Pear Butter Quotes

The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.” “I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.

THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case. In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic." Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight. So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic. Suzy Kassem, Truth Is Crying

For the first time in American history citizens began to feel that the occupant of the White House was their representative. They referred to him as Father Abraham, and they showered him with homely gifts: a firkin of butter, a crate of Bartlett pears, New England salmon.

In the morning they rose in a house pungent with breakfast cookery, and they sat at a smoking table loaded with brains and eggs, ham, hot biscuit, fried apples seething in their gummed syrups, honey, golden butter, fried steak, scalding coffee.  Or there were stacked batter-cakes, rum-colored molasses, fragrant brown sausages, a bowl of wet cherries, plums, fat juicy bacon, jam.  At the mid-day meal, they ate heavily: a huge hot roast of beef, fat buttered lima- beans, tender corn smoking on the cob, thick red slabs of sliced tomatoes, rough savory spinach, hot yellow corn-bread, flaky biscuits, a deep-dish peach and apple cobbler spiced with cinnamon, tender cabbage, deep glass dishes piled with preserved fruits-- cherries, pears, peaches.  At night they might eat fried steak, hot squares of grits fried in egg and butter, pork-chops, fish, young fried chicken.

I go to the larder for the quinces and stop in amazement. For the larder is brimming over with food. Baskets of field mushrooms. Trugs of green apples and yellow pears. A metal bath containing two pink crabs. Slabs of newly churned butter as bright as a dandelion flower. Wheels of pale yellow cheese the size of my head. An earthenware bowl of cobnuts. A ham soaking in a pail of water.

The woman, one of those usually known as a good-time girl, was famous for the premature portliness which had earned her the nickname Boule de Suif. Small, round as a barrel, fat as butter and with fingers tightly jointed like strings of small sausages, her glowing skin and the enormous bosom which strained under the constraints of her dress — as well as her freshness, which was a delight to the eye — made her hugely desirable and much sought after. She had a rosy apple of a face, a peony bud about to burst into bloom. Out of it looked two magnificent dark eyes shaded by thick black lashes. Further down was a charming little mouth complete with invitingly moist lips and tiny, gleaming pearly-white teeth. She was said to possess a variety of other inestimable qualities.

People call it regret, but it’s true awareness,” he continued. “It’s pure comprehension that the actions you take and don’t take have direct effect on others. You’re complicit. I’m complicit. We’re all complicit. The definition isn’t ‘involved in a crime’; it’s more about having done someone wrong in some way. It happens to everyone. So tomorrow morning, when you’re in front of that mirror brushing those pearly whites, think about why you do it. Not the oral health benefits. Brushing your teeth, combing your hair, buttering your toast, thinking about what the day will bring you. Everything is an invocation. Little, itty-bitty, step-by-step moments of holy summoning. But here’s the thing about it. Sometimes we are not the ones doing the summoning. Sometimes we are the ones being summoned.

I suggest some of this broth that Cook made for Mademoiselle,' came Patrice's muffled voice. 'A little Toulouse sausage, some cheese perhaps...' Gui wolfed down whatever was put in front of him, hunger a gnawing pit in his stomach. Fresh bread and butter, a savory broth made from chicken, then sausage and a slab of cheese, cake made with pears, milk to drink.

On the cutting board there are two peanut butter and red currant jam sandwiches for Emerson and two Serrano ham, shaved cheddar, and apricot chutney sandwiches for Felice. Nieves wraps them smartly in waxed paper, tapes them, and puts them back in the fridge. There's also a cooler Nieves opens: packed with trail mix, sliced pears and apples, and the lemon bars.

Before long our entire table was covered in food: an earthenware ramekin of pearly-pink prawns bathed in garlic butter; translucent, paper-thin slices of cured ham fanned out on the plate; tortilla espanola with nuggets of potato and sweet onion; candy-stripe beets studded with goat cheese and almond slivers; slow-cooked short ribs almost silky in their tenderness; thick chorizo stew.

The dinner is delicious- the poivre sauce is perfect with the medium-rare duck, which cuts like butter. The potatoes are creamy, well seasoned, and cheesy, the rabe bright green, croquant and garlicky. Gustav has brought along a bottle of Cru Bourgeois, and I'm drinking it like grape juice. Dessert is an assortment of small tarts- vanilla crème brûlée with a chocolate crust, key lime, and pear.

The story was simple: a child named Amanda Pine, who enjoyed food in a way some therapists consider significant, was eating Madeline’s lunch. This was because Madeline’s lunch was not average. While all the other children gummed their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Madeline opened her lunch box to find a thick slice of leftover lasagna, a side helping of buttery zucchini, an exotic kiwi cut into quarters, five pearly round cherry tomatoes, a tiny Morton salt shaker, two still-warm chocolate chip cookies, and a red plaid thermos full of ice-cold milk. These contents were why everyone wanted Madeline’s lunch, Madeline included. But Madeline offered it to Amanda because friendship requires sacrifice, but also because Amanda was the only one in the entire school who didn’t make fun of the odd child Madeline already knew she was.

