I've long been a fan of Cook's Illustrated's aggressively middlebrow, involved-but-not-difficult, style of home cooking. They have a solid recipe for everything, and they come with pictures. I was overwhelmingly charmed by this weekend's profile of Cook's Illustrated grumpus-in-chief, Christopher Kimball.
Good reporting is really about eliciting quotes that let the personality of your subject shine through, and arranging them in the most amusing way possible. In case you don't have the vim required for such a long feature, here are the best quotes from the profile, arranged from least grumpy to grumpiest:
"If you had walked across this country a hundred years ago, you probably wouldn’t have eaten the same biscuit twice."
"I’m happier eating hoagies."
"Most magazines don’t write about failure, but we do. Disaster in the kitchen puts the reader at ease, and that’s why we start our recipes with it."
"We don’t make the ultimate anything. Were they the world’s best burgers — no, probably not. But if you get food on the table and it works, we’ve done our jobs."
"I hate the idea that cooking should be a celebration or a party. Cooking is about putting food on the table night after night, and there isn’t anything glamorous about it."
"Cooking isn’t creative, and it isn’t easy. It’s serious, and it’s hard to do well, just as everything worth doing is damn hard."
"This is my magazine, and I will print what I want."
"There’s something about pleasure I find annoying."