M.F.K. Fisher, in the intro. to the 1951 revision of her 1942 book about how to live during wartime rationing, How to Cook a Wolf, says:

"There are very few men or women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever the extravagance of the Twenties. They will forever feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts."

I always think about that quote when I make fagioli all Frantoiana, basic Tuscan white beans done in a clay pot for 20-24 hours in a slow oven. I made a batch this weekend and it's the best aroma therapy I know.