Baking Business Quotes

I'll be busy for the next eight weeks, so let's set this for November 15th. MENU I want lamb or venison steak. Baked potatoes with honey butter. Corn on the cob. Rolls. And apple pie, like the one you made before. I really liked it. I want it with ice cream. You owe me one naked dinner, but I'm not a complete beast, so you can wear a bra and panties if you so wish. The blue ones with the bow will do. Curran, Beast Lord of Atlanta

...I've made it my business to observe fathers and daughters. And I've seen some incredible, beautiful things. Like the little girl who's not very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father holds her hand and walks with her like she's a tiny angel that no one can touch. He gives her the best gift a woman can get in this world: protection. And the little girl learns to trust the man in her life. And all the things that the world expects from women - to be beautiful, to soothe the troubled spirit, heal the sick, care for the dying, send the greeting card, bake the cake - allof those things become the way we pay the father back for protecting us...

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight... [Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

Peeta smiles and douses Haymitch's knife in white liquor from a bottle on the floor. He wipes the blade clean on his shirt tail and slices the bread. Peeta keeps all of us in fresh baked goods. I hunt. He bakes. Haymitch drinks. We have our own ways to stay busy, to keep thought of our time as contestants in the Hunger Games at bay.

That was sex for you -- it only got really good when you didn't care how undignified the whole business was.

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak's thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers. Some crows come overhead then, three or four, not a murder, on the wing, silent with intent, corn-bound for the pasture's wire beyond which one horse smells at the other's behind, the lead horse's tail obligingly lifted. Your shoes' brand incised in the dew. An alfalfa breeze. Socks' burrs. Dry scratching inside a culvert. Rusted wire and tilted posts more a symbol of restraint than a fence per se. NO HUNTING. The shush of the interstate off past the windbreak. The pasture's crows standing at angles, turning up patties to get at the worms underneath, the shapes of the worms incised in the overturned dung and baked by the sun all day until hardened, there to stay, tiny vacant lines in rows and inset curls that do not close because head never quite touches tail. Read these.

Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another. By covering our bases financially, we escape the pressure to publish half-baked books, sell shoddy art, or launch untested businesses.

Half-baked ideas that might seem too big even for the naïfs at TED Conferences—that Woodstock of the intellectual effete—sit rather comfortably on Silicon Valley’s business plans.

Remember that when a women gets the job you wanted or dates that bloke you fancied or wears a dress you loved but couldn't afford, she hasn't taken anything from you. There is time and space for you to do it too. One of the cleverest things the patriarchy did was make us believe that there is only one tiny sliver of success cake available; that we all have to fight over it; that a woman who tramples on her competitors to chow it down first is somehow 'ruthless' or to borrow a phrase from Apprentice-ese, 'a natural business mind.' This is a scare-mongering lie. There are so many cakes to eat. And if you can't find the slice you want, try baking one. Cake for everyone! Let them eat cake! I've got lost in the metaphor.

American business at this point is really about developing an idea, making it profitable, selling it while it's profitable and then getting out or diversifying. It's just about sucking everything up. My idea was: Enjoy baking, sell your bread, people like it, sell more. Keep the bakery going because you're making good food and people are happy.

People do not buy fortune cookies because they taste better than every other cookie on the shelf. They buy them for the delight they deliver at the end of a meal. Marketers spend most of their time selling the cookie, when what they should be doing is finding a way to create a better fortune. Of course your job is to bake a good cookie, the very best that you can, but you must also spend time figuring out how to tell a great story.

When she was widowed, there were still pleasing qualities in her, suitable for an unpretentious everyday life, and people sent matchmakers to her, but she declined any new matrimony and busied herself with the baking of savory pies.

Too Busy I've folded all my laundry and put it in the drawer. I've changed my linen, made my bed, and swept my bedroom floor. I've emptied out the garbage and fixed tomorrow's lunch. I've baked some cookies for dessert and given dad a munch. I've searched the house for pencils and sharpened every one. There are so many things to do when homework must be done.

He was now suddenly hot, as hot as if he’d been in a kitchen baking cinnamon rolls in August. I already knew vampires could sweat, under certain conditions, like being chained to a wall of a house with sunlight coming in through the windows. He was sweating again now. Some of his sweat fell on me. I’ve always rather liked sweat. On other occasions when I’ve had a naked, sweating male body up against mine, I’ve tended to feel that it meant he was getting into what was going on. This usually produces a similar enthusiasm in me. Not that there was anything going on…exactly. Yet. Remember how fast and suddenly this was all happening. And if he was in shock so was I. Maybe my brain hadn’t fully come with me in that zap through the void, like my clothes manifestly hadn’t. With a truly masterful erection now pressed against me I turned my head again and licked his sweating shoulder. What happened next probably lasted about ten seconds. Maybe less. I don’t think I heard the sound he made; I think I only felt it. He moved his hands again, to tip my face toward him, and kissed me. I can’t say I noticed any fangs. I had the lingering vestige of sense not to try anything clever with my teeth, which with a human lover I would have. But I was nonetheless busy with tongue and hands. I wriggled a little under him. I kissed him back as he tangled his fingers in my hair. I arched up off the floor a trifle to press myself more thoroughly against him. I was undoubtedly making some noises of my own…

(It should be noted that the Honorable Guild of Evil Warlords has worked very hard to counter the negative stereotype of its members. After several dozen bake sales and charity auctions, someone suggested that they remove the word evil from the title of their organization. The suggestion was eventually rejected on account of Gurstak the Ruthless having just ordered a full box of embossed business cards.) The

Now, this is my little public service announcement: If you get invited to something, it's incumbent upon you to RSVP as soon as possible. A quick “no” is better than a long “maybe.” People go to a lot of trouble to plan a party, and it's a big deal to open up your home. What's more, it's essential to show up if you say you will. I have a busy life, but I still don't cancel unless it's a superduper emergency – I'm talking hospital-visit, in-the-newspapers-the-next-day emergency. Being tired just isn't a good enough excuse. C'mon! Make an effort! One trick I use to determine whether or not to say yes to an invite is: Would I want to go right then and there? If the party were that second, would I get dressed and rush out of the house to go to the party? If the answer is yes, I probably do want to go, but if the answer is no, I don't accept the invitation.

THERE WILL COME A DAY . . . There will come a day when she no longer wants to hold my hand. So I will hold it while I still can. There will come a day when she no longer tells me what’s on her mind. So I will listen while she still wants to talk to me. There will come a day when she no longer says, “Watch me, Mama!” So I will observe and encourage while I still can. There will come a day when she no longer invites me to eat school lunch with her. So I will join her while I still can. There will come a day when she no longer needs my help to bake cookies or hit the tennis ball in the sweet spot. So I will stand beside her gently guiding and instructing while I still can. There will come a day when she no longer wants my opinion about clothes, friendship, death, and heaven. So I will share my views while she still wants to hear them. There will come a day when she no longer allows me to hear her prayers and her dreams. So I will fold my hands and absorb every word while I still can. There will come a day when she no longer sleeps with her beloved stuffed animal. And that day may come sooner than I think. Because sometimes unexpected events happen, causing the days to rush by, the years to tumble ahead. Sometimes what I thought I would have time to do, Like listen to her laugh, Wipe her tears, Breathe her scent, And hold her close, Will no longer be available to me. What I thought I had all the time in the world to do, May no longer be an option. The little pink dog that my child must now learn to sleep without after eight precious years reminds me that tomorrow may not allow for all the things I planned to do. So instead of being too busy, Too tired, Or too distracted when she seeks my love and attention, I will be ready and waiting To make her a well-loved child While I still can.

We learn to keep busy again. Peeta bakes. I hunt.

Cookie cutters are for baking, not branding.

I hunt. He bakes. Haymitch drinks. We have our own ways to stay busy,

Here’s the deal, my friend: Profit is not an event. Profit is not something that happens at year-end or at the end of your five-year plan or someday. Profit isn’t even something that waits until tomorrow. Profit must happen now and always. Profit must be baked into your business. Every day, every transaction, every moment. Profit is not an event. Profit is a habit.

Since launching their business, The Sweethearts—as they’re known by their friends—have planned charity events for celebrities as illustrious as Benedict Cumberbatch, Niall Horan from One Direction, and Bake Off’s Paul Hollywood.

Starting Your Own Business for Dummies was on top. “That doesn’t mean I think you’re stupid or anything, you know,” Josh said as he handed me the books. “Yeah, I know,” I said, though I liked that he was the kind of person who’d check to make sure.

My father doesn't ask why I'm in the back after the first morning rush, making green and purple sugar paste for pan dulce. He's working on a batch of unicorn conchas, his latest stroke of genius, pan dulce covered with shells of pink, purple, and blue sugar that sell out every weekend.

I carried with me into the West End Bar, the White Horse Tavern, a long list of things I would never do: I would never have my hair set in a beauty parlor. I would never move to a suburb and bake cakes or make casseroles. I would never go to a country club dance, although I did like the paper lanterns casting rainbow colors on the terrace. I would never invest in the stock market. I would never play canasta. I would never wear pearls. I would love like a nursling but I would never go near a man who had a portfolio or a set of golf clubs or a business or even a business suit. I would only love a wild thing. I didn't care if wild things tended to break hearts. I didn't care if they substituted scotch for breakfast cereal. I understood that wild things wrote suicide notes to the gods and were apt to show up three hours later than promised. I understood that art was long and life was short.

