by the time I had cooked the liver for twenty minutes in hot water, cut it into little cubes, rolled them in flour, and sautéed them in fat, I'd made flour footprints all over the kitchen floor. The consommé and cream both hissed like angry cats when I added them. Then I was supposed to add stoned olives and taste for seasoning. I spit it right into the sink.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“Not to me. One lost soul looking for another. Doesn’t that describe us all?”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel

“I know you're a chocolate lover. I can always tell. I'm about to temper the chocolate. I have my own method; want to watch?"
"Could I?" Inside my head, a little voice was reminding me that I had to get back to the office, but it was drowned out by the scent of chocolate, which flooded all my senses with a heady froth of cocoa and coffee, passion fruit, cinnamon and clove. I closed my eyes, and for one moment I was back in Aunt Melba's kitchen with Genie.
I opened them to find Kim dancing with a molten river of chocolate. I stood hypnotized by the scent and the grace of her motions, which were more beautiful than any ballet. Moving constantly, she caressed the chocolate like a lover, folding it over and over on a slab of white marble, working it to get the texture right. She stopped to feed me a chocolate sprinkled with salt, which had the fierce flavor of the ocean, and another with the resonant intensity of toasted saffron. One chocolate tasted like rain, another of the desert. I tried tracking the flavors, pulling them apart to see how she had done it, but, like a magician, she had hidden her tricks. Each time I followed the trail, it vanished, and after a while I just gave up and allowed the flavors to seduce me.
Now the scent changed as Kim began to dip fruit into the chocolate: raspberries, blackberries, tiny strawberries that smelled like violets. She put a chocolate-and-caramel-covered slice of peach into my mouth, and the taste of summer was so intense that I felt the room grow warmer. I lost all sense of time.”
― Ruth Reichl, Delicious!

“Didn’t you say you were a copy editor? Isn’t that a fancy term for literary detective? Why don’t you see what you can find out?”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel

“I'm just an actor, and no more interesting than you are. She scribbled her name. Probably not as interesting, actually You should pay more attention to yourself and less to people like me. You'll be better off that way.”
― Ruth Reichl, Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

“You have good rhythm and great patience,” he said. “Two of the four things required to make a cook.” “What are the other two?” “Good ingredients. And imagination.”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel

“Even the most avid technocrat must occasionally escape from virtual space, and what better place to do it than the kitchen, with all its dangerous knives and delicious aromas?”
― Ruth Reichl, The Best American Food Writing 2018

“When something frightens me, it is definitely worth doing.”
― Ruth Reichl, Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

“it: be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel

“In the end you are the only one who can make yourself happy, More important, Mom showed me that it is never too late to find out how to do it.”
― Ruth Reichl, Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way

“The soft, smooth substance filled her mouth. Chocolate cream, she thought. The flavor grew richer, rounder, louder with each passing second. It was like music, the notes lingering in her mind long after the sound itself had vanished.
He was openly staring at her. "You eat with such concentration and intensity. And, dare I say it, joy?"
Joy? The word was so foreign, especially in relation to food. It embarrassed her; she took a sip of the wine and concentrated on the way the flavors changed. She thought of music again. The sweet wine was like the trill of a flute, and suddenly the foie gras, which had reminded her more of pastry than meat, became robust, substantial.”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel

“when you cook for people, they feel cared for.”
― Ruth Reichl, My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life: A Cookbook