Jenni Ferrari-Adler > Quotes

“What does an introvert do when he's left alone? He stays alone.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“The fact is, I love to feed other people. I love their pleasure, their comfort, their delight in being cared for. Cooking gives me the means to make other people feel better, which in a very simple equation makes me feel better. I believe that food can be a profound means of communication, allowing me to express myself in a way that seems much deeper and more sincere than words. My Gruyere cheese puffs straight from the oven say 'I'm glad you're here. Sit down, relax. I'll look after everything.'
- Ann Patchett, "Dinner For One, Please, James”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Because cooks love the social aspect of food, cooking for one is intrinsically interesting. A good meal is like a present, and it can feel goofy, at best, to give yourself a present. On the other hand, there is something life affirming in taking the trouble to feed yourself well, or even decently. Cooking for yourself allows you to be strange or decadent or both. The chances of liking what you make are high, but if it winds up being disgusting, you can always throw it away and order a pizza; no one else will know. In the end, the experimentation, the impulsiveness, and the invention that such conditions allow for will probably make you a better cook.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Taking solitude in stride was a sign of strength and of a willingness to take care of myself. This meant - among other things - working productively, remembering to leave the house, and eating well. I thought about food all the time. I had a subscription to Gourmet and Food & Wine. Cooking for others had often been my way of offering care. So why, when I was alone, did I find myself trying to subsist on cereal and water? I'd need to learn to cook for one.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“There was real plasure to be had eating ice cream out of container and pickles out of a glass jar, standing up at the counter. I wondered whether the cravings associated with pregnancy were really only a matter of women feeling empowered to admit their odd longings to their husbands, to ask another person to bring them the eccentric combinations they'd long enjoyed in private.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Never be daunted in public' was an early Hemingway phrase that had more than once bolstered me in my timid twenties. I changed it resolutely to 'Never be daunted in private'.
- M.F.K. Fisher "A Is for Dining Alone”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Eating as a simple means of ending hunger is one of the great liberties of being alone ... It is a pleasure to not have to take anyone else's tastes into account or explain why I like to drink my grapefruit juice out of the carton." - Ann Patchett, "Dinner for One, Please, James”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“The very thought of maintaining high standards meal after meal is exhausting. It discounts all the peanut butter that is available in the world. When”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“The fact was, I wanted the same thing again and again. And so I yielded, bought the good, took them home, cooked, ate, accompanied usually by music, preferably a public radio station that played music I liked. And I am here to tell you, the pleasure never diminished I was happy every time. - Beverly Lowery”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“I still face a final, cold truth: eating alone isn’t natural. Life’s greatest sensual pleasure (or at least its most consistently attainable) should be shared. I happen to believe that humans were born to feed one another. The meal is our celebration of nurturance, our secular communion. Does”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“As 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.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Eating alone is not nature’s way. Babies never eat alone. They can’t. Children don’t, unless they’re in tragic circumstances. Old people eat alone regularly and it’s dreadful. No wonder they lose their appetites. My theory (and I have several solo dinners behind me to back it up) is that to compose a happy character, and thus contribute to making the world a nice place to live in, you’ve either got to be fed (that is, by someone other than yourself who cares about you), which feels good and means that you’re part of something larger than yourself; or, you’ve got to be the person feeding (that is, other people—not just dogs!—that you care about).

The Lonely Palate, Laura Calder”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“The best table in any restaurant, so far as I’m concerned, is in a corner next to a window. From that spot I can be entertained by the infinite variety of the street or the enclosed drama of the restaurant itself. There’s always a lot to see.

Out to Lunch, Colin Harrison”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“But in practice, eating alone feels wrong. I’m so accustomed to eating with people, and serving people who are eating with people, that the social aspect of it seems inextricable from any other step on that journey from farm to table. Without the shared appreciation, a meal might as well not exist, like a book with no one to read it except the author.

