Cake Jars Quotes

Under the twinkling trees was a table covered with Guatemalan fabric, roses in juice jars, wax rose candles from Tijuana and plates of food — Weetzie's Vegetable Love-Rice, My Secret Agent Lover Man's guacamole, Dirk's homemade pizza, Duck's fig and berry salad and Surfer Surprise Protein Punch, Brandy-Lynn's pink macaroni, Coyote's cornmeal cakes, Ping's mushu plum crepes and Valentine's Jamaican plantain pie. Witch Baby's stomach growled but she didn't leave her hiding place. Instead, she listened to the reggae, surf, soul and salsa, tugged at the snarl balls in her hair and snapped pictures of all the couples.

Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket. "Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars." The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and cicrcled the wall of the pot slowly. I leaned my hot arms on the table and said, "Iphy better not go tomorrow. She got tired today." I was smelling the berries and Mamaa's sweat, and watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees. "Does them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them. Though Elly likes her jam." "Elly doesn't like anything anymore." The knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the pot. "Mama, Elly isn't there anymore. Iphy's changed. Everything's changed. This whole berry business, cooking big meals that nobody comes for, birthday cakes for Arty. It's dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn't any family anymore, Mama." Then she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and the purple-black juice spayed across the table. She started at me, terrified, her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran. I went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That's the only time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserved it. I also knew that Mama was too far gone to understand why I deserved it. She'd swung that spoon in a tigerish reflex at blasphemy. But I believed that Arty had turned his back on us, that the twins were broken, that the Chick was lost, that Papa was weak and scared, that Mama was spinning fog, and that I was an adolescent crone sitting in the ruins, watching the beams crumble, and warming myself in the smoke from the funeral pyre. That was how I felt, and I wanted company. I hated Mama for refusing to see enough to be miserable with me. Maybe, too, enough of my child heart was still with me to think that if she would only open her eyes she could fix it all back up like a busted toy.

Sir Edmund’s home is an architectural grotesque, the ornate facade the unlikely union of a warship and a wedding cake. A riot of musket loops, carved shells, liquorice-twist chimneys, mock battlements, a first-floor prow, and an exuberance of portholes. On the carved stone pediment above the wide front door Neptune cavorts with sea nymphs. The lower-floor windows are festooned with theatrical swags of stone starfish and scallop shells. For all this, the house looks unlived in.

I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, &c., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting. It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to show you what they COULD do, and to get you interested.

We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me “dear boy,” it means much more than when another uses it. I know well enough that the jar of whortleberries is the only one they have had for months, and that she has kept it for me; and the somewhat stale cakes that she gives me too. She must have got them cheap some time and put them all by for me. I sit by her bed, and through the window the chestnut trees in the beer garden opposite glow in brown and gold. I breathe deeply and say over to myself:—“You are at home, you are at home.” But a sense of strangeness will not leave me, I cannot feel at home amongst these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there my case of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano—but I am not myself there. There is a distance, a veil between us.

Dear boy," says my mother softly. We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me "dear boy," it means much more than when another uses it. I know well enough that the jar of whortleberries is the only one they have had for months, and that she has kept it for me; and the somewhat stale cakes that she gives me too. She must have got them cheap some time and put them all by for me.

A well-known skin specialist patronized by many famous beauties charges seventy-five dollars for a twenty-minute consultation and eight dollars for a cake of sea-mud soap. I get more satisfaction and just as much benefit out of applying a purée of apples and sour cream! [...] Of course, all masques should COVER THE NECK too. [...] Masques should only be used ones or twice a week. [...] While the masque is working, place pads soaked in witch hazel or boric acid over your eyelids and put on your favorite music. [...] A masque really works only when you're lying down. Twenty minutes is the right length of time. Then wash the masque off gently with warm water and follow with a brisk splash of cold water to close the pores. [...] For a luxurious once-a-week treatment give your face a herbal steaming first by putting parsley, dill, or any other favorite herb into a pan of boiling water. (Mint is refreshing too.) Hold a towel over your head to keep the steam rising onto your face. The pores will open so that the masque can do a better job. [...] Here are a few "kitchen masques" that work: MAYONNAISE. [...] Since I'm never sure what they put into those jars at the supermarket, I make my own with whole eggs, olive or peanut oil, and lemon juice (Omit the salt and pepper!). Stir this until it's well blended, or whip up a batch in an electric blender. PUREED VEGETABLES - cucumbers, lemons, or lettuce thickened with a little baby powder. PUREED FRUITS - cantaloupe, bananas, or strawberries mixed to a paste with milk or sour cream or honey. A FAMOUS OLD-FASHIONED MIXTURE of oatmeal, warm water, and a little honey blended to a paste.