A chilled pea soup of insane simplicity, garnished with creme fraiche and celery leaves. Roasted beet salad with poached pears and goat cheese. Rack of lamb wrapped in crispy prosciutto, served over a celery root and horseradish puree, with sautéed spicy black kale. A thin-as-paper apple galette with fig glaze. Everything turned out brilliantly, including Patrick, who roused himself as I was pulling the lamb from the oven to rest before carving. He disappeared into the bathroom for ten minutes and came out shiny; green pallor and under-eye bags gone like magic. Pink with health and vitality, polished and ridiculously handsome, he looked as if he could run a marathon, and I was gobsmacked. He came up behind me just as I was finishing his port sauce for the lamb with a sprinkle of honey vinegar and a bit of butter, the only changes I made to any of his recipes, finding the sauce without them a bit one-dimensional and in need of edge smoothing.

The place that I went, the place that I still go, was the warm, hollowed-out center of a Bundt cake. It is usually gingerbread, though sometimes that changes. Sometimes it's gingerbread crowned in a ring of poached pears. The walls that surround me are high and soft, but as they go up they curve back, open up to the light, so I feel protected by the cake but never trapped by it. There are a few loose crumbs around my feet, clinging to my hair, and the smell! The ginger and butter, the lingering subtlety of vanilla... I press my cheek against the cake, which is soft as eiderdown and still warm.

The rosé was dry and crisp and perfect. The baguette was ambrosia: crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside. What was it about bread in France? Like the French version of butter, it seemed to bear little relation to the item of the same name back home. Genevieve sliced a wedge of pâté, topped it with a cornichon, and made a little sandwich. Another glass of wine, a bit of cheese: P’tit Basque, tangy Roquefort, a stinky and delicious washed-rind Brie. Even the pear seemed better than the ones she was used to: the perfect combination of tangy and sweet, the juice running down her arm as she ate. Sated,

I ate and drank what I wanted in Paris. Butter, duck fat, liver fat, triple-cream brie, deep cherry-red wines, pear, clementine and lavender jelly, crème cakes, caviar, escargot in sautéed pine nuts and garlic butter. I did what the French did, I licked my fingers, didn't care if people saw, what they thought. Father would've hated it, would've told me I was uncouth. I ate everything up, ate his money, was delightful everywhere I went. I learned how to wrap my tongue around accented vowels, spoke to this stranger and that. Nobody knew me, didn't expect anything from me. I wanted to stay like that forever.

For the weekend before, we had had a blowout of tarts, a tart bender, tart madness- even, I dare say, a Tart-a-pa-looza, if you will forgive one final usage of the construction before we at last bury that cruelly beaten dead pop-culture horse. Tarte aux Pêches, Tarte aux Limettes, Tarte aux Poires, Tarte aux Cerises. Tarte aux Fromage Frais, both with and without Pruneaux. Tarte aux Citron et aux Amandes, Tarte aux Poires à la Bourdalue, and Tarte aux Fraises, which is not "Tart with Freshes," as the name of the Tarte aux Fromage Frais ("Tart with Fresh Cheese," of course) might suggest, but rather Tart with Strawberries, which was a fine little French lesson. (Why are strawberries, in particular, named for freshness? Why not blackberries? Or say, river trout? I love playing amateur- not to say totally ignorant- etymologist....) I made two kinds of pastry in a kitchen so hot that, even with the aid of a food processor, the butter started melting before I could get it incorporated into the dough. Which work resulted in eight tart crusts, perhaps not paragons of the form, but good enough. I made eight fillings for my eight tart crusts. I creamed butter and broke eggs and beat batter until it formed "the ribbon." I poached pears and cherries and plums in red wine.

They set aside the quills and inspected the roasted pear, which was filled with mascarpone and scattered with pistachios. Leo considered. "The mascarpone's a good idea," he said. "It's not sweet. There's some cardamom in there too." Britt nodded. The tuiles that accompanied the pear were caramelized and sparkling with coarse dark sugar. He took a bite of pear and mascarpone and a bite of tuile and chewed, still nodding. Leo took one more bite. "That's actually really good. I hate a mushy pear, but this is just right." They moved on to the sour cherry cake, which was moist and fragrant with almond and some herbal note that quieted both of them. They sat, tasting and thinking, for several seconds, until Leo said, "Hyssop.