Table for One, Erin Ergenbright”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“When I cooked it for myself, I made sure to sit at the table, light candles, and have a really good book to read while I dawdled over my meal, eventually polishing off every lentil, every speck of carrot. It was a perfect way to leave the office behind, to say to the world, I am a grown-up. I don’t have any papers due. I didn’t bring any work home tonight. My evening is mine.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Over the years I’ve settled on a few basic beliefs, one of which is that whatever we do for pleasure, we should try to do, or learn to do, and practice on occasion, in solitude. A kind of test to gauge our skills and see how deep the passion lies and to find out what it is we truly like, to discover—minus other tastes and preferences—what specifically gives us pleasure. We all have our eccentricities. Alone, we indulge.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“I truly believe that a meal is the culmination of an entire journey from birth to death to table; a journey that includes, and is colored by, every person involved—not least the person who eats it.

Table for One, Erin Ergenbright”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“There are people who bring books to restaurants, and who hide behind them, blind and deaf to everything beyond their pages. They hide behind menus, too, and order carelessly, and they never glance at the other diners. Maybe they’re afraid the glance will reveal a hunger that has nothing to do with food. Or maybe they are so ashamed of being companionless that they court invisibility.

Dining Alone, Mary Cantwell [from the book Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone]”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Sometimes, eating alone, you are humble. Sometimes, though, the reason to go through with cooking for yourself is the chance to brag about it afterward. When I talked to my ex-boyfriend on the phone, we would recount meals we had made for ourselves—see, I live pretty nice on my own.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“The instant noodles that I ate alone in Ithaca might have been identical to the instant noodles of my childhood, but the taste, so to speak, was entirely different. The reasons for this, of course, were obvious. My mother was not there. My sister was not there.

Instant Noodles, Rattawut Lapcharoensap [from the book Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone]”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Naturally there have been times when my self-made solitude has irked me. I have often eaten an egg and drunk a glass of jug-wine, surrounded deliberately with the trappings of busyness, in a hollow Hollywood flat near the studio where I was called a writer, and not been able to stifle my longing to be anywhere but there, in the company of any of a dozen predatory or ambitious or even kind people who had not invited me.

That was the trouble: nobody did.

A Is for Dining Alone, M.F.K Fisher”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“I still face a final, cold truth: eating alone isn’t natural. Life’s greatest sensual pleasure (or at least its most consistently attainable) should be shared. I happen to believe that humans were born to feed one another. The meal is our celebration of nurturance, our secular communion.

Does this mean that I starve myself when I can’t find company? Not quite. What I do, though, is put off eating until I’m ravenous. I also deny myself the richest possibilities. I don’t throw that pat of butter into the pan (though I wish to). I scrimp on the smoked shrimp. It’s a little deal I make with myself, just in case someone shows up later. Then I sit down with my quesarito and a glass of sweet juice and, when I can bear the hunger no longer, I go to town.

Que Será Sarito: An (Almost) Foolproof Plan to Never Ever Eat Alone Again, by Steve Almond”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Serving the single diner I feel like a voyeur, and also guilty if I wonder why he or she is alone. After all, why is anyone alone, finally?

Table for One, Erin Ergenbright”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“What does an introvert do when he’s left alone? He stays alone.

—Jeremy Jackson, Beans and Me”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“And before you know it, you have stopped thinking and started doing. Which, as you are starting to figure out, is the first step to making anything become real.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“I went to bed early, believing that sleep would shorten the days until he arrived. But each night I woke around two o’clock, to stare at the ceiling and the thin line of light from the hallway under the door and the white curtains stirring in the sullen September air.

Dining Alone, Mary Cantwell [from the book Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone]”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Then I sailed, rather than walked, out and if I had left a wake I wouldn’t be surprised.

Mary Cantwell, Dining Alone [from the book Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone]”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“The instant noodles that I ate alone in Ithaca might have been identical to the instant noodles of my childhood, but the taste, so to speak, was entirely different. The reasons for this, of course, were obvious. My mother was not there. My sister was not there.

Instant Noodles, Rattawut Lapcharoensa”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

“Out of a can, yes. I mean, seriously, what did he think? I told him we were poor—my family, my mother’s family—I’m sorry, but isn’t it common knowledge that poor means canned, and canned means food in a poor family? And you’re damn glad to have it, too: that’s right. Now shut up and eat.”
― Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone