Vegetable Quotes

“I want you to understand what you are doing, not just perform tasks because I say so.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“Gardening is easier than it is often made out to be.”
― Charles Dowding, Charles Dowding's Skills for Growing

“It’s incredible to reflect on how much knowledge and growth power is contained in seeds.”
― Charles Dowding

“restraint equals indulgence”
― barbara kingsolver

“The tree feels splintery, nasty to my touch; it feels Floridian, more reptile than vegetable, more stucco than stone. I do loathe this state, their Elba.”
― Allan Gurganus, Plays Well with Others

“What are those bulb things you're slicing?"
"You've never seen fennel? It looks like celery and tastes like licorice.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“In the kingdom of spices, garlic is the king.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“Ahead, a house sits close to the road: a small, single-story place painted mint green. Ivy grows up one corner and onto the roof, the green tendrils swaying like a girl's hair let loose from a braid. In front there's a full and busy vegetable garden, with plants jostling for real estate and bees making a steady, low, collective hum. It reminds me of the aunties' gardens, and my nonna's when I was a kid. Tomato plants twist gently skywards, their lazy stems tied to stakes. Leafy heads of herbs- dark parsley, fine-fuzzed purple sage, bright basil that the caterpillars love to punch holes in. Rows and rows of asparagus. Whoever lives here must work in the garden a lot. It's wild but abundant, and I know it takes a special vigilance to maintain a garden of this size.
The light wind lifts the hair from my neck and brings the smell of tomato stalks. The scent, green and full of promise, brings to mind a childhood memory- playing in Aunty Rosa's yard as Papa speaks with a cousin, someone from Italy. I am imagining families of fairies living in the berry bushes: making their clothes from spiderweb silk, flitting with wings that glimmer pink and green like dragonflies'.”
― Hannah Tunnicliffe, Season of Salt and Honey

“The first ear of corn, eaten like a typewriter, means summer to me—intense, but fleeting.”
― Michael Anthony, V Is for Vegetables: Inspired Recipes & Techniques for Home Cooks - from Artichokes to Zucchini

“Extra bitter melon was never an issue. The unpopular vegetable was a favorite with the Rajes, none of whom were daunted by the bitterness that sat atop the other, more complex underlying flavors. She would take some over to her aunt and uncle's house later.
Her grandmother could make magic with bitter melon, stuffing it with fried onions and then frying the entire thing to a buttery, salty crunch. Baba's recipe at the restaurant was derived from Aji's recipe, he'd made it richer with cashews added to the stuffing and a creamy onion sauce. Decadent, the way all of Baba's versions of traditional recipes were. Ashna could make that version in her sleep, but she preferred the taste of the one her grandmother made.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Barbecue, vegetable plate, baked beans, sweet tea, fried
cherry pie, and an apple


I'm almost catatonic as I hold the little slip of paper in my hand now. Harlan, Cody, and I didn't need Shawn to go into what "barbecue" meant. Classic Texas barbecue is a beef brisket, sausage, and ribs. A "vegetable plate" is traditionally a potato salad, raw white onions, and pickles. Not quite what most people would call a healthy vegetable plate, but this is how we do it in Texas.”
― Liza Palmer, Nowhere But Home

“What is that?" I asked because her was stuffing puff pastry with a rich brown mixture.
"It is called tourte de blettes," he said. "A specialty of our region."
"What are blettes?" The word was unfamiliar to me.
"It is a green vegetable, like cabbage, only with long green curly leaves," he explained, then he held a stalk up for me.
"Is that Swiss chard?" I exclaimed. "Then it is a savory tart?"
"No, mademoiselle, it is for the dessert."
"But chard? That must taste bitter."
"Not at all. It is made with raisins and pine nuts and brown sugar, and when it is finished, I will save a small taste for you. You will see, it tastes not at all bitter. Quite delicious, in fact.”
― Rhys Bowen, Above the Bay of Angels

“In many ways, turnips are the unsung heroes of the root crop universe. They don't have the ad budget potatoes have, or the glamorous appearance of carrots, but they shouldn't be underestimated. They're high in vitamins and minerals, low in sugar, and taste delicious roasted, caramelized, or mashed with a pound of butter. Pliny the Elder considered the turnip the most important vegetable of his day, because "its utility surpasses that of any other plant's." Say what you want about Pliny the Elder... he was a man who knew his vegetables.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Garden of Small Beginnings

“Shop the fruit, vegetable and refrigerator section only for good health.”
― Steven Magee

“...restaurants run by the wrong sort of people, such as an Eskimo Curry House... Or, wait a minute, how about a Slaughterhouse for Vegetables. Wait, I've got it, Protests at Vegetable Vivisection!!”
― Ian Watson

“It's the side dish that pulls everything together. Thousand-layer potatoes fried in duck fat? Phenomenal. Potato chips and caviar? Perfection. Thrice-fried fries with curry mayo? Life-changing. Poutine with cheese curds and gravy? Delectable. Mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving? Irrefutably the best part of the meal. This is a hill I will die on.”
― Emily Arden Wells, Eat Post Like

“We tasted the Vegetable menu, an exploration through the garden with awe-inspiring presentations of ingredients we so often take for granted. Take, for example, the potato, usually served baked, fried, boiled, steamed. Here they return the potato to its humble beginning, the ground, but in the world of Noma, it arrives in the form of potato soup served in a terracotta pot, topped with a garden of herbs. While potatoes are often a favorite staple of a meal, it was refreshing to be surprised by this dish. It was a hint of what else was to come.
Other dishes are crafted from ingredients that are transformed through experimental cooking techniques; onions that are cooked until they resembled lumps of charcoal, with sweet, almost gooey centers, fermented ants that taste of pickled ginger and lemongrass, or plums, dried and fermented until they could easily be confused with cured meat. ”
― Emily Arden Wells, Eat Post Like