Capon.....................

Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013) was an Episcopalian priest, author, knife aficionado, lover of life and food, and an advocate of the radical grace of God.  Here are a few quotes attributed to him:

“I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm.” 

“Every real thing is a joy, if only you have eyes and ears to relish it, a nose and tongue to taste it.” 

“Man was made to lead with his chin; he is worth knowing only with his guard down, his head up and his heart rampant on his sleeve.” 

“What is good is difficult, and what is difficult is rare.” 

“We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.  That is the inconsolable heartburn, the lifelong disquietude of having been made in the image of God.” 

“In the Bible, the opposite of Sin, with a capital 'S,' is not virtue - it's faith: faith in a God who draws all to himself in his resurrection.” 

“Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers? Why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half earth's gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become.” 

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.” 

"Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with Give us pasta with a hundred fillings."


"At the root of many a woman's failure to become a great cook lies her failure to develop a workmanlike regard for knives."