She sent a serving girl out to fetch some food. A beef pie, bread and butter and plenty of the sweet stuff that she loved. She devoured a treacle pudding, closing her eyes to savor every sticky crumb. Sugar. How she had craved the stuff. Though her belly was full, still she helped herself from a paper bag of sugarplums, globes of candied fruits that made her cheeks bulge. Was this happiness, she wondered? She was full of food again, and as sleepy as a suckled child. She pictured a well-stocked larder, and the chance to make all the delights in Mother Eve's Secrets. She would help herself to the best, of course, for she who stirs the pot never starves. A comfortable future lay before her, all for the taking. Mrs. Quin bustled back into the room and began to dress her face. Gone were the worst of the bran-specks and flaking red sores. Instead, she had the prettiness of a portrait on an enameled tin; a smudgy confection of pink and cream. "A rosy blush," Mrs. Quin said benignly, "is the fashion nowadays." While Mrs. Quin deposited her half a crown in a locked trunk, Mary slipped a bottle of Pear's Almond Bloom and a tin of White Imperial Powder into her skirts.

There is no fault that can’t be corrected [in natural wine] with one powder or another; no feature that can’t be engineered from a bottle, box, or bag. Wine too tannic? Fine it with Ovo-Pure (powdered egg whites), isinglass (granulate from fish bladders), gelatin (often derived from cow bones and pigskins), or if it’s a white, strip out pesky proteins that cause haziness with Puri-Bent (bentonite clay, the ingredient in kitty litter). Not tannic enough? Replace $1,000 barrels with a bag of oak chips (small wood nuggets toasted for flavor), “tank planks” (long oak staves), oak dust (what it sounds like), or a few drops of liquid oak tannin (pick between “mocha” and “vanilla”). Or simulate the texture of barrel-aged wines with powdered tannin, then double what you charge. (““Typically, the $8 to $12 bottle can be brought up to $15 to $20 per bottle because it gives you more of a barrel quality. . . . You’re dressing it up,” a sales rep explained.) Wine too thin? Build fullness in the mouth with gum arabic (an ingredient also found in frosting and watercolor paint). Too frothy? Add a few drops of antifoaming agent (food-grade silicone oil). Cut acidity with potassium carbonate (a white salt) or calcium carbonate (chalk). Crank it up again with a bag of tartaric acid (aka cream of tartar). Increase alcohol by mixing the pressed grape must with sugary grape concentrate, or just add sugar. Decrease alcohol with ConeTech’s spinning cone, or Vinovation’s reverse-osmosis machine, or water. Fake an aged Bordeaux with Lesaffre’s yeast and yeast derivative. Boost “fresh butter” and “honey” aromas by ordering the CY3079 designer yeast from a catalog, or go for “cherry-cola” with the Rhône 2226. Or just ask the “Yeast Whisperer,” a man with thick sideburns at the Lallemand stand, for the best yeast to meet your “stylistic goals.” (For a Sauvignon Blanc with citrus aromas, use the Uvaferm SVG. For pear and melon, do Lalvin Ba11. For passion fruit, add Vitilevure Elixir.) Kill off microbes with Velcorin (just be careful, because it’s toxic). And preserve the whole thing with sulfur dioxide. When it’s all over, if you still don’t like the wine, just add a few drops of Mega Purple—thick grape-juice concentrate that’s been called a “magical potion.” It can plump up a wine, make it sweeter on the finish, add richer color, cover up greenness, mask the horsey stink of Brett, and make fruit flavors pop. No one will admit to using it, but it ends up in an estimated 25 million bottles of red each year. “Virtually everyone is using it,” the president of a Monterey County winery confided to Wines and Vines magazine. “In just about every wine up to $20 a bottle anyway, but maybe not as much over that.

I can't tell you how many times over the years people tried to give me soy cheese and tempeh fake-meat, and other ickiness and pass it off as yummy. I'm sorry but no, you cannot make vegetable protein taste like bacon, no matter how much salt and liquid smoke you put in it! I wanted to celebrate good food, prepared in ways that make it good for you, which is surprisingly easy to do if you know the basics. If you use exceptional products that have inherent natural goodness, you don't need to swamp them in butter or cream to make them taste good." For dinner we'd had grilled skirt steaks, spicy Thai sesame noodles from my friend Doug's recipe, braised cauliflower, and for dessert, poached pears and Greek yogurt with lavender flowers and black sage honey. Filling, balanced, nutritionally sound.

The second course would feature six butter statues, one of which was an elephant, and another Hercules fighting the legendary monster Cerebus. A monstrous pastry stag was the centerpiece of that course, with red wine gelatin bleeding from where an arrow had pierced its side. The final course included six monstrous statues made of pastry: Helen of Troy; a nude Venus; a camel with a king upon its back; a unicorn with its horn in the mouth of a serpent; Hercules holding open the mouth of a lion; and Poseidon and his mighty trident. There were 361 bowls and plates of candied fruits: coconuts, apricots, grapes, pears, and melons, as well as plates of almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, and a variety of cheeses.