I stopped by the super for the new key, climbed to my apartment, and studied my new lock. Big, metal, and shiny. Not a scratch on it. Even the key itself had a bizarre groove carved into it, which made the whole setup supposedly completely burglar proof. Pick that, Your Majesty. I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and shut it behind me. I kicked my shoes off, wincing at the hint of ache in my stomach. It would take a long time before it healed completely. At least I no longer bled. Tension fled from me. Tomorrow I would worry about Hugh d’Ambray and Andrea and Roland, but now I was simply happy. Aaahh. Home. My place, my smells, my familiar rug under my feet, my kitchen, my Curran in the kitchen chair . . . Wait a damn minute. “You!” I looked at the lock; I looked at him. So much for the burglar-proof door. He calmly finished writing something on a piece of paper, got up, and came toward me. My heart shot into overdrive. Little golden sparks laughed in his gray eyes. He handed me the piece of paper and smiled. “Can’t wait.” I just stared like an idiot. He inhaled my scent, opened the door, and left. I looked at the paper. I’ll be busy for the next eight weeks, so let’s set this for November 15th. Menu. I want lamb or venison steak. Baked potatoes with honey butter. Corn on the cob. Rolls. And apple pie, like the one you made before. I really liked it. I want it with ice cream. You owe me one naked dinner, but I’m not a complete beast, so you can wear a bra and panties if you so wish. The blue ones with the bow will do. Curran. Beast Lord of Atlanta.

The mighty Toyota Company was born from the ashes of a failed weaving business. And perhaps you have heard of Wrigley’s gum? William Wrigley started off his company trying to sell baking soda and soap, but he never turned a profit, and so he turned to making and selling chewing gum instead. These men share one thing in common—they were open to change and they listened to their intuition. Sometimes we hear a whisper in the air that guides us positively. This whisper we hear, it is not passive—it is a response to our own enthusiasm, passion, and commitment. We put in the effort and we get back a divine message. Call it inspiration if you want. Call it an entrepreneurial muse. But it feels and sounds like a whisper in your soul. If you hear it, listen to it. You must be willing to change course when it tells you to.

while we professors, lawyers, physicians, agronomists, artisans, instead of busying ourselves with books, legal papers, diagnoses, weather forecasts, machine parts, were making piles of bricks that we would be ordered to unpile the day following, that verse from Exodus came into my mind, the verse in which the children of Israel are forced to bake bricks for Pharaoh of Egypt to build the treasure cities of Pithom and Raamses.

She would be a cook! The very word delighted her. She would make herself busy in the downstairs of the household, butchering and baking, and doling out whatever was deserved. As she recalled incomparable dishes and counterfeit cures, she imagined herself the mistress of a great store of food. As big as a house, she dreamed it, a palace made of sugarplums, or a castle baked of cake. The serpent that would be a dragon must dine well. But could any store ever be vast enough, to sate her hunger for all she had lost?

If you want to work in a business, get a job in somebody else’s business! But don’t go to work in your own. Because while you’re working, while you’re answering the telephone, while you’re baking pies, while you’re cleaning the windows and the floors, while you’re doing it, doing it, doing it, there’s something much more important that isn’t getting done. And it’s the work you’re not doing, the strategic work, the entrepreneurial work, that will lead your business forward, that will give you the life you’ve not yet known.

In St. Patrick Town, we find the stubborn, sprightly residents all awake--the leprechaun I spoke to days before still in search of his lost pot of gold in the glen, rain clouds heavy in the distance, and rainbows gleaming above the treetops. In Valentine's Town, Queen Ruby is bustling through the streets, making sure the chocolatiers are busy crafting their confections of black velvet truffles and cherry macaroons, trying to make up for lost time, while her cupids still flock through town, wild and restless. The rabbits have resumed painting their pastel eggs in Easter Town. The townsfolk in Fourth of July Town are testing new rainbow sparklers and fireworks that explode in the formation of a queen's crown, in honor of the Pumpkin Queen who saved them all from a life of dreamless sleep. In Thanksgiving Town, everyone is preparing for the feast in the coming season, and the elves in Christmas Town have resumed assembling presents and baking powdered-sugar gingerbread cookies. And in Halloween Town, we have just enough time to finish preparations for the holiday: cobwebs woven together, pumpkins carved, and black tar-wax candles lit.

Asked me what?” Just the sound of his voice twists my stomach into a knot of unpleasant emotions like guilt, sadness, and fear. And longing. I might as well admit there’s some of that, too. Only it has too much competition to ever win out. I watch as Peeta crosses to the table, the sunlight from the window picking up the glint of fresh snow in his blond hair. He looks strong and healthy, so different from the sick, starving boy I knew in the arena, and you can barely even notice his limp now. He sets a loaf of fresh-baked bread on the table and holds out his hand to Haymitch. “Asked you to wake me without giving me pneumonia,” says Haymitch, passing over his knife. He pulls off his filthy shirt, revealing an equally soiled undershirt, and rubs himself down with the dry part. Peeta smiles and douses Haymitch’s knife in white liquor from a bottle on the floor. He wipes the blade clean on his shirttail and slices the bread. Peeta keeps all of us in fresh baked goods. I hunt. He bakes. Haymitch drinks. We have our own ways to stay busy, to keep thoughts of our time as contestants in the Hunger Games at bay. It’s not until he’s handed Haymitch the heel that he even looks at me for the first time. “Would you like a piece?” “No, I ate at the Hob,” I say. “But thank you.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own, it’s so formal. Just as it’s been every time I’ve spoken to Peeta since the cameras finished filming our happy homecoming and we returned to our real lives. “You’re welcome,” he says back stiffly. Haymitch tosses his shirt somewhere into the mess. “Brrr. You two have got a lot of warming up to do before showtime.” He’s right, of course. The audience will be expecting the pair of lovebirds who won the Hunger Games. Not two people who can barely look each other in the eye. But all I

Resource constrained instead of not enough people to do the job. Bake in the numbers instead of include. In the August timeframe instead of August. Tasked by the organization instead of assigned. The optics of the plan instead of how the plan will look. Double-click the point instead of emphasize. Drill down instead of analyze. Scope this out instead of check further. On a go-forward basis instead of in the future. Operationalized its goal, instead of achieved. Aggressively ramp headcount instead of hiring a lot of people. Or bandwidth — as in I don’t have the bandwidth (time) for that meeting or He doesn’t

Let me tell you youngins something. See yawl are half-baked like your fathers. The first mistake yawl made was coming to my place of business without hesitation. You don’t come in your enemy's territory because obviously I have shit set up to defend myself. Second, I’ll give yawl credit for doing something halfway smart. I know you two would have some of your own people in here posing as club goers, but I have people checked at the door. So, your men have been disarmed. Third you can’t make business moves with me, so I suggest you two drop this shit. Yawl quest for revenge is admirable but it’s over. I’ll let the other shit yawl have done to us slide as a fair pay for what we did to your fathers.” - Cyrus

I sprinkle some flour on the dough and roll it out with the heavy, wooden rolling pin. Once it’s the perfect size and thickness, I flip the rolling pin around and sing into the handle—American Idol style. “Calling Gloriaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . .” And then I turn around. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Without thinking, I bend my arm and throw the rolling pin like a tomahawk . . . straight at the head of the guy who’s standing just inside the kitchen door. The guy I didn’t hear come in. The guy who catches the hurling rolling pin without flinching—one-handed and cool as a gorgeous cucumber—just an inch from his perfect face. He tilts his head to the left, looking around the rolling pin to meet my eyes with his soulful brown ones. “Nice toss.” Logan St. James. Bodyguard. Totally badass. Sexiest guy I have ever seen—and that includes books, movies and TV, foreign and domestic. He’s the perfect combo of boyishly could-go-to-my-school kind of handsome, mixed with dangerously hot and tantalizingly mysterious. If comic-book Superman, James Dean, Jason Bourne and some guy with the smoothest, most perfectly pitched, British-Scottish-esque, Wessconian-accented voice all melded together into one person, they would make Logan fucking St. James. And I just tried to clock him with a baking tool—while wearing my Rick and Morty pajama short-shorts, a Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt I’ve had since I was eight and my SpongeBob SquarePants slippers. And no bra. Not that I have a whole lot going on upstairs, but still . . . “Christ on a saltine!” I grasp at my chest like an old woman with a pacemaker. Logan’s brow wrinkles. “Haven’t heard that one before.” Oh fuck—did he see me dancing? Did he see me leap? God, let me die now. I yank on my earbuds’ cord, popping them from my ears. “What the hell, dude?! Make some noise when you walk in—let a girl know she’s not alone. You could’ve given me a heart attack. And I could’ve killed you with my awesome ninja skills.” The corner of his mouth quirks. “No, you couldn’t.” He sets the rolling pin down on the counter. “I knocked on the kitchen door so I wouldn’t frighten you, but you were busy with your . . . performance.” Blood and heat rush to my face. And I want to melt into the floor and then all the way down to the Earth’s core.

This is an art I can enjoy. There is a kind of sorcery in all cooking; in the choosing of ingredients, the process of mixing, grating, melting, infusing, and flavoring, the recipes taken from ancient books, the traditional utensils- the pestle and mortar with which my mother made her incense turned to a more homely purpose, her spices and aromatics giving up their subtleties to a baser, more sensual magic. And it is partly the transience of it delights me; so much loving preparation, so much art and experience, put into a pleasure that can last only a moment, and which only a few will ever fully appreciate. My mother always viewed my interest with indulgent contempt. To her, food was no pleasure but a tiresome necessity to be worried over, a tax on the price of our freedom. I stole menus from restaurants and looked longingly into patisserie windows. I must have been ten years old- maybe older- before I first tasted real chocolate. But still the fascination endured. I carried recipes in my head like maps. All kinds of recipes: torn from abandoned magazines in busy railway stations, wheedled from people on the road, strange marriages of my own confection. Mother with her cards, her divinations, directed our mad course across Europe. Cookery cards anchored us, placed landmarks on the bleak borders. Paris smells of baking bread and croissants; Marseille of bouillabaisse and grilled garlic. Berlin was Eisbrei with sauerkraut and Kartoffelsalat, Rome was the ice cream I ate without paying in a tiny restaurant beside the river.

