One of the oft-cited laments of those who don’t really enjoy cooking is that a meal takes so much less time to eat than it does to cook.

I don’t mind that, not least because I always relish a bit of pottering about in the kitchen, it’s the only time I ever get to myself. But also, I confess to an affinity with that Victorian worldview, the constant harping on the inevitability of decline - “the woods decay, the woods decay and fall”, that sort of thing - and the reminders that all things go back into the earth or up to the heavens. I don’t resist the implacable cycle of meals, the kitchen grind.

- Nigella Lawson (Nigella Express, Against the Clock)