I think the desire to create will last all my life – I realize that the time for me to be that person has not been available, or should I say right – I have become aware that the young stage of my children’s life is passing and there will be more time for me later – it’s too easy to be a “want it now” person. But I am so glad that I will have more time very soon. Without doubt though, as luck would have it, the very best thing I have ever made is my children. I feel my spirit rise as I listen to Elizabeth’s words, and so I reach over and take the bowl… Before I had children I had a dream. A dream of the sort of mama I wanted to be. One who always had a homemade cake in a pretty tin and a jar of homemade cookies, a stylish handmade home with French-print curtains, a carefully tended cottage garden, lots of time to play together outside and making all our own Christmas presents. Happy children, happy stay-at-home mama and a beautiful life.

She pulls from a shelf certain rare spices and sugars that her successor is unlikely to use. Insulating the jars with softbound books and sheafs of cooking notes, she packs them in a carton that came to this kitchen holding boxes of Italian pasta. She examines the fanciful designs on a container of sugar imported from Turkey, a favorite finish for the surface of cookies: bearclaws, butter wafers. The large, faceted granules glitter like bluish rhinestones; children always choose those cookies first. She wonders if she will be able to get this sugar anymore, if borders will tighten so austerely that she will lose some of her most precious, treasured ingredients: the best dried lavender and mascarpone, pomegranate molasses. But in the scheme of things, does it matter? She comes upon her collection of vinegars, which she uses to brighten the character of certain cakes, to hold the line between sweet and cloying. She takes down a spicy vinegar she bought at a nearby farm; inside the bottle, purple peppers, like sleeping bats, hang from the surface of the liquid. Greenie used it in a dark chocolate ice cream and molasses pie.

And yeah, put out as I can be with Mama 'bout a lotta things, I gotta admit she gets all the credit for getting me interested in cooking when I was just knee-high to a grasshopper. Gladys never seemed to give a damn about it when we were kids, which I guess is why she and that family of hers nourish themselves today mainly on KFC and Whoppers and junk like that. But me, I couldn't keep my eyes off Mama when she'd fix a mess of short ribs, or cut out perfect rounds of buttermilk biscuit dough with a juice glass, or spread a thick, real shiny caramel icing over her 1-2-3-4 cakes. And I can remember like it was yesterday (must have been about 4 years old at the time) when she first let me help her bake cookies, especially the same jelly treats I still make today and could eat by the dozen if I didn't now have better control. "Honey, start opening those jars on the counter," she said while she creamed butter and sugar with her Sunbeam electric hand mixer in the same wide, chipped bowl she used to make for biscuit dough. Strawberry, peach, and mint- the flavors never varied for Mama's jelly treats, and just the idea of making these cookies with anything but jelly and jam she'd put up herself the year before would have been inconceivable to Mama.

I must have been one of the original latchkey kids…. My father worked in New York City and my mother worked the counter at a local bakery. With both of my parents working, I would let myself into the house after school. We all used a big old-fashioned key, hidden in plain sight, under the doormat. When I entered, the only one to greet me was our dog “Putzy,” a mixed breed who would jump with glee when I came in. The first thing I would do was to feed him, from his own special container left in the refrigerator. I would also open the back door and let him run around in our enclosed backyard. Billy came home about an hour after I did and since he was younger, I was responsible for him as well. There was always dried-out, day-old cake in the refrigerator that my mother had brought home from her job. Again, being the oldest, it was up to me to cut the cake into big slices, and pour two jelly jar glasses of milk for us. Afterward, my brother would go to his room to do his homework and I cleaned up, washing whatever dishes we had used.

When we got back, we opened Bella's posh hamper which contained lovely luxuries that were pointless on their own. But we ate the olive biscuits and the chocolate mints and the jar of cherries in kirsch as well as Christmas cake and Beatrice's Jamaican rum cake and we drank champagne.

Through the course of my life, I’ve attended a lot of different churches. From time to time I would hear murmurings in some of those congregations, something along the lines of, “I’m just not being fed spiritually here.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard those exact words, no matter where I attended church. Such a strange concept to me. Whenever I heard it, I was always a little tempted to tie a bib around the person’s neck and twist open a jar of baby food. It just seemed like the right thing to do. It also struck me that the person making that statement was somehow implying he or she was just oh-so-much-more spiritual than the pastor of the church. Okay. I suppose that’s entirely possible. But let’s be honest. Is your spiritual health your pastor’s responsibility, or is it yours? Because I’ve always thought of the whole church and Sunday message experience as so much icing on the cake. But it’s my responsibility to make that cake. I’m responsible for my own spiritual growth, and so are you.

