Alice Waters Quotes

#1. We've been so disconnected agriculturally and culturally from food. We spend more time on dieting than on cooking. - Author: Alice Waters

#2. It's a comfort to always find pasta in the cupboard and garlic and parsley in the garden. - Author: Alice Waters

#3. Americans don't have deep gastronomic roots. They wanted to get away from the cultures of Europe or wherever they came from. We stirred up that melting pot pretty quickly. - Author: Alice Waters

#4. The act of eating is very political. You buy from the right people, you support the right network of farmers and suppliers who care about the land and what they put in the food. - Author: Alice Waters

#5. I think if you buy from people who are taking care of the land, you're supporting the future of this country. - Author: Alice Waters

#6. When you have good ingredients, cooking doesn't require a lot of instruction because you can never go very wrong. - Author: Alice Waters

#7. Whenever I want to know how to cook something, I can't ask one chef - I have to ask six. - Author: Alice Waters

#8. I try not to do anything that's immoral. - Author: Alice Waters

#9. I really appreciate the many neighbourhoods of Berkeley. There is still the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. And it has the University of California, which is the greatest gift, to my mind, to be close to it. It keeps the place alive. - Author: Alice Waters

#10. It is a fundamental fact that no cook, however creative and capable, can produce a dish of a quality any higher than that of its raw ingredients. - Author: Alice Waters

#11. It's hard to come into a new relationship with food unless you're engaged in an interactive way at an early age; it's hard to change your values. - Author: Alice Waters

#12. If I weren't involved with food, I'd be working in architecture. Design is that critical to me. - Author: Alice Waters

#13. Food can be very transformational, and it can be more than just about a dish. That's what happened to me when I first went to France. I fell in love. And if you fall in love, well, then everything is easy. - Author: Alice Waters

#14. I love those tiny little onions in the spring that are so small they're almost like a little chive. - Author: Alice Waters

#15. I'm always changing my work, as there are endless ways to think about food. - Author: Alice Waters

#16. My kitchen has a wood-burning oven, a large worktable, and windows all around, including one above the sink. I think whoever is washing the dishes needs to have a lot of beauty around. - Author: Alice Waters

#17. My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment. - Author: Alice Waters

#18. I can't imagine leaving the restaurant. It's hard for me to separate my life from my work; I'm really thinking about what we're doing every day. - Author: Alice Waters

#19. I know once people get connected to real food, they never change back. - Author: Alice Waters

#20. We can't think narrowly. We have to think in the biggest possible way. - Author: Alice Waters

#21. 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. - Author: Alice Waters

#22. The fact that most kids aren't eating at home with their families any more really means they are eating elsewhere. They are eating out there in fast food nation. - Author: Alice Waters

#23. A whole set of values comes with fast food: Everything should be fast, cheap and easy; there's always more where that came from; there are no seasons; you shouldn't be paid very much for preparing food. It's uniformity and a lack of connection. - Author: Alice Waters

#24. 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. - Author: Alice Waters

#25. If we want children to learn to tend the land and nourish themselves and have conversations at the table, we need to communicate with them in ways that are positive. - Author: Alice Waters

#26. First, kids should be involved in the production of their own food. They have to get their hands in the dirt, they have to grow things. They also have to become sensually stimulated, and the way to begin is with a bakery. - Author: Alice Waters

#27. I don't think it ever works to tell people what they can't eat. They can do it for so long, and then they fall off. You have to bring them into a new relationship with food. - Author: Alice Waters

#28. I am confident that we will see a growing consensus about the most effective way to transform food in America: building a real, sustainable and free school-lunch program. - Author: Alice Waters

#29. Our full humanity is contingent on our hospitality; we can be complete only when we are giving something away; when we sit at the table and pass the peas to the person next to us we see that person in a whole new way. - Author: Alice Waters

#30. Let things taste the way they are. - Author: Alice Waters

#31. A lot of equipment can get in the way of the connection with food, with touching and feeling. - Author: Alice Waters

#32. The way we subsidize food makes it cheaper to go to McDonald's and get a hamburger than a salad, and that's insane. It's pure government policy. - Author: Alice Waters

