Tabatha Delphi

“The preparation of food also serves the soul in a number of ways. In a general sense, it gives us a valuable, ordinary opportunity to meditate quietly, as we peel and cut vegetables, stir pots, measure out proportions, and watch for boiling and roasting. We can become absorbed in the sensual contemplation of colors, textures, and tastes as, alchemists of the kitchen, we mix and stir just the right proportions.”
― Thomas Moore

“Few things are more important than finding a home and working at it constantly to make it resonate with deep memories and fulfill deep longings.”
― Thomas Moore

“I was beginning to believe that it is foolish and perhaps pretentious and often boring, as well as damnably expensive, to make a meal of four or six courses just because the guests who are to eat it have always been used to that many. Let them try eating two or three things, I said, so plentiful and so interesting and so well cooked that they will be satisfied. And if they are not satisfied, let them stay away from our table, and our leisurely comfortable friendship at that table.

I talked like that, and it worried Al a little, because he had been raised in a minister's family and had been taught that the most courteous way to treat guests was to make them feel as if they were in their own homes. I, to his well-controlled embarrassment, was beginning to feel quite sure that one of the best things I could do for nine-tenths of the people I knew was to give them something that would make them forget Home and all it stood for, for a few blessed moments at least.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, Long Ago In France: The Years In Dijon

“Point me to a bookstore where the owners, managers, and salespeople know and love books, though they don't know exactly where everything is by chart or abstract arrangement; a store that has private places to take a book for a few minutes of examination, where the bright light won't expose me completely and where I can be deliriously lost in contemplation.”
― Thomas Moore