George Malcolm: half white, half black, with messy tousled hair, rumpled and tugged between kind of curly and extremely curly. Once, a year or so before, he'd been at our house and he'd pulled out a lock of his hair and used it to teach me about eddies and helixes. It's a circular current into a central station, he'd explained, giving me one to hold. I pulled on the spring. Nature is full of the same shapes, he said, taking me to the bathroom sink and spinning on the top and pointing out the way the water swirled down the drain. Taking me to the bookshelf and flipping open a book on weather and showing me a cyclone. Then a spiral galaxy. Pulling me back to the bathroom sink, to my glass jar of collected seashells, and pointing out the same curl in a miniature conch. See? he said, holding the seashell up to his hair. Yes! I clapped. His eyes were warm with teaching pleasure. It's galactic hair, he said, smiling. At school, George was legendary already. He was so natural at physics that one afternoon the eighth-grade science teacher had asked him to do a preview of the basics of relativity, really fast, for the class. George had stood up and done such a fine job, using a paperweight and a yardstick and the standard-issue school clock, that the teacher had pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. I'd like to be the first person to pay you for your clarity of mind, the teacher had said. George used the cash to order pizza for the class. Double pepperoni, he told me later, when I'd asked.

The shelves were filled with baskets of goodies, and mason jars had been loaded with beautiful honey lollipops, their amber color almost translucent. There were tiered trays full of boxed cake slices and stunning cupcakes topped with playful fondant bees, clear packaging showing all the delight inside. An old tobacco basket on the countertop was brimming with sugar cookie sandwiches filled with various types of frosting.

I've never known anyone with the capacity for sugar that Adeena has. She'd demolished her waffles, which she'd drowned in syrup, and then ordered a slice of triple chocolate tuxedo pie, another sugar bomb. If I ate the way she'd did, I'd have lost a foot to diabetes by now. Martha slid our desserts in front of us, and Adeena and I hummed in appreciation after taking our first bites. The lemon icebox cake was cold and creamy, with a background sweetness and a whole lot of tang. As I often did when sampling delicious desserts, I tried to deconstruct what was in it. Graham crackers, cream cheese, whipped cream, and a ton of lemon curd seemed to be the basis of the recipe. Similar to the ginger calamansi pie I'd made, but simpler and no-bake, if I decided to buy the graham crackers instead of making my own. Definitely worth experimenting with, as I had a jar of calamansi curd tucked away in the fridge just begging to be used. I made a note on my phone later, maybe as a summer offering. As per usual when eating out, Adeena and I swapped plates so we could taste each other's desserts. "What do you think, girls?" I grinned at Martha. "Delicious. I love how the lemon cake is sweet and tangy, but you don't go too far in either direction." Adeena added, "It's the perfect counterpoint to my chocolate pie, which is divine, by the way. Rich, creamy, and so satisfying.

SAFFRON SUMMER COMPOTE Compote de Pêches aux Safran A few threads of saffron add depth--- maybe even a little fancy-pants--- to this summer compote. I make mine with a mix of white and yellow peaches and juicy nectarines, whatever I have on hand. Top your morning yogurt, layer in a parfait, or serve with a slice of pound cake and a dollop of crème fraîche. When I get my canning act together, this is what I'm going to make, jars and jars of golden days to last me through the chill of winter. 2 pounds of slightly overripe fruit (a mix of peaches, nectarines, and apricots) 1 tablespoon of raw sugar 2 good pinches of saffron Cut the fruit into 1-inch cubes. I don't especially feel the need to peel. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the fruit and sugar. Bring to a boil, stir in the saffron, and let simmer over low heat until thickened and slightly reduced; mine took about 40 minutes. Serve warm or cold. Serves 6-8

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.

The missions were always changing- sometimes collecting jars of rain, paper bags of hiccups, adopting lost moonbeams and folding them into cake batter. Or perhaps investigating glittering slug trails left in the moonlight, finding the owners of abandoned buttons, or playing the sousaphone for caterpillars still in their cocoons.

