What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of improving our cooking methods to better utilize the quality ingredients we have.
H. L. Mencken highlights a significant issue concerning food preparation in the country, suggesting that despite having access to some of the finest raw materials, the way we prepare and cook food often diminishes its quality. This calls for a collective awareness and improvement in culinary practices to fully appreciate and enhance the inherent value of our food resources.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a cooking workshop focusing on ingredient quality.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
I lived my whole life in the kitchen. Not only that, but it's the passion, it's the love for cooking and food. It's dictated my entire life β every aspect of it. So, in some ways, the thought of not being able to do that anymore radically affects your life.
As a chef Iβm not your dietitian or your ethicist, Iβm in the pleasure business.
And while other passions in your life may at some point begin to bank their fires, the shared happiness of good homemade food can last as long as we do.
Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology.
Cooking is, to me, the perfect fusion of generosity and selfishness, indeed the resolution of generosity and selfishness, the answer to my torn nature.
Coffee - the favorite drink of the civilized world.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.