Cardan turns back to me, gazing down at me as he did in my imaginings. 'When you forced me into working for the Court of Shadows, I never thought of the things I could do- frightening people, charming people- as talents, no less ones that might be valuable. But you did. You showed me how to use them to be useful. I never minded being a minor villain, but it's possible I might have grown into something else, a High King as monstrous as Dain. And if I did- if I fulfilled the prophecy- I ought to be stopped. And I believe that you would stop me.' 'Stop you?' I echo. 'Sure. If you're a huge jerk and a threat to Elfhame, I'll pop your head right off.' 'Good.' His expression is wistful. 'That's one reason I didn't want to believe you'd joined up with Madoc. The other is that I want you here by my side, as my queen.' It's a strange speech, and there's little of love in it, but it doesn't seem like a trick, either. And if it stings a little that he admires me primarily for my ruthlessness, well, I suppose there should be some comfort that he admires me at all. He wants me with him, and maybe he wants me in other ways, too. Desiring more than that from him is just greed. He gives me a half smile. 'But now that you're High Queen and back in charge, I won't be doing anything of consequence anyway. If I destroy the crown and ruin the throne, it will only be through neglect.' That startles a laugh out of me. 'So that's your excuse for not doing any of the work? You must be draped in decadence at all times because if you aren't kept busy, you might fulfil some half-baked prophecy?' 'Exactly.

It was a busy time of day in Aleppo. Parents stopping by for a coffee on the way to picking up the kids from school; the self-employed sneaking out for a break from their own four walls; a quartet of pensioners who met every day to while away an hour playing dominos; and the Syrian refugees who had nowhere else to go that had the feel of home. There wasn’t a free table, and Karen ended up on a stool at the counter. She wasn’t in the mood for more coffee, so she ordered a sparkling water and a couple of ma’amoul. Amena served her, gesturing to the star-shaped pastries studded with almonds and sesame seeds. ‘Fresh baked this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Dates or figs?’ Amena smiled. ‘Dates, how you like them.’ Karen bit into the pastry and savoured the burst of flavour that filled her mouth. ‘Oh, that’s the business,

The page begins with the person’s picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or painting by Peeta. Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. Lady licking Prim’s cheek. My father’s laugh. Peeta’s father with the cookies. The color of Finnick’s eyes. What Cinna could do with a length of silk. Boggs reprogramming the Holo. Rue poised on her toes, arms slightly extended, like a bird about to take flight. On and on. We seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well to make their deaths count. Haymitch finally joins us, contributing twenty-three years of tributes he was forced to mentor. Additions become smaller. An old memory that surfaces. A late primrose preserved between the pages. Strange bits of happiness, like the photo of Finnick and Annie’s newborn son. We learn to keep busy again. Peeta bakes. I hunt. Haymitch drinks until the liquor runs out, and then raises geese until the next train arrives. Fortunately, the geese can take pretty good care of themselves. We’re not alone. A few hundred others return because, whatever has happened, this is our home. With the mines closed, they plow the ashes into the earth and plant food. Machines from the Capitol break ground for a new factory where we will make medicines. Although no one seeds it, the Meadow turns green again. Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that. So after, when he whispers, “You love me. Real or not real?” I tell him, “Real.

Bread!--Yes, I think it might honestly be called bread that Walter Drake had ministered. It had not been free from chalk or potatoes: bits of shell and peel might have been found in it, with an occasional bit of dirt, and a hair or two; yes, even a little alum, and that is _bad_, because it tends to destroy, not satisfy the hunger. There was sawdust in it, and parchment-dust, and lumber-dust; it was ill salted, badly baked, sad; sometimes it was blue-moldy, and sometimes even maggoty; but the mass of it was honest flour, and those who did not recoil from the look of it, or recognize the presence of the variety of foreign matter, could live upon it, in a sense, up to a certain pitch of life. But a great deal of it was not of his baking at all--he had been merely the distributor--crumbling down other bakers' loaves and making them up again in his own shapes. In his declining years, however, he had been really beginning to learn the business. Only, in his congregation were many who not merely preferred bad bread of certain kinds, but were incapable of digesting any of high quality.

Avocado Brownies   Vegetables have always been used in desserts, but this avocado brownie is truly special because the avocado gives it a lot of moisture and a smooth, creamy consistency. Just a square of this and your taste buds will be in heaven.   Yields: 10 servings   Ingredients: 2 ripe avocados, mashed 1 cup dark chocolate (72% cocoa), melted 1/4 cup coconut oil 1/2 cup agave syrup 2 brown eggs 1 cup almond flour 1/4 cup organic unsweetened cocoa powder 1 pinch salt 1 teaspoon baking soda   Directions: 1. In a bowl, mix the avocados with the melted chocolate, then stir in the eggs, agave syrup and coconut oil. 2. Fold in the almond flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda. 3. Spoon the batter into a baking pan lined with parchment paper and bake in a preheated oven at 350F for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. If it comes out with traces of batter, the cake needs a few more minutes in the oven. 4. When done, remove from the oven and let it cool completely before cutting in smaller portions.   Nutritional information per serving   Calories: 280 Fat: 20.6g Protein: 5g Carbohydrates: 24.7g

She buys only the best couverture, from a fair trade supplier down near Marseille, and pays for it all in cash. A dozen blocks of each kind, to begin with, she says; but I already know from her eager response that a dozen blocks will not be enough. She used to make all her own stock, so she tells me, and though I'll admit I didn't quite believe it at first, the way she has thrown herself back into the business tells me that she was not exaggerating. The process is deft and peculiarly therapeutic to watch. First comes the melting and tempering of the raw couverture: the process that enables it to leave its crystalline state and take on the glossy, malleable form necessary to make the chocolate truffles. She does it all on a granite slab, spreading out the melted chocolate like silk and gathering it back toward her using a spatula. Then it goes back into the warm copper, the process to be repeated until she declares it done. She rarely uses the sugar thermometer. She has been making chocolates for so long, she tells me, that she can simply sense when the correct temperature has been reached. I believe her; certainly over the past three days I have been watching her, she has never produced a less than flawless batch. During that time I have learned to observe with a critical eye: to check for streaks in the finished product; for the unappealing pale bloom that denotes incorrectly tempered chocolate; for the high gloss and sharp snap that are the indicators of good-quality work.

Galveston?” he asked in that amazing voice, still surprising me by keeping our conversation going. “Yeah. Staying at a beach house and everything. Totally slumming it and having a miserable time, you know?” I gave him a real smile that time. Rip just raised his brows. “I promised her I would go visit, and she promised she would come up too... What’s that face for?” I surprised myself by laughing. “I don’t believe it either. I’ll get lucky if she comes once. I’m not that delusional.” I didn’t imagine the way his cheek twitched again, just a little, just enough to keep the smile on my face. “I’m stuck making my own lunches from now on. I have nobody to watch scary movies with who’s more dramatic than I am screaming at the scary parts. And my house is empty,” I told him, going on a roll. “Your lunches?” was what he picked up on. I wasn’t sure how much he’d had to drink that he was asking me so many questions, but I wasn’t going to complain. “I can’t cook to save my life, boss. I thought everyone knew. Baking is the only thing I can handle.” “You serious?” he asked in a surprised tone. I nodded. “For real?” “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I can’t even make rice in an Instant Pot. It’s either way too dry or it’s mush.” Oh. “An Instant Pot is—” “I know what it is,” he cut me off. It was my turn to make a face, but mine was an impressed one. He knew what an Instant Pot was but not a rom-com. Okay. “Sorry.” He didn’t react to me trying to tease him, instead he asked, “You can’t even make rice in that?” “Nope.” “You know there’s instructions online.” Was he messing with me now? I couldn’t help but watch him a little. How much had he drunk already? “Yeah, I know.” “And you still screw it up?” I blinked, soaking up Chatty Cathy over here like a plant that hadn’t seen the sun in too long. “I wouldn’t say I screw it up. It’s more like… you either need to chew a little more or a little less.” It was his turn to blink. “It’s a surprise. I like to keep people on their toes.” If I hadn’t been guessing that he’d had a couple drinks before, what he did next would have confirmed it. His left cheek twitched. Then his right one did too, and in the single blink of an eye, Lucas Ripley was smiling at me. Straight white teeth. That not-thin but not-full mouth dark pink and pulled up at the edges. He even had a dimple. Rip had a freaking dimple. And I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. I couldn’t help but think it was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen, even though I had zero business thinking anything along those lines. But I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t say a single word to mention it; otherwise, it might never come out again. What I did trust myself to do was gulp down half of my Sprite before saying, “You can make rice, I’m guessing?” If he wanted to talk, we could talk. I was good at talking. “Uh-huh,” he replied, sounding almost cocky about it. All I could get myself to do in response was grin at him, and for another five seconds, his dimple—and his smile—responded to me.