#33. Eating is an environmental act. - Author: Alice Waters

#34. People cooked with a certain integrity before fast food, 50 or 60 years ago. When the cheap food arrived, and we didn't have the education and deep cultural roots to hold on, we got swept away by fast, cheap and easy. - Author: Alice Waters

#35. I think the biggest impediment to fixing the food system in the United States is that we expect food to be cheap. We want to by other things with our money. We're so disconnected from agriculture - from the culture in agriculture. - Author: Alice Waters

#36. This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive. - Author: Alice Waters

#37. I eat meat, but no meat that isn't pastured is acceptable, and we probably need to eat a whole lot less. - Author: Alice Waters

#38. He understands that creating a meal means creating your own reality ... - Author: Alice Waters

#39. I think health is the outcome of finding a balance and some satisfaction at the table. - Author: Alice Waters

#40. We all need to know how to cook. I can buy a chicken and have many meals come from it. Is it affordable? Yes. Cheap? No. I want to pay the farmers the right price for food. They deserve it. They are the most important people in the country besides our teachers. - Author: Alice Waters

#41. Food isn't like anything else. It's something precious. It's not a commodity. - Author: Alice Waters

#42. Hard-boiled eggs are wonderful when they're really done right. I bring the water to a boil, and then I put in the eggs. And then I boil them for - well, it depends on the size of the egg - maybe eight minutes. - Author: Alice Waters

#43. Because only slow food can teach us the things that really matter - care, beauty, concentration, discernment, sensuality, all the best that humans are capable of, but only if we take the time to think about what we're eating. - Author: Alice Waters

#44. Food culture is like listening to the Beatles - it's international, it's very positive, it's inventive and creative. - Author: Alice Waters

#45. Create a garden; bring children to farms for field trips. I think it's important that parents and teachers get together to do one or two things they can accomplish well - a teaching garden, connecting with farms nearby, weave food into the curriculum. - Author: Alice Waters

#46. I wanted people to come to the restaurant and feel at home, so I put it in a house. - Author: Alice Waters

#47. I once had an Early Girl tomato at my friend Jay's house, and I thought that was the best thing I'd ever had. But then I visited friends in Senegal, and I ate sea urchin pulled fresh out of the sea. It tasted like the ocean. - Author: Alice Waters

#48. I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist. - Author: Alice Waters

#49. I believe there should be breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, all for free and for every child that goes to school. And all food that is good, clean and fair. - Author: Alice Waters

#50. When you don't have much money, cooking can be incredibly reassuring. You feel like you're doing meaningful work. - Author: Alice Waters

#51. I am disappointed because nobody is talking about food and agriculture. They're talking about the diets of children, but they're talking about Band-Aids. We're not seeing a vision. - Author: Alice Waters

#52. Basically, the person in the White House should be principled, should have a philosophy about food that relates directly to organic agriculture. I will continue to push for that. - Author: Alice Waters

#53. Always explore your garden and go to the market before you decide what cook. - Author: Alice Waters

#54. I think you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday, and I'm buying for family and friends, I'm thinking about what I'm going to eat on the weekend but also about what I'm going to make for the following week. - Author: Alice Waters

#55. Let things taste of what they are. - Author: Alice Waters

#56. I feel it is an obligation to help people understand the relation of food to agriculture and the relationship of food to culture. - Author: Alice Waters

#57. I'm unwilling to eat food that has been adulterated. - Author: Alice Waters

#58. You have to take it upon yourself and preserve and can foods that you'll want for the winter. - Author: Alice Waters

#59. We make decisions every day about what we're going to eat. And some people want to buy Nike shoes - two pairs, and other people want to eat Bronx grapes and nourish themselves. I pay a little extra, but this is what I want to do. - Author: Alice Waters

#60. The things most worth wanting are not available everywhere all the time. - Author: Alice Waters

#61. To have a basic ingredient that can be prepared a million different ways is a beautiful thing. - Author: Alice Waters

#62. Buy foods from nearby farms and have that food served in the cafeteria. - Author: Alice Waters

#63. I am an optimist of the first order. - Author: Alice Waters

#64. I have a love affair with tomatoes and corn. I remember them from my childhood. I only had them in the summer. They were extraordinary. - Author: Alice Waters

