Let's face it: my life tends to revolve around food, and I love feeding people.

'Comfort Me with Apples' is a love story, or better, two love stories. And since it deals with a later period in my life, most of the people who appear in it are living.

Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.

You can be a decent critic if you know about food, but to be a really good one, you need to know about life.

I love to make pies - pot pies, quiches, savory tarts, fruit pies. I use an old-fashioned pastry blender with wires and a wooden handle. I never use a recipe.

Hunger, I discovered, is very much a matter of the mind, and as I began to study my own appetites, I saw that my teenage craving had not really been for food. That ravenous desire had been a yearning for love, attention, appreciation. Food had merely been my substitute.