We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit. And if our bosses proved mean, why then we’d evoke their whole and genuine meanness afterward over vodka cranberries and small batch bourbons. And if our drinking companions proved to be sublime then we would stagger home at dawn over the Old City cobblestones, into hot showers and clean shirts, and press onward until dusk fell again. For the rest of the world, it seemed to us, had somewhat hastily concluded that it was the chief end of man to thank God it was Friday and pray that Netflix would never forsake them. Still we lived frantically, like hummingbirds; though our HR departments told us that our commitments were valuable and our feedback was appreciated, our raises would be held back another year. Like gnats we pestered Management— who didn’t know how to use the Internet, whose only use for us was to set up Facebook accounts so they could spy on their children, or to sync their iPhones to their Outlooks, or to explain what tweets were and more importantly, why— which even we didn’t know. Retire! we wanted to shout. We ha Get out of the way with your big thumbs and your senior moments and your nostalgia for 1976! We hated them; we wanted them to love us. We wanted to be them; we wanted to never, ever become them. Complexity, complexity, complexity! We said let our affairs be endless and convoluted; let our bank accounts be overdrawn and our benefits be reduced. Take our Social Security contributions and let it go bankrupt. We’d been bankrupt since we’d left home: we’d secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn’t believe in and that we expected yesterday. Instead of three meals a day, we’d drink coffee for breakfast and scavenge from empty conference rooms for lunch. We had plans for dinner. We’d go out and buy gummy pad thai and throat-scorching chicken vindaloo and bento boxes in chintzy, dark restaurants that were always about to go out of business. Those who were a little flush would cover those who were a little short, and we would promise them coffees in repayment. We still owed someone for a movie ticket last summer; they hadn’t forgotten. Complexity, complexity. In holiday seasons we gave each other spider plants in badly decoupaged pots and scarves we’d just learned how to knit and cuff links purchased with employee discounts. We followed the instructions on food and wine Web sites, but our soufflés sank and our baked bries burned and our basil ice creams froze solid. We called our mothers to get recipes for old favorites, but they never came out the same. We missed our families; we were sad to be rid of them. Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to decrypt our neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords and to never turn on the air-conditioning. We vowed to fall in love: headboard-clutching, desperate-texting, hearts-in-esophagi love. On the subways and at the park and on our fire escapes and in the break rooms, we turned pages, resolved to get to the ends of whatever we were reading. A couple of minutes were the day’s most valuable commodity. If only we could make more time, more money, more patience; have better sex, better coffee, boots that didn’t leak, umbrellas that didn’t involute at the slightest gust of wind. We were determined to make stupid bets. We were determined to be promoted or else to set the building on fire on our way out. We were determined to be out of our minds.

The occult town was vibrant, busy with fiddles playing themselves on street corners, and enchanted paper lanterns hanging mysteriously string-less in the dead of night. Lycanthropes chattered with each other in alleyways between the hotels and inns. Fairies stalked in the shadows, preying on unfortunate cats and mice. Hearty Elves with round bellies and rosy smiles worked late into the night, pushing their wooden carts filled with baked goods and meats.

As a result, we will allow profanity. However, this does not mean that you can use profanity to intimidate, sexually harass people, or do other bad things. In this way, profanity is no different from other language. For example, consider the word ‘cupcakes.’ It’s fine for me to say to Shannon, ‘Those cupcakes you baked look delicious.’ But it is not okay for me to say to Anthony, ‘Hey, Cupcakes, you look mighty fine in them jeans.’ ” And that was all I said about that.

Great, but maybe you should mind your own damn business,” I snap. He’s standing there in his normal, causal stance with his hands in his pockets, his stupid sexy glasses hanging off his stupid sexy nose. “Wow, someone’s uptight this morning. Monday blues? You know, I know of something that can ease that tension.” God the nerve. How does he get away with it? I take a few menacing steps towards him, but he never drops that smile. “You know. You may have everyone fooled here. But not me. Ohhhh no! I see right through you. The ‘I’m just this nice innocent science teacher, who compliments old ladies’ cardigans and plays with baking soda and test tubes’. But nope. I know the real you. The condescending type. Thinks all highly of himself. With his big bad muscles and fake—” Peter grabs for me, pulling me into his classroom. The door shuts behind him and my back is thrown against the wall and his mouth is on mine. I spend a half-second thinking of fighting him off before I fight him in a different way, kissing him just as aggressively. God this is so hot. What is wrong with me!? His movement is quick and brutal. He doesn’t bother asking, but takes, as he spreads my legs with his knees, his hands hiking up my skirt. His mouth breaks from mine, his breath caressing my earlobe as he speaks. “We have exactly three minutes before that bell rings. Now you can waste it, or you can enjoy what I’m most definitely going to.” I don’t say a word, because his hand on my thigh is burning a hole through my skin. My silence is his green light, and he raises his hand, pushing my panties aside. The smirk on his face has a lot to do with the realization that I’m already soaking wet. He uses my juices to spread me open then pushing a thick finger inside. His mouth back on mine abusing my lips with his touch while his finger fucks me, in and out, the pleasure, heavenly. “Two minutes,” he says between nips and licks, his finger pulling out and two entering me. God, this is messed up, but so hot. I’m so turned on; my hands are pulling at his hair. “One minute,” he moans into my mouth and I find myself riding his hand thrust for thrust. It’s like I can hear the seconds ticking by, knowing that if I don’t come before that minute ends I will die. “Thirty seconds,” he murmurs across my lips and his pressure increases, his pumps wild, my back riding up and down the wall. He starts counting down from ten, the numbers getting louder and louder in my brain as he slams a third finger inside me and hooks, putting pressure on just the right spot. I explode. I squeeze his fingers so tight and come all over his hand, just as he grunts out the number one. We both hear the bell sound and he pulls out, adjusting my skirt. Taking his fingers into his mouth, he sucks off my juices, never taking his eyes off me. Before I can say anything, the doorknob begins to jiggle. Light appears from the outside and the door opens as a sea of children scatter in. “Thank you Ms. Gretchen, I will most definitely try out three finger servings of baking soda in today’s explosion experiment.” Smiling heftily at me, “But, you should really be getting to class now. The precious youth is waiting for you.” With that he holds his door open, and in a daze, I walk past him. What the fuck…

Demeter's Grove was a "new age" kind of store, as they were calling them these days, and Autumn sold everything from incense and candles to especially elemental stones to clothing to books. She was used to inviting all kinds of strangers and friends into her kitchen; demonstrations- cooking, baking, tincture or poultice-making- were another dimension of her business.

chose their low prices over my painfully handcrafted selection of cookies, cupcakes, and pastries. Thus the ever growing pile of bills on my kitchen table. And I thought going into business for myself at age twenty-five was going to be glamorous. Now she was here. I bristled as she approached with bull-like intensity, her eyes focused on my table, waiting for her to cast more disparaging comments. She pointed to a fresh baked pie on my table. "I'll have a slice of that." My face stretched into a wide smile. "Really?" Her coin purse paused in midair. "Are you trying to turn away a customer?

There are many potential explanations for the less-than-robust performance, but IBM’s current strategy suggests that one component at least is a challenge to the traditional shrink-wrapped software business. As much as any software provider in the industry, IBM’s software business was optimized and built for a traditional enterprise procurement model. This typically involves lengthy evaluations of software, commonly referred to as “bake-offs,” followed by the delivery of a software asset, which is then installed and integrated by some combination of buyer employees, IBM services staff, or third-party consultants. This model, as discussed previously, has increasingly come under assault from open source software, software offered as a pure service or hosted and managed on public cloud infrastructure, or some combination of the two. Following the multi-billion dollar purchase of Softlayer, acquired to beef up IBM’s cloud portfolio, IBM continued to invest heavily in two major cloud-related software projects: OpenStack and Cloud Foundry. The latter, which is what is commonly referred to as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering, may give us both an idea of how IBM’s software group is responding to disruption within the traditional software sales cycle and their level of commitment to it. Specifically, IBM’s implementation of Cloud Foundry, a product called Bluemix, makes a growing portion of IBM’s software portfolio available as a consumable service. Rather than negotiate and purchase software on a standalone basis, then, IBM customers are increasingly able to consume the products in a hosted fashion.

To tell you the truth, I'm curious about this place now. I wouldn't mind exploring. What do you know about it?" "I haven't been in here in years," he said. "I liked coming here as a kid. There was always something to eat, always something interesting to look at, like a puzzle of bent nails or one of Magnus's boxes, things made of beeswax from the local hives." "Isabel said her grandmother used to be in charge of the shop." Gratefully she buried her nose in the fleecy lining of his jacket. 'I'm such a goner,' she thought, lost in the scent of him. "During the harvest season, it was a busy place. Eva sold produce from the orchards, local honey, baked goods, freshly pressed cider.... Man, I'll never forget her cider and homemade donuts.

Setting out some honey shortbread cookies to go with the lemonade, she flashed on memories of her grandmother, offering refreshments to anyone who was lucky enough to come through the kitchen door. As a working farm, Bella Vista was always busy with workers, some seasonal and others permanent. 'In my kitchen, everyone is family,' Bubbie used to say, beaming as the orchard workers, mechanics or gardeners gladly wolfed down her baked goods.

Sorrel watched fascinated as Delphine set out a row of glass bowls and filled them with all the ingredients for her meal. On one wonderfully scarred baking sheet she placed all the chopped and minced vegetables she needed: carrots and celery, onions, shallots, and leeks, mushrooms and minced garlic. On the next she arrayed two cut-up chickens and on the third were beakers of wine and stock, saucers of softened butter and herbs, stripped and cleaned from their stems. Finally, a mortar of finely ground salt beside two bowls of coarse ground pepper and flaky Maldon sea salt. "Coq au vin, only with white wine," Delphine announced. "It is too warm for red, and we are too busy to be made drowsy with heavy food.

Amish Baked Oatmeal I would love to boast that I was taught how to make this breakfast dish by my Amish friend three farms over, but that isn’t the case. Instead, I learned how to make it from fellow homeschooling moms--which, if you don’t happen to live near an Amish community, is the next best thing. Homeschooling moms are rich with ideas for recipes that are quick, easy, nutritious, and gol-darn delicious…and that just so happens to be the exact Merriam-Webster definition for Amish Baked Oatmeal! This is pretty much an oatmeal cookie that decided to defect to the breakfast category, and I’m so very glad it did. It’s super easy to make, too!