#65. I came to all the realizations about sustainability and biodiversity because I fell in love with the way food tastes. That was it. And because I was looking for that taste I feel at the doorsteps of the organic, local, sustainable farmers, dairy people and fisherman. - Author: Alice Waters

#66. The problem with living in a fast-food nation is that we expect food to be cheap. - Author: Alice Waters

#67. I was a very picky eater. - Author: Alice Waters

#68. Cooking and shopping for food brings rhythm and meaning to our lives. - Author: Alice Waters

#69. I really like having someone who knows about food and what goes well together make a meal for me. - Author: Alice Waters

#70. When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day. - Author: Alice Waters

#71. Change the food in the schools and we can influence how children think. Change the curriculum and teach them how to garden and how to cook and we can show that growing food and cooking and eating together give lasting richness, meaning, and beauty to our lives. - Author: Alice Waters

#72. 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. - Author: Alice Waters

#73. Grass-fed cattle are leaner. But it's not true that they are less flavorful. - Author: Alice Waters

#74. We eat every day, and if we do it in a way that doesn't recognize value, it's contributing to the destruction of our culture and of agriculture. But if it's done with a focus and care, it can be a wonderful thing. It changes the quality of your life. - Author: Alice Waters

#75. It's so important to that we go into the public schools and we feed all of the kids something that is really good for them. - Author: Alice Waters

#76. Everything tastes better with butter. Meat that has fat in it is tender in a certain way, flavorful in a certain way. It's hard to deny the flavor quotient there. - Author: Alice Waters

#77. My mother made a lot of things because she thought they'd be healthy for us. There were some very unfortunate experiences with whole wheat bread and bananas. I always tried to get rid of that sandwich and eat one of my friends' lunches. - Author: Alice Waters

#78. Good food depends almost entirely on good ingredients. - Author: Alice Waters

#79. I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation. - Author: Alice Waters

#80. I do feel like food should cost more, because we aren't paying farmers a living wage. It has to cost more. - Author: Alice Waters

#81. In countries around the world, people spend more money on food because they know how precious it is. - Author: Alice Waters

#82. I want every child in America to eat a nutritious, delicious, sustainably sourced school lunch for free. - Author: Alice Waters

#83. I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing. - Author: Alice Waters

#84. We need to have a course in school that teaches about ecology and gastronomy. I could imagine that all children could eat at school for free and that the cafeteria would become part of the school's curriculum. - Author: Alice Waters

#85. Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education. - Author: Alice Waters

#86. English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food. - Author: Alice Waters

#87. I believe that every child in this world needs to have a relationship with the land ... to know how to nourish themselves ... and to know how to connect with the community around them. - Author: Alice Waters

#88. 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. - Author: Alice Waters

#89. It's around the table and in the preparation of food that we learn about ourselves and about the world. - Author: Alice Waters

#90. The decisions you make are a choice of values that reflect your life in every way. - Author: Alice Waters

#91. Usually, cheap food is not nutritious. You're feeding people, but you're not really feeding people something that is good for them. - Author: Alice Waters

#92. We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture. - Author: Alice Waters

#93. In Berkeley, we built the garden and a kitchen classroom. We've been working on it for 12 years. We've learned a lot from it. If kids grow it and cook it, they eat it. - Author: Alice Waters

#94. People have become aware that way that we've been eating is making us sick. - Author: Alice Waters

#95. How we eat can change the world - Author: Alice Waters

#96. I think health is the outcome of eating well. - Author: Alice Waters

#97. If I've gone to the market on Saturday, and I go another time on Tuesday, then I'm really prepared. I can cook a little piece of fish; I can wilt some greens with garlic; I can slice tomatoes and put a little olive oil on. It's effortless. - Author: Alice Waters

#98. Good food is a right, not a privilege. It brings children into a positive relationship with their health, community and environment. - Author: Alice Waters

#99. I just hope Americans come to understand that food isn't something to be manipulated by our teeth and shoved down our gullet, that it's our spiritual and physical nourishment and important to our well-being as a nation. - Author: Alice Waters

#100. Organize yourself so you aren't struggling to shop at the last minute. When you have real food, it's very easy to cook. - Author: Alice Waters