But, Emmie”—Bothwell’s cultured tones drifted through the back doors of the hall—“you know I’ve missed you.” Emmie’s reply was murmured in low, unintelligible tones, causing St. Just to pause. The damned Kissing Vicar was about to strike again, but as a gentleman… As a gentleman, hell… St. Just did not pull the door shut loudly behind him, which would have afforded Bothwell a moment to protect the lady’s privacy. He charged into the hall, boots thumping on the wooden floor, jar of icing at the ready. “Now, Emmie…” Bothwell was kissing her, one of those teasing little kisses to the cheek that somehow wandered down to the corner of her mouth in anticipation of landing next on her lips. “Excuse me, Bothwell, didn’t realize you were about.” “Rosecroft.” Bothwell grinned at him, looking almost pleased to be caught at his flagrant flirting. “I’d heard you were back. My thanks for the use of your stables.” “And my thanks for keeping those juvenile hellions in shape. You need a horse, man, congregational politics be damned.” “Maybe someday.” Bothwell’s smile dimmed a little as his gaze turned to Emmie. “But for today, I’ve a wedding to perform.” And Bothwell had known, probably from experience, Emmie would be bringing her cake over. Absent a special license, the wedding would have to start in the next couple of hours, and St. Just suspected the vicar had been all but lying in wait for Emmie. “Em?” He brought her the icing. “Shall I go offer up a few for my immortal soul, or will we be going shortly?” “I won’t be long,” she said, brows knit as she positioned the second layer atop the little pedestals set on the first. “I just need to put the candied violets around the base when I’ve got the thing assembled, and maybe a few finishing touches.” “She’ll be hours.” The vicar smiled at her so indulgently that St. Just’s fist ached to put a different expression on the man’s face. “Come along, St. Just, and we can at least spend a few minutes in the sunshine.

Spice Cake in a Cup   Ingredients: 4 tablespoons of all-purpose flour 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar 2 teaspoons of spice-cinnamon or ginger (whichever you prefer) 1/8 of a teaspoon of baking powder 1 medium-sized egg white - lightly-beaten 3 tablespoons of either milk or soy-milk 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil 1/4 of a teaspoon of vanilla extract   Directions: You will need 1 microwavable coffee cup   Mix-together the flour, spice, sugar, & baking powder in the coffee cup. Now mix-in the egg white. Add the milk, vanilla & oil and mix-well   Place the cup into a microwave set on HIGH & cook for about 2&1/2 minutes.   (The cake should be done when it stops rising and sets)

. As a kid, I wore toilet paper veils and practiced walking down the aisle. I dreamed of my first dance and picked a new song every few years. I had a scrapbook of wedding themes down to the cake decorations. When I had tried to share this with Fiona after she proposed, she laughed at me, saying the patriarchy poisoned me.

Honey was especially valued by the Egyptians. It was used as salve for wounds, for mummification, and especially in foods and drinks such as honey cakes and honey-based beer. It was valued like gold and silver, and was often collected as a type of tax or taken as a spoil of war. Thutmose III, for example, collected over 470 jars of honey when he invaded Canaan (today’s Israel and Palestine), the “land of milk and honey.

TICKLED PINK LEMONADE COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. Hannah’s 1st Note: This recipe is from Lisa’s Aunt Nancy. It’s a real favorite down at The Cookie Jar because the cookies are different, delicious, and very pretty. ½ cup salted, softened butter (1 stick, 4 ounces,

Say, cut it out!” Chet bellowed. “I have half a mind not to give you fellows any lunch at all!” “Ho! Now you want us to starve!” Biff laughed as he and the Hardys lifted out succulent sandwiches, a jar of home-preserved peaches, a gallon Thermos of chilled milk, and slabs of chocolate cake. “Lucky for you, Chet,” Joe teased, “you brought enough so there’s some food left for you.” The heavy-set boy, though pretending indignation, settled down to enjoy his share of the lunch. Then the Hardys and Biff followed Chet’s example and took a nap after the hearty meal. “Not a bad idea,” Joe murmured as he dozed off.

We discovered that we shared a birthday, though she was two years behind me. She was enchanted by the coincidence, but I had just been told to expect them and thus had no reaction. The DJ probably had our birthday too. She confessed that meeting people with her birthday was jarring if they were younger, because she imagined them coming out of their mothers’ vaginas at the same moment she was eating her cake. She tried to will herself to stop imagining it but all she saw was icing and blood. “Cake, placenta, cake, placenta, cake, placenta.” I was exempt from this imagery because I was older. “Though,” she mused, “if you want to imagine me coming out of my mother’s vagina, I can’t stop you.” “Well, I wouldn’t want to ruin cake for myself.” “I wouldn’t want to ruin vaginas for myself.

