Anabelle/Introduction

On Cooking:

• Julia Child

"The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude."

• Craig Claiborne

"Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love."

• Anthony Bourdain

"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.

Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold.

Oh, I'll accommodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine."

On Brewing:

• Anonymous

"Give a man a beer, he'll drink for the day. Teach a man to brew, he'll be drunk the rest of his life."

• Friar Tuck in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves

"This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption... Beer!"

On Alchemy:

• Jean Dubuis

"Alchemy is the art of manipulating life, and consciousness in matter, to help it evolve, or to solve problems of inner disharmonies."

• Albert Poisson

Scholasticism with its subtle argumentation,
Theology with its ambiguous phraseology,
Astrology, so vast and so complex,
are all children's games when compared with alchemy.