On a smoggy spring day, the midday sun baked two California Highway Patrolmen in dark blue uniforms and a bearded dirt biker astride his Yamaha. They stood on a dirt road between the San Andreas barren earthquake faulted hills crisscrossed with biker’s trails. The sergeant stood next to the still body of Eduardo Sanchez, a thirteen-year-old boy clad in a t-shirt and oversized shorts, lying on his back with three bullet wounds and powder burns tattooed on his forehead. An astonished look captured his small immature cold face.

Highly innovative companies don’t necessarily generate more ideas than their less innovative counterparts (good ideas are in plentiful supply for all companies). But highly innovative companies are more receptive to ideas—and not only to their own ideas but to ideas from everywhere. Furthermore, they do something about the ideas. Not that an innovative company executes every single idea, but it is much more likely to act quickly on a partly baked idea than to spend countless hours deliberating about all the reasons it can’t work.

It smelled of baking cakes, which sent her back to the kitchen of her childhood, coming home from school to find her mother in the kitchen, making cookies... but it also smelled medicinal, and that made her think of being ill and being looked after when she was tucked in bed. Then there were spices, and a faint hint of Christmas---nutmeg, perhaps, and cloves---but underneath all of those was something else, something insidiously smooth and emollient, like vanilla or eucalyptus. She had a sudden memory of kissing her father's cheek as he bent to say good night, the rasp of his five-o'clock shadow and that smell... She had it now: it was the smell of his cologne, the smell of his business suits, the smell of her parents' bedroom and the big double bed and the terrifying, dark thought of what went on there. But after another moment she relaxed. There were comforting smells in there too: apples and brandy and crisp butter pastry and cinnamon.

Tonight's lesson was a breadcrumb cake, and the idea that so many Italian desserts were less about being impressive---as so many French recipes were---than about being resourceful. "After all," I said, "tiramisu is just cookies dipped in coffee and liqueur, layered with custard." For the breadcrumb cake, I walked them through how to make the breadcrumbs. "There's no sense in buying breadcrumbs, not in that quantity." We sliced the crusts off of the bread together, toasted the slices lightly, and ran the bread through the food processor. Afterward, we grated the dark chocolate, peeled and sliced the pears, cracked eggs, and measured cream. The thick batter came together quickly, and we placed them into the ovens. While the cakes baked, I walked them through the pasta fritta alla Siracusa, the angel-hair pasta twirls fried in a shallow amount of oil. We boiled up the pasta, then stirred together honey and candied orange before chopping pistachios and adding some cinnamon. One by one, they dropped the knotted pasta into the oil and cooked them on both sides. After draining them, we drizzled the honey mixture over the top, followed by a sprinkle of the pistachios and cinnamon. The process of frying the pasta bundles, one by one, kept everyone busy until the breadcrumb cakes finished baking.

It’s irrational to think that a cake baked without sugar will come out of the oven tasting sweet. In life and business, bake your values in from the start. Value your time, don't time your values.

and I even buy olives once in a while.”22 Bob’s staff, business partners, and customers were barely aware of the silent partner who held his world together. Shirleigh tirelessly answered every call to duty, from packing theremin kits or feeding 30 seminar participants on a $35-a-month food budget, to balancing the company books. She managed every household and mothering duty—cleaning, canning, cooking, baking, laundry, naptime, trips to the library, bedtime stories—and stole a few spare moments for herself to read a magazine. Her cycle of chores ran in a never-ending loop. Her situation, whether she realized it or not, typified the plight of most American women of her generation.

As we continued to meet with Jeff, we tried various kinds of spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides to present and explore our ideas, none of which seemed to be particularly effective. At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, Jeff suggested a different approach for the next meeting. Forget the spreadsheets and slides, he said. Instead, each team member would write a narrative document. In it, they would describe their best idea for a device or service for the digital media business. The next meeting arrived, and we all showed up with our narratives. (As mentioned, ours was one of several teams involved in the early experimentation with narratives at the company. They were not yet official Amazon policy.) We distributed them and read them to ourselves and then discussed them, one after another. One proposed an e-book reader that would use new E Ink screen technology. Another described a new take on the MP3 player. Jeff wrote his own narrative about a device he called the Amazon Puck. It would sit on your countertop and could respond to voice commands like, “Puck. Please order a gallon of milk.” Puck would then place the order with Amazon. The great revelation of this process was not any one of the product ideas. As we’ve described in chapter four, the breakthrough was the document itself. We had freed ourselves of the quantitative demands of Excel, the visual seduction of PowerPoint, and the distracting effect of personal performance. The idea had to be in the writing. Writing up our ideas was hard work. It required us to be thorough and precise. We had to describe features, pricing, how the service would work, why consumers would want it. Half-baked thinking was harder to disguise on the written page than in PowerPoint slides. It could not be glossed over through personal charm in the presentation. After we started using the documents, our meetings changed. There was more meat and more detail to discuss, so the sessions were livelier and longer. We weren’t so focused on the pro forma P&L and projected market segment share. We talked at length about the service itself, the experience, and which products and services we thought would appeal most to the customer.

We only have five minutes before dessert's ready," she protests. "I can do a lot to you in five minutes, sweetheart." "Then what are you waiting for, boyfriend?" He moves with purpose, hooking his hands around her thighs so that he can lift her up and lay her down on the kitchen table. The dishes have already been cleared, save for a pair of forks that clink together with the sudden movement. His skillful hands make quick work of the front of her jeans, tugging them off hurriedly before kneeling on the kitchen tile between her thighs. They've already eaten dinner, but he's ravenous. With the time now sitting at four minutes and thirty seconds, he wastes no more time and dips down to enjoy his meal. The sounds she makes. Alexander's so hard, it's almost painful. He teases her with his tongue, his fingers; makes his business her pleasure. Eden reaches her peak just as the timer on the oven beeps. Alexander can't help but smirk at himself. He always knew he worked well under pressure. "Mmph, thank you for that," Eden mumbles. "Sit tight. I'll go get dessert." "I've already had dessert." She rolls her eyes. "Cheesy." Alexander reclaims his seat just as Eden returns with a piping hot baking dish. It's a layer of molten chocolate topped with a gooey marshmallow layer and a buttery graham cracker crust. She also retrieves a tub of vanilla bean ice cream from the fridge and a can of whipped cream... Which she immediately sprays all over his chest. He's momentarily shocked by the cold, but then Eden gets on her knees with that mischievous glint in her eye that he adores so much. "Food needs to cool," she reasons. "We've got time to kill.

Interdisciplinary research is risky business. It entails importing technical concepts from many specialized fields and then tying them together, often metaphorically. Settling on the right level of detail is tricky. How much molecular biology is necessary to make a point? How much is sufficient to satisfy relevant experts that I have done my homework? A psychologist might be put off by more molecular biology than is needed, while a molecular biologist might be put off by omission of the nuances of the field. In this, the book can be at once too scholarly for some and not scholarly enough for others. This challenge is baked into all interdisciplinary research, and the more interdisciplinary the research, the more prominent the challenge.

This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. My personal experience with Nazi monkey business was limited. There were some vile and lively native American Fascists in my home town of Indianapolis during the thirties, and somebody slipped me a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I remember, which was supposed to be the Jews' secret plan for taking over the world. And I remember some laughs about my aunt, too, who married a German German, and who had to write to Indianapolis for proofs that she had no Jewish blood. The Indianapolis mayor knew her from high school and dancing school, so he had fun putting ribbons and official seals all over the documents the Germans required, which made them look like eighteenth-century peace treaties. After a while the war came, and I was in it, and I was captured, so I got to see a little of Germany from the inside while the war was still going on. I was a private, a battalion scout, and, under the terms of the Geneva Convention, I had to work for my keep, which was good, not bad. I didn't have to stay in prison all the time, somewhere out in the countryside. I got to go to a city, which was Dresden, and to see the people and the things they did. There were about a hundred of us in our particular work group, and we were put out as contract labor to a factory that was making a vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. It tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke. It was good. I wish I had some right now. And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an 'open' city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there. But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945, just about twenty-one years ago, as I now write. There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground. And then hundreds of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, and became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. And so what? We didn't get to see the fire storm. We were in a cool meat-locker under a slaughterhouse with our six guards and ranks and ranks of dressed cadavers of cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep. We heard the bombs walking around up there. Now and then there would be a gentle shower of calcimine. If we had gone above to take a look, we would have been turned into artefacts characteristic of fire storms: seeming pieces of charred firewood two or three feet long - ridiculously small human beings, or jumbo fried grasshoppers, if you will. The malt syrup factory was gone. Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. So we were put to work as corpse miners, breaking into shelters, bringing bodies out. And I got to see many German types of all ages as death had found them, usually with valuables in their laps. Sometimes relatives would come to watch us dig. They were interesting, too. So much for Nazis and me. If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes. There's another clear moral to this tale, now that I think about it: When you're dead you're dead. And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.