My lola had made a few jars of her specialty, matamis na bao, or coconut jam, to spread on our pandesal and kakanin. The fragrant smell of coconut cream, caramelized sugar, and pandan leaves wafted through the room, the intoxicating aroma of the dark, sticky jam making my mouth water. I scanned the contents of the fridge, waiting for inspiration to strike. Whatever I made had to be small and snack-y, so as to complement but not draw attention from my grandmother's sweet, sticky rice cakes. Maybe some kind of cookie to go with our after-dinner tea and coffee? Coco jam sandwiched between shortbread would be great, but sandwich cookies were a little heavier and more fiddly than what I was looking for. Maybe if they were open-faced? As I thought of a way to make that work, my eyes fell on the pandan extract in the cabinet and everything clicked into place. Pandan thumbprint cookies with a dollop of coconut jam! Pandan and coconut were commonly used together, plus the buttery and lightly floral flavor of the cookies would balance well against the rich, intense sweetness of the jam.

When we were tucked away inside the huge space, Ettrek turned to me. “You know, it took a lot out of me, breaking all those jars,” he said. “The least you could do is not look so angry at being rescued.” Now that we were safe, I let myself break. This time, I fell apart shouting. “I had him! I was on the verge of killing him! And you decided to rescue me?” Sifa emerged from a stairwell, her hands clasped in front of her. Had she known that we would fail? I didn’t even want to consider the idea. “Killing him!” Ettrek’s hair was dusted with dirt, like sugar on top of a cake. “You were about to plunge a currentblade in your own stomach!” “These currentshadows aren’t only good for making me flinch a lot, you know.” I charged toward him, crushing a patch of fragile flowers under the heel of my shoe. “I had him wrapped in them. I would have killed him.” “Maybe not before he killed you,” Ettrek said quietly. “And?” I demanded. He retreated, his back colliding with Zyt’s chest, and I said, “When someone asks you to trade the chance of Lazmet Noavek’s death for the life of Ryzek’s Scourge…” and then shouted, “…you do it!

The next three days were busy ones for the ladies at Flint Cottage. Red-berried holly, pale mistletoe and glossy ivy were collected, and used to decorate the living room. Two red candles stood one at each end of the mantelpiece, and a holly garland hung from the brass knocker on the front door. The cake was iced, the pudding fetched down from the top shelf in the pantry, the mincemeat jar stood ready for the pies and a trifle was made. One of Mrs. Pringle's chickens arrived ready for the table, and sausage meat came from the butcher.

When the bell rings she hurries up to me with more than twenty sheets of paper. She’s Indian—Hidatsa, maybe, or Sioux—and the other children let her pass as if she were invisible. The morning star dances in a red circle, singing a song about his girlfriend Sheila; the angel Gabriel stands before Mary, his blue wings ablaze with stars. His mouth is open wide and notes are coming out, each one a different color. A woman with green hair holds her hands up to the sky and says: These are secret words, Say them after me. May all the plants and flowers rise And all people rise from death. I look up from the paper: a dusty shelf, a starfish in a jar caked with dust beside dusty petri dishes. I see shades of blue: the globe cerulean, the sky bleached out. And out the window, above the children’s heads, topsoil, the residue of ancient oceans, swirling like a thumbprint in the playground, wind pushing the empty swings. “So many poems,” I say, smiling at the girl. “You must love to write.” She shifts from foot to foot and weaves her hands in air. “I don’t have paper at home,” she says, “so I keep them in my head. That’s where they live until I write them down.

Cakes and pies lined the parsonage countertop and the church refrigerator was stacked with casseroles. They baked spicy apple harvest cakes and angel biscuits so light they seemed to hover above the pan. They brought him jars of homemade bread and butter pickles, plum preserves, and chow-chow. Every morning cars lined the sidewalk in front of the church, and ladies bearing gifts of honey buns and banana bread still warm from the oven filed into the church. After a particularly moving sermon on "Faith, Fishes, and Loaves," they whipped up enough salmon croquettes and tuna casseroles to feed the masses.

After Sims and the footmen had departed, Ethan sat with his back against the tree trunk and watched as Garrett unearthed a feast from the hampers. There were boiled eggs, plump olives, stalks of crisp green celery, jars of pickled carrots and cucumbers, sandwiches wrapped in paraffin paper, cold fried oyster-patties and wafer crackers, jars of finely chopped salads, a weighty round of white cheese, muslin-lined baskets filled with finger cakes and pastry biscuits, a steamed cabinet pudding left in its fluted stoneware mold, and a wide-mouthed glass bottle filled with stewed fruit.

