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41 " He draws asparagus and cabbages, but he's obsessed with artichokes. He draws them more than any other vegetable. Why artichokes?"George drained his glass. "The artichoke is a sexy beast. Thorns to cut you, leaves to peel, lighter and lighter as you strip away the outer layers, until you reach the soft heart's core. "
― Allegra Goodman , The Cookbook Collector
42 " She had applied to college without her parents' knowledge, and when she got her choral scholarship she broke from childhood, choosing music as her religion.Emily and Jess pressed him, but they didn't understand. Their mother's life began when she came up to Cambridge on her own. "It's like a fairyland here," she used to say, when they walked through the ancient cloisters. She was a quiet rebel, buying a Liberty-dress pattern and sewing her own gown for the Emmanuel College ball, dancing until dawn, and then slipping barefoot onto the velvet lawns reserved for Fellows. As a soprano she sang for services and feasts. As an adventurer, she tried champagne for the first time and pork loin and frog's legs. "
43 " You think there's something materialistic about collecting books, but really collectors are the last romantics. We're the only ones who still love books as objects.""That's the question," said Jess. "How do you love them if you're always selling them?""I don't sell everything," he said. "You haven't seen my own collection.""What do you have?""First editions. Yeats, Dickinson- all three volumes; Eliot, Pound, Millay..." He had noticed the books she read in the store. "Plath. I also have Elizabeth Bishop.""I wish I could see them," Jess said."You would have come to my house.""Are you inviting me?" She must have known this was a loaded question, but she asked without flirtatiousness or self-consciousness, as if to say, I only want to know as a point of information.Yes, he thought, I'm inviting you, but he did not say yes. He was her employer. She could act with a certain plucky independence, but he would always be the big bad wolf. "
44 " Giddy with each other and the wine, they strolled outside through the Presidio, the old fort now housing restaurants and galleries. Jess explained that she wanted to devise a matrix for scarcity and abundance, frugality and profligacy. She thought that sweetness represented, and in some periods misrepresented, a sense of surplus and shared pleasure. "I don't think taste is purely biological," she said. "I think it's economically, historically, and culturally constructed as well. Sweetness means different things depending on availability, custom, farming, trade..."She was shivering, and George took off his jacket. "Here, sweetness." He helped her into it and laughed at the way her hands disappeared inside the sleeves."Context is key- so the question is, What carries over? What can we still know about sweet and sour? Bitterness. What persists from generation to generation? Do we taste the same things?"He kissed her, sucking her lower lip and then her tongue. "I think so," he said. "Yes. "
45 " There were three wedding cakes, curious and historical but tasty, each labeled with a calligraphed card:"Plumb Cake" with currants, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, salt, citron, orange peel candied, flour, eggs, yeast, wine, cream, raisins. Adapted from Mrs. Simmons, American Cookery, 1796."Curran-cake" with sugar, eggs, butter, flour, currans, brandy. Adapted from Mrs. McClintock, Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work, 1736."Chocolate Honeycake" with oil, unsweetened cocoa and baking chocolate, honey, eggs, vanilla, flour, salt, baking powder. Adapted from Mollie Katzen, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, 1982. "