Dina hummed to herself as she pulled out an empty jam jar from a busy cupboard. It was still labeled "Apricot Jam" from the batch her mum had made for her last year--- jam that tasted like bottled sunshine. There wasn't an exact science to the magic, but Dina often found that the best tea blends were ones she put into secondhand jars, ones that had been full of delicious, wonderful things. She clipped her curls out of her face and headed into the pantry. The walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with all manner of jars and boxes, all individually labeled in Dina's messy handwriting. She kept her spices together, along with other baking essentials like fish vanilla, cake flour, and a tin that was labeled "Eye of Newt" but actually contained nutmeg. Her tea selection had several shelves dedicated to it. Aside from the specialty blends she made for the shop, Dina kept a collection of tea and tisane ingredients, which she could mix into more personal blends at a moment's notice. Dina never felt more in her element as a kitchen witch than when she was looking through her pantry. Scott's tea blend needed to be something that encapsulated his energies yet also helped him in some way. A tea to drink in the middle of a long work day, Dina decided. She twirled a curl around her finger as she focused. She hadn't met any of his fellow curators yet, but from what Scott had told her they could be a bit of a handful. So the kind of tea that would help him get through a long meeting. Something to sharpen a tired mind. Dina knew just the thing for it. She scooped up several jars and laid them out on the counter before her. Black tea--- a full-bodied assam, cacao nibs, dried ginger and... it was missing something. Dina stepped back into the pantry and surveyed her shelves with her hands on her hips. She knew that this would need one more ingredient to be perfect for Scott. Lion's mane mushroom? Perhaps a little too earthy. Clove? Too heavy. It would overpower the other flavors. As her eyes skirted over the rows of jars, she spotted it. A small glass jar with a dark red powder in it. Dried beetroot! Perfect! Energizing yet slightly sweet and smooth, and it would make Scott look like he was drinking some kind of red-velvet-themed drink. Which was also his favorite cake flavor.

For spring and summer, Dina baked delicate and light pastries fragranced with rosewater, meskouta orange bundt cake, and delicate raspberry macarons. When strawberries were in season in early June, she made airy fraisier cake. For autumn and winter, Dina worked with heavier ingredients: thick, dark chocolate, cinnamon, cardamom, gingerbread, and pumpkin. As the days grew colder and the light dimmed earlier and earlier, people started to crave that feeling of warmth and comfort. And Dina would give that to them, even if only for a short while. One special bake for this season was a ginger and persimmon cake, yellowed with saffron strands, which Dina had bought on her last trip to Morocco, and fresh vanilla pods, their sweet scent so potent that it wafted across the café. This was in addition to all the regular pastries and cakes she had on offer, which were all recipes her mother had taught her to bake. The cake made with dark honey from the Atlas mountains was an all-time customer favorite. Dina had imbibed it with a very specific spell, a childhood memory of a time that she must have fallen asleep on a car ride home, and although she was a little too big to be carried, she remembered her father lifting her into his arms, her mother closing the car door softly so as not to wake her, then carrying her upstairs and tucking her into bed. When she'd been fashioning the spell for the first time, it had occurred to Dina that one day your parents put you down and they never picked you up again, and so she'd made the honey cake to recreate that feeling of childhood comfort. That sensation of someone taking the utmost care of you, holding you close, was a feeling that many in the rushing city of London didn't experience often. Sometimes she wondered if she was really in the business of café ownership, or if she was more of a fairy godmother in disguise. Undeniably, the magical pastries were great at keeping customers coming back for more, so that was a bonus on the businesswoman side of things.

Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another. By covering our bases financially, we escape the pressure to publish half-baked books, sell shoddy art, or launch untested businesses. When

By definition, new ventures call for a company to envision what is unknown, uncertain, and not yet obvious to the competition. The safe, reliable, predictable knowledge of the well-understood business has not yet emerged. Instead, managers must make do with assumptions about the possible futures on which new businesses are based. New ventures are undertaken with a high ratio of assumption to knowledge. With ongoing businesses, one expects the ratio to be the exact opposite. Because assumptions about the unknown generally turn out to be wrong, new ventures inevitably experience deviations—often huge ones—from their original planned targets. Indeed, new ventures frequently require fundamental redirection. Rather than trying to force startups into the planning methodologies for existing predictable and well-understood businesses, discovery-driven planning acknowledges that at the start of a new venture, little is known and much is assumed. When platform-based planning is used, assumptions underlying a plan are treated as facts—givens to be baked into the plan—rather than as best-guess estimates to be tested and questioned. Companies then forge ahead on the basis of those buried assumptions. In contrast, discovery-driven planning systematically converts assumptions into knowledge as a strategic venture unfolds. When new data are uncovered, they are incorporated into the evolving plan. The real potential of the venture is discovered as it develops—hence the term discovery-driven planning. The approach imposes disciplines different from, but no less precise than, the disciplines used in conventional planning.

marketing tells one story about the company, usually connected to corporate strategy at the senior level, while the products tell several stories, depending on a product manager’s vision of his or her own strategy.

The 49-year-old Bryant, who resembles a cereal box character himself with his wide eyes, toothy smile, and elongated chin, blames Kellogg's financial woes on the changing tastes of fickle breakfast eaters. The company flourished in the Baby Boom era, when fathers went off to work and mothers stayed behind to tend to three or four children. For these women, cereal must have been heaven-sent. They could pour everybody a bowl of Corn Flakes, leave a milk carton out, and be done with breakfast, except for the dishes. Now Americans have fewer children. Both parents often work and no longer have time to linger over a serving of Apple Jacks and the local newspaper. Many people grab something on the way to work and devour it in their cars or at their desks while checking e-mail. “For a while, breakfast cereal was convenience food,” says Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. “But convenience is relative. It's more convenient to grab a breakfast bar, yogurt, a piece of fruit, or a breakfast sandwich at some fast-food place than to eat a bowl of breakfast cereal.” People who still eat breakfast at home favor more laborintensive breakfasts, according to a recent Nielsen survey. They spend more time at the stove, preparing oatmeal (sales were up 3.5 percent in the first half of 2014) and eggs (up 7 percent last year). They're putting their toasters to work, heating up frozen waffles, French toast, and pancakes (sales of these foods were up 4.5 percent in the last five years). This last inclination should be helping Kellogg: It owns Eggo frozen waffles. But Eggo sales weren't enough to offset its slumping U.S. cereal numbers. “There has just been a massive fragmentation of the breakfast occasion,” says Julian Mellentin, director of food analysis at research firm New Nutrition Business. And Kellogg faces a more ominous trend at the table. As Americans become more healthconscious, they're shying away from the kind of processed food baked in Kellogg's four U.S. cereal factories. They tend to be averse to carbohydrates, which is a problem for a company selling cereal derived from corn, oats, and rice. “They basically have a carb-heavy portfolio,” says Robert Dickerson, senior packagedfood analyst at Consumer Edge. If such discerning shoppers still eat cereal, they prefer the gluten-free kind, sales of which are up 22 percent, according to Nielsen. There's also growing suspicion of packagedfood companies that fill their products with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For these breakfast eaters, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam may seem less like friendly childhood avatars and more like malevolent sugar traffickers.

The three main observactions - (1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; (2) it's now within reach economically; (3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market - seemed indisputable, especially baked up with heretofore unseen data.

the American journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote after trekking across much of China in 1940. No worse luck could befall a human being than to be born and live there, unless by some golden chance you happened to be born one of the .00000099 percent who had power, money, privilege (and even then, even then). I pitied them all, I saw no tolerable future for them, and I longed to escape away from what I had escaped into: the age-old misery, filth, hopelessness and my own claustrophobia inside that enormous country. Skinny, sweaty rickshaw pullers strained at their large-wheeled contraptions to provide transportation to the rich. The scenes of nearly naked coolies towing barges up canals and rivers, leaning so far against their harnesses as to be almost horizontal to the ground, were an emblem, picturesque and horrible at the same time, of the unrelenting strain of everyday life in China, as were such other standard images as the women with leathery skin barefoot in the muck planting and weeding, the farmers covered in sweat at the foot pumps along fetid canals or carrying their loads of brick or straw on balancing poles slung over their shoulders or moving slowly and patiently behind water buffalo pulling primitive plows. The fly-specked hospitals, the skinny, crippled beggars, the thousands and thousands of villages made of baked mud whose houses, as one visitor described them, were “smoky, with gray walls and black tiled roofs; the inhabitants, wearing the invariable indigo-dyed cloth … moving about their business in an inextricable confusion of scraggy chickens, pigs, dogs, and babies.

night, I got home and Clay stood in the kitchen cooking dinner for two.  I had to suppress the happy-dance I wanted to do and, instead, nonchalantly walked by him.  A note on the table from Rachel explained she had gone out with Peter and would be back late.  The note stressed alone. Since Clay’s last appearance, I’d thought of several questions to ask him—starting with his teeth—and hoped he wouldn’t get annoyed and go fur on me again.  I decided to ease him into my agenda. “Wow, I didn’t know you cooked.  It smells great.”  I set my messenger bag on a chair and hovered behind him, watching him work. He pulled baked potatoes from the oven.  To the side, two plates waited with steaming chicken breasts.  Seeing dinner almost ready, I grabbed flatware for us and sat down. “So, other than cooking, how did you keep yourself busy today?” He set a plate in front of me and sat down.  He pointed to the last batch of books I’d brought home that he had piled neatly on the table between us. “You read them all already?” He nodded. “That’s a lot to read in just five days.  Are you skipping chapters?” I teased. He glanced up at me then back down at his food.  Maybe I needed to work on my teasing.  I supposed smiling would have helped. “So,