Cosima lines up all her little jars of dried herbs and flowers, then carefully picks the ones she needs. "Acacia, for secret love. Celandine, for joys to come. Bluebell," she whispers, "for constancy. Bougainvillea, for passion. And chrysanthemum, for truth." She finds her special ceramic baking bowl and begins to add the usual ingredients: flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. "And the only flavor strong enough to mask the flowers." Cosima opens the cupboard above her head and takes down two bars of the finest dark chocolate she's ever tasted. "Ninety-nine percent. Perfect." After she's grated a beetroot, for moisture, and added vanilla pods, for extra flavor, Cosima pours the dark, thick mixture into a small baking tin and slips it into the oven. An hour later, she cools the cake, then glazes its black (with a tint of purple) surface with a chocolate icing seasoned with a little dust of daffodil, passionflower, and cosmos: new beginnings, faith, joy in love and life.

She returned to the kitchen, where she'd been making sugared flowers. Mint leaves, tiny violets and old-fashioned rose petals, heavy with perfume, lay on the counter. Very gently she dipped each one into the stiff egg whites, then in confectioners' sugar, and then placed them on the baking sheet, which she put in the warm oven, the door ajar. It gave the room the scent of a garden, heady and sweet. Sabine had planned to store the sweets in canning jars- there were still a few gaskets and lids left- and save them for cake. When she was a child, her grand-mère had once made her a Saint-Honoré for her birthday. It was the most wondrous cake in the world. Not a cake at all but a composition of tiny puffs of choux pastry filled with vanilla cream, very much like profiteroles, but molded together with caramel and covered with whipped chantilly cream fresh from the dairy. Her grand-mère decorated it with candied flowers and mint leaves. Sabine never had anything like it before or since and suddenly wanted to make that cake again.

I loved shopping on rue Montorgueil so much that I often carted home more food- slices of spinach and goat cheese tourtes; jars of lavender honey and cherry jam, tiny, wild handpicked strawberries; fraises aux bois- than one person alone could possibly eat. Now at least I had an excuse to fill up my canvas shopping bag. "Doesn't it smell amazing?" I gushed once we had crossed the threshold of my favorite boulangerie. Mom, standing inside the doorway clutching her purse, just nodded as she filled her lungs with the warm, yeasty air, her eyes alight with a brightness I didn't remember from home. With a fresh-from-the-oven baguette in hand, we went to the Italian épicerie, where from the long display of red peppers glistening in olive oil, fresh raviolis dusted in flour, and piles and piles of salumi, soppressata, and saucisson, which we chose some thinly sliced jambon blanc and a mound of creamy mozzarella. At the artisanal bakery, Eric Kayser, we took our time selecting three different cakes from the rows of lemon tarts, chocolate éclairs, and what I was beginning to recognize as the French classics: dazzling gâteaux with names like the Saint-Honoré, Paris-Brest, and Opéra. Voila, just like that, we had dinner and dessert. We headed back to the tree house- those pesky six flights were still there- and prepared for our modest dinner chez-moi. Mom set the table with the chipped white dinner plates and pressed linen napkins. I set out the condiments- Maille Dijon mustard, tart and grainy with multicolored seeds; organic mayo from my local "bio" market; and Nicolas Alziari olive oil in a beautiful blue and yellow tin- and watched them get to it. They sliced open the baguette, the intersection of crisp and chewy, and dressed it with slivers of ham and dollops of mustard. I made a fresh mozzarella sandwich, drizzling it with olive oil and dusting it with salt and pepper.

I baked all those cakes, and I didn't want them to just sit." "You could have told me," I said through gritted teeth. "I'm sure I wasn't missed," Sabrina replied. I looked back at Dante, who was ignoring the conversation in favor of chatting through his Bluetooth earpiece neck thingy. "What do you sell?" I asked Tameka. "I make jams and jellies. Chowchow." "It's so delicious," Sabrina added. I cocked an eyebrow at my sister. "Sabrina had a great sales day. Most of her cakes sold out." Tameka turned to Sabrina. "How many jars did you sell?" "Thirty-four," Sabrina said, cutting her eyes away from me. Thirty-four. In one morning? At a farmers market? I couldn't believe it. A sting of resentment settled around my heart. I didn't know why that bothered me so much. Tameka looked at my cake tray and said to Sabrina, "The little jars would fit nicely at events like this." Once again, my uninventive and un-unique dessert display was dissed.