Veteran Pillsbury spokesperson, the Pillsbury Doughboy, died yesterday of a severe yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes to the belly. He was 71. Doughboy was buried in a slightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out, including Mrs. Buttersworth, the California Raisins, Hungry Jack, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, Captain Crunch, and many others. The graveside was piled high with flours as longtime friend, Aunt Jemima, delivered the eulogy, describing Doughboy as a man who "never knew how much he was kneaded." Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with many turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he even still, as a crusty old man, was considered a roll model for millions. Doughboy is survived by his second wife, Play Dough. They have two children, and one in the oven. The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

worried about you, I’d never have asked Mia about it. Rather saw my tongue in half with a rusty kitchen knife. But I did ask her, and she’s not clear on it.’ ‘Honey, what you said before about knowing me, that’s true. Now what do you think my reaction is to what you just said?’ She hissed out a breath. ‘If he comes after her, he’ll have to get through you.’ ‘Close enough. Shouldn’t you be out on patrol, or would you rather take the paperwork portion of our day?’ ‘I’d rather eat lice.’ She put on her cap, yanked the tail of her hair through the back. ‘Look, I’m glad you found someone who suits you. I’m even more glad I like her. But there’s more to Nell Channing than a nice woman with a murky past who can bake like a team of angels.’ ‘You mean she’s a witch,’ he said easily. ‘Yeah, I figured that out. I’ve got no particular problem with it.’ So saying, he went back to the keyboard, chuckling to himself when Ripley slammed the door behind her.   ‘The goddess doesn’t require sacrifice,’ Mia said. ‘She’s a mother. Like a mother, she requires respect, love, discipline, and wants happiness for her children.’ The evening was cool. Mia could already scent the end of summer. Soon her woods would change from green and lush to wild color. She’d already seen the woolly caterpillars, watched the busy squirrel hoarding

You will catch your death, Wife.” Joseph opened his cape and enveloped her in its folds, which—happily for her—necessitated that he hug her to his chest. “I will be back as soon as possible.” “We have much to do in your absence.” “I’ve never seen this house so thoroughly decorated for the holidays. I can’t believe there’s another thing to be done.” Louisa felt his chin come to rest on her temple. “We have a great deal of baking to do if we’re to send baskets to the tenants and neighbors. I must write to the agencies to find us another governess, and you’ve set me the task of finding a charity worthy of your coin. Then too, I am behind on my correspondence, and if all else fails, I have your library to explore. I will stay busy.” “While I will freeze my backside off, haring about the realm without you.

We shared a family-style bucket of chicken from the Busy Bee; I had three pieces and he had thirteen, along with all the coleslaw, baked beans, six biscuits, and four cans of iced tea." p. 151, 152

He was forever falling down stairs. I saved his life one day by grabbing his shirt just as he was going out of an upstairs window. One afternoon, I was busy baking and didn’t hear his footsteps when he awoke. The room that he’d shared with his grandmother was his now. When I went upstairs to get him, he’d gotten into a dirty diaper and spread it all over the room. After that, I had him take his nap on a pallet in the corner of the kitchen.

could always dance with Connell,” Vera said, following Lily’s gaze. It was Lily’s turn to feel embarrassed. “Oh no, I couldn’t.” “Why not?” Vera smiled, a knowing gleam in her eyes. “I’m sure Mr. Heller won’t mind playing another song. And I know Connell wouldn’t say no to the chance to put his hands on your waist and twirl you in his arms.” She wiggled, her insides blushing. She highly doubted Connell would want to twirl her. Connell lowered his head further into his book. “And don’t you dare contradict me, Connell McCormick.” Vera wagged her finger at the man. “What?” He sat up straighter and arched his eyebrows at them, as if it were the first time he’d noticed them in the room all evening. Lily smiled at the feigned innocence on his face. “Now, young man,” Vera scolded, “you’ve had your eyes on Lily all week. Don’t you deny it.” “I’ve been doing what I always do—sitting over here minding my own business and doing my work.” Vera shook her head. “You’re in trouble now, boy. I was going to give you a couple more cookies, but”—she pushed the plate of treats toward Lily—“now only Lily gets more.” The sugary sweet scent of the freshly baked molasses cookies had bathed the room, driving out the lingering acridness of burnt coffee. Lily had already indulged in several in place of the usual fare of beans and salt pork. She picked two more from the plate. “You’re a dear, dear woman.” Connell snorted. Vera’s lips twitched with a smile she was holding back. “That’s enough from you, young man. If you stopped all your nonsense, got up and danced with Lily like a real man, then maybe I’d give you the rest.” Connell sat up taller and eyed the plate that was still heaped with cookies. Lily wanted to giggle but hid the smile behind her hand. Then his eyes lifted to hers, the mirth within them turning the green into the same shade as summer leaves fluttering in a warm breeze. The warmth captured her and drew her in. For a long moment she basked in their private exchange of amusement over Vera’s audacity. But then the green of his eyes darkened and the jollity of his expression faded, replaced with a determination that sent Lily’s heart chugging forward like a locomotive. Without breaking his eye contact, he pushed back from his spot and stood. Would he really listen to Vera’s silly challenge to dance with her? Her heart picked up speed. Everything in his expression said he would—that he wanted to dance with her more than anything. Although she’d been in plenty of situations where she’d had to rebuff the advances of shanty boys, she’d never met one like this man—one she didn’t want to rebuff. Did she actually want his attention? A tingle of fright pushed her off the bench and to her feet. He stopped. “I’d best be heading up to bed,” she said, refusing to meet his gaze.

How decent Check Plumber Community Even taking into account the plumbing solutions that invitation in a constructive direction to his own would produce economic reporting. If indeed very accurate in the sense that it produces some people have to use its focus, effort, so even complete use’s lead around too much greater problems. Until the next season Sam the direction of the effort and hard work, plumber should, described below, more than a few elements have their own small businesses. Out of the question, especially just prior to creating the session Staff accredited? Popular plumbing qualification, not all employees apply to other places, to be licensed plumber. Although it certified one of the most exclusive, you cannot believe that you understand the advantages and disadvantages of working with pipes and equipment. Auto, can potentially more than just ask certainly emphasize small business and in the form of business. Many freshly baked plumbers may be more inclined to choose the problems of the ICU. Get some staff that was sent in the direction of their residence, place of jurisdiction is impressive way to self-sufficiency Terrific find quality guaranteed to get the procedure done. Record Companies Join crisis? With all the plumbing company to do, to mental states, to prove himself to the work that the quality of the work itself and create a practical experience of its kind. The strategy is to locate a company may be located in the religion, and the media try as soon as the time is a plumber to complete, in fact, to understand, to speak in what direction. Only some of their own needs, contact a plumber is when the Office for an unexpected emergency.

Draw a line in the sand As you get going, keep in mind why you’re doing what you’re doing. Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service. You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you’re willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world. A strong stand is how you attract superfans. They point to you and defend you. And they spread the word further, wider, and more passionately than any advertising could. Strong opinions aren’t free. You’ll turn some people off. They’ll accuse you of being arrogant and aloof. That’s life. For everyone who loves you, there will be others who hate you. If no one’s upset by what you’re saying, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. (And you’re probably boring, too.) Lots of people hate us because our products do less than the competition’s. They’re insulted when we refuse to include their pet feature. But we’re just as proud of what our products don’t do as we are of what they do. We design them to be simple because we believe most software is too complex: too many features, too many buttons, too much confusion. So we build software that’s the opposite of that. If what we make isn’t right for everyone, that’s OK. We’re willing to lose some customers if it means that others love our products intensely. That’s our line in the sand. When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious. For example, Whole Foods stands for selling the highest quality natural and organic products available. They don’t waste time deciding over and over again what’s appropriate. No one asks, “Should we sell this product that has artificial flavors?” There’s no debate. The answer is clear. That’s why you can’t buy a Coke or a Snickers there. This belief means the food is more expensive at Whole Foods. Some haters even call it Whole Paycheck and make fun of those who shop there. But so what? Whole Foods is doing pretty damn well. Another example is Vinnie’s Sub Shop, just down the street from our office in Chicago. They put this homemade basil oil on subs that’s just perfect. You better show up on time, though. Ask when they close and the woman behind the counter will respond, “We close when the bread runs out.” Really? “Yeah. We get our bread from the bakery down the street early in the morning, when it’s the freshest. Once we run out (usually around two or three p.m.), we close up shop. We could get more bread later in the day, but it’s not as good as the fresh-baked bread in the morning. There’s no point in selling a few more sandwiches if the bread isn’t good. A few bucks isn’t going to make up for selling food we can’t be proud of.” Wouldn’t you rather eat at a place like that instead of some generic sandwich chain?

The industrial world of pipelines relies heavily on push. Consumers are accessed through specific marketing and communication channels that the business owns or pays for. In a world of scarcity, options were limited, and getting heard often sufficed to get marketers and their messages in front of consumers. In this environment, the traditional advertising and public relations industries focused almost solely on awareness creation—the classic technique for “pushing” a product or service into the consciousness of a potential customer. This model of marketing breaks down in the networked world, where access to marketing and communication channels is democratized—as illustrated, for example, by the viral global popularity of YouTube videos such as PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” In this world of abundance—where both products and the messages about them are virtually unlimited—people are more distracted, as an endless array of competing options is only a click or a swipe away. Thus, creating awareness alone doesn’t drive adoption and usage, and pushing goods and services toward customers is no longer the key to success. Instead, those goods and services must be designed to be so attractive that they naturally pull customers into their orbit. Furthermore, for a platform business, user commitment and active usage, not sign-ups or acquisitions, are the true indicators of customer adoption. That’s why platforms must attract users by structuring incentives for participation—preferably incentives that are organically connected to the interactions made possible by the platform. Traditionally, the marketing function was divorced from the product. In network businesses, marketing needs to be baked into the platform.

following one process and the development team with different process philosophies, terms and metrics. In Waterfall, once a “plan” is baked and approved, there is an expectation that the plan will be followed and delivered upon, even if the development team is using Agile to execute. Now I’m going to say it, “But that’s not truly Agile,” since Agile requires the plan to be flexible and consistently reprioritized and revised. We see this approach so often that we’ve heard many describe it as, “WaterScrumFall. ” It’s really business as usual

I wanted to ask you if you could help me with it,” she said, her voice shaking. “You know, give me a few tips. Tell me what I should do.” “What?” I said. “There’s no reason for you to help me. But you know how to bake, and you’re a good business woman. I’ve sunk my life’s savings into this shop, and if it goes under, I don’t know what I’m going to do, Cinnamon.” I couldn’t believe what she was saying. How could she be asking me for my help after what she’d done? Because as much as she wanted to sell me on that whole I wouldn’t have destroyed your life if I didn’t think he was the one bit, I knew better.

I would be over the moon if you'd make me one of your famous apple cakes." Portia stared at the ingredients her sister had lined up with perfect precision on the scratched countertop. Apples. Butter. Brown sugar. Cordelia cocked her head. "What is it?" "Nothing," Portia said, her voice weak. "It's just that I'm not in the mood to bake, is all." That was a lie. Her fingers itched to dive in, peel, and core, sift the flour, fold in the softened butter and brown sugar. Again and again since moving into the apartment she'd had to ignore her tingling fingertips and the smells of chocolate and vanilla that didn't really exist. She had thrown every bit of food in the apartment away, and it still hadn't helped. "I don't believe you," Cordelia said. "You want to bake like nobody's business. I can see it in your eyes.

There's a telos of self-improvement baked into the immigrant experience. As a teenager, I busied myself with the school newspaper or debate club because, unlike with math or science, I thought I could actually get better at these things. You flip through your father's old physics notebooks, and you know in your bones that these formulas and graphs will never make sense to you. But one day, you realize that your parents speak with a mild accent, and that they have no idea what passive voice is. The next generation would acquire a skill on their behalf -- one that we could also use against them. Commanding the language seemed like our only way of surpassing them. Home life took on a kind of casual litigiousness. The calm and composed children, a jaunty bounce to our sentences, laying traps with our line of questioning. The parents, tired and irritated, defaulting to the native tongue.

Rural Free Delivery (RFD) Home, upon that word drops the sunshine of beauty and the shadow of tender sorrows, the reflection of ten thousand voices and fond memories. This is a mighty fine old world after all if you make yourself think so. Look happy even if things are going against you— that will make others happy. Pretty soon all will be smiling and then there is no telling what can’t be done. Coca-Cola Girl Mother baked a fortune cake pale yellow icing, lemon drops round rim, hidden within treasures, a ring—you’ll be married, a button—stay a bachelor, a thimble—always a spinster, and a penny—you’re rich. Gee, but I am hungry. Wait a second, dear, until I pull my belt up another notch. There that’s better. So, you see, Hon, I am straighter than a string around a bundle. You ought to see my eye, it’s a peach. I am proud of it, looks like I’ve been kicked by a mule. You know, dear, that they can kick hard enough to knock all the soda out of a biscuit without breaking the crust Hogging Catfish This gives you a fighting chance. Noodle your right hand into their gills, hold on tight while you grunt him out of the water. This can be a real dogfight. Old river cat wants to go down deep, make you bottom feed. Like I said, boys, when you tell a whopper, say it like you believe it. Saturday Ritual My Granddad was a cobbler. We each owned two pairs of shoes, Sunday shoes and everyday shoes. When our Sunday shoes got worn they became our everyday shoes. Main Street Saturday Night We each were given a dime on Saturday opening a universe of possibilities. All the stores stayed open and people flocked into town. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds set up a popcorn stand on Reinheimer’s corner and soon after lighting a little stove, sounding like small firecrackers, popping began. Dad, laughing shooting the breeze with a group of farmers, drinking Coca Cola, finding out if any sheds needed to be built or barns repaired, discussing the price of next year’s seed, finding out who’s really working, who’s just looking busy. There is no object I wouldn’t give to relive my childhood growing up in Delavan— where everyone knew everyone— and joy came with but a dime. Market Day Jim Pittsford’s grocery smelled of bananas ripening and the coffee he ground by hand, wonderful smoked ham and bacon fresh sliced. He’d reward the child who came to pick up the purchase, with a large dill pickle Biking home, skillfully balancing Jim Pittsford’s bacon, J B’s tomatoes and peaches, while sniffing a tantalizing spice rising from fresh warm rolls, I nibbled my pickle reward.

Asking for Referrals. Not every product can have word of mouth baked into the product, but every founder can—and should—be proactive about asking for referrals. When you see that trials are converting well and customers are happy with your product, set up an automated email that goes out around the 60- or 90-day mark. Say something like, “So much of our business is based on referrals. If you’re enjoying our product, could you please pass the word along?” The automated email works well when you have a pretty hands-off, low-touch sales process. However, for products with higher ACVs and a more intensive sales process, it’s better to ask for referrals in person.

Watching and being a part of people discovering just how therapeutic and comforting baking can be was quite special. Whether it was baking just to pass the time, baking with kids to keep them busy while home schooling, or providing homemade goodies to frontline workers, it was a sweet reminder of the way that food really does bring us together.

Baking and drinking? Who would have guessed,” Eliza teased. “I’m eighty-three years old. I dedicated a good chunk of my life to this town. Now, I can do whatever I like. I can cook, drink, and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in my birthday suit if I want to. As long as I keep the turnovers coming, nobody gives a hoot if I’m three sheets to the wind,

look at what Dylan sees. You get wonderful grades; you have three best friends who would walk over hot coals for you; you have a thriving business, doing something you love; you have an adorable crush who seems to like you back; you’re a member of a business club that enriches your life; you’re a beautiful dancer.

Humans have always suspected they’re half-baked, but because they’re half-baked they have trouble doing anything about it. And the saddest thing is, if somebody tries, and begins to conceive how humankind could save itself, because they’re sane and see the world isn’t flat, the rest of the monkeys use whatever wits they have to invent new ways

Trader Joe’s first private label food product was granola. We installed Alta Dena certified raw milk, to the disgruntlement of Southland, and within six months were the largest retailers of Alta Dena milk, both pasteurized and raw, in California. We began price-bombing five-pound cans of honey, and then all the ingredients for baking bread at home. We installed fresh orange juice squeezers in the stores, and sold fresh juice at the lowest price in town. By late in 1971, we were moving into vitamins, encouraged by my very good friend James C. Caillouette, MD. Jim spent a lot of time talking with the faculty at Cal Tech. He was convinced that Linus Pauling was on to something with his research on vitamin C. I set out to break the price on vitamin C. At one point, I think, we were doing 3 percent of sales in vitamin C! Later, Jim forwarded articles from the British medical magazine Lancet, describing how a high fiber diet could avoid colon cancer. But where could we get bran? The only stores that sold it were conventional health food stores, who sold it in bulk, something that I have always been opposed to on the grounds of hygiene. And still am! Leroy found a hippie outfit in Venice—I think it was called Mom’s Trucking—which would package the bran. But bran is a low-value product. They couldn’t afford to deliver it. Since they also packaged nuts and dried fruits, however, we somewhat reluctantly added them to the order. And that’s how Trader Joe’s became the largest retailer of nuts and dried fruits in California! Brilliant foresight! Astute market analysis! By 1989, when I left Trader Joe’s, we regularly took down 5 percent of the entire Californian pistachio crop, and we were the thirteenth largest buyer of almonds in the United States—Hershey was number one.

Over the past few years, I'd been so busy with Dark Castle that I'd never truly gotten into cooking or baking shows. I reconsidered them now. Watching Lucian move about the kitchen, all firm confidence and loose-limbed grace, was pure porn for me. Heaven help me, but the way his ropy forearms moved as he briskly whipped up egg whites or heavy cream----because the man never used a blender for these things----would get me so hot and bothered I'd have to press my thighs together under the cover of the battered farm table. And when he kneaded dough? Sweet baby Jesus. He did this little grunt every time he thrust the heels of his hands over the springy mass. A deep rumbling grunt as his whole taut body rocked toward the countertop. And then there were was the pullback, when he'd breathe in, those wide shoulders of his rolling in a steady rhythm. Grunt. Thrust. Breathe. Pull. It was a wonder I didn't orgasm on the spot watching him.

In response to Napoleon’s problems with feeding his huge army, Nicolas Appert invented canning in 1809. This was the first step away from bulk retailing. About thirty years after Waterloo, America had its first branded canned food, which was probably Underwood’s deviled ham. During the Civil War, which also stimulated food technology, Gail Borden invented canned milk, and after that an avalanche of branded food products appeared: Royal Baking Powder, Baker’s Chocolate, et al.

Blessing in disguise he didn't believe me, Andy. Truth gets out, they hunt you down. Set a trap. Bait it with a thick, juicy ribeye. Medium rare. Big baked potato on the side. Maybe a salad. You know - for roughage? Keeps you regular. They capture you. Open you up and study your organs. While you're still alive. Vivisection. Nasty business. When they're done they stop your heart and put your brain in a jar. Drain off your blood. Sell samples for scientific study. Skin you and tan your hide. They boil the meat off your skeleton. Stuff you full of sawdust. Pop marbles in your sockets. Pose you inside a diorama like some magnificent beast behind glass in a museum. They do that to all the great apes. But not to you. I'll never let them do it. No way in hell. Not to my boy. Nope. Not to my child.

Furthermore, for a platform business, user commitment and active usage, not sign-ups or acquisitions, are the true indicators of customer adoption. That’s why platforms must attract users by structuring incentives for participation—preferably incentives that are organically connected to the interactions made possible by the platform. Traditionally, the marketing function was divorced from the product. In network businesses, marketing needs to be baked into the platform.

Before, we were childhood best friends, constantly playing together in the alley shared by our family’s neighboring businesses. Then, more recently, he started becoming Kai, as in Kai with the infectious laugh and defined arms and delicious buns (I’m talking about the breads he bakes, okay?).

There's a telos of self-improvement baked into the immigrant experience. As a teenager, I busied myself with the school newspaper or debate club because, unlike with math or science, I thought I could actually get better at these things.