The fact that there were more adults than children at her party didn't seem to faze Dixie. "That child is like a dandelion," Lettie said. "She could grow through concrete." Dixie's birthday party had a combination Mardi Gras/funeral wake feel to it. Mr. Bennett and Digger looped and twirled pink crepe paper streamers all around the white graveside tent until it looked like a candy-cane castle. Leo Stinson scrubbed one of his ponies and gave pony rides. Red McHenry, the florist's son, made a unicorn's horn out of flower foam wrapped with gold foil, and strapped it to the horse's head. "Had no idea that horse was white," Leo said, as they stood back and admired their work. Angela, wearing an old, satin, off-the-shoulder hoop gown she'd found in the attic, greeted each guest with strings of beads, while Dixie, wearing peach-colored fairy wings, passed out velvet jester hats. Charlotte, who never quite grasped the concept of eating while sitting on the ground, had her driver bring a rocking chair from the front porch. Mr. Nalls set the chair beside Eli's statue where Charlotte barked orders like a general. "Don't put the food table under the oak tree!" she commanded, waving her arm. "We'll have acorns in the potato salad!" Lettie kept the glasses full and between KyAnn Merriweather and Dot Wyatt there was enough food to have fed Eli's entire regiment. Potato salad, coleslaw, deviled eggs, bread and butter pickles, green beans, fried corn, spiced pears, apple dumplings, and one of every animal species, pork barbecue, fried chicken, beef ribs, and cold country ham as far as the eye could see.

Except for the coconut cake (filled with Meyer lemon curd and glazed with brown sugar), most of the desserts she made for Walter were not her best or most original, but they were exemplars of their kind: portly, solid-citizen desserts, puddings of rice, bread, and noodles-sweets that the Pilgrims and other humble immigrants who had scraped together their prototypes would have bartered in a Mayflower minute for Greenie's blood-orange mousse, pear ice cream, or tiny white-chocolate eclairs. Walter had also commissioned a deep-dish apple pie, a strawberry marble cheesecake, and a layer cake he asked her to create exclusively for him. "Everybody expects one of those, you know, death-by-chocolate things on a menu like mine, but what I want is massacre by chocolate, execution by chocolate- firing squad by chocolate!" he told her. So that very night, after tucking George in bed, Greenie had returned to the kitchen where she made her living, in a basement two blocks from her home, and stayed up till morning to birth a four-layer cake so dense and muscular that even Walter, who could have benched a Shetland pony, dared not lift it with a single hand. It was the sort of dessert that appalled Greenie on principle, but it also embodied a kind of uberprosperity, a transgressive joy, flaunting the potential heft of butter, that Protean substance as wondrous and essential to a pastry chef as fire had been to early man. Walter christened the cake Apocalypse Now; Greenie held her tongue. By itself, this creation doubled the amount of cocoa she ordered from her supplier every month. After it was on his menu for a week, Walter bet her a lobster dinner that before the year was out, Gourmet would request the recipe, putting both of them on a wider culinary map.

As he bit into the oily green flesh, Fairchild couldn't have known he was holding in his hands the future crop of the American Southwest. But he had a hunch. It was a black-skinned fruit, a variety of alligator pear, or as the Aztecs called it, "avocado," a derivative of their word for testicle. It grew in pairs, and had an oblong, bulbous shape. The fruit had the consistency of butter and was a little stringy. But unlike the other avocados he had tasted farther north, in Jamaica and Venezuela, this one had remarkable consistency. Every fruit on the tree was the same size and ripened at the same pace, rare qualities for anything that grew in the consistent warmth of the subtropics. In Santiago, where a boat had deposited Fairchild and Lathrop, the avocado had an even greater quality. Fairchild listened intently as someone explained that the fruit could withstand a mild frost as low as twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit. Such a climatic range suggested a perfect crop for America. From central Mexico, the worldwide home of the first avocados, centuries of settlers had carried the fruit south to Chile. David Fairchild mused about taking it the other way, back north. "A valuable find for California," he wrote. "This is a black-fruited, hardy variety." Lathrop tagged along on the daytime expedition when Fairchild tasted that avocado. He agreed that a fruit so hardy, so versatile, would perfectly answer farmers' pleas for novel but undemanding crops, ones that almost grew themselves, provided the right conditions. Fairchild didn't know the chemical properties of the avocado's fatty flesh, or that a hundred years in the future it would, like quinoa, find esteem, owing to its combination of fat and vitamins. But he could tell that such a curious fruit, unlike any other, must have an equally curious evolutionary history. No earthly mammal could digest a seed as big as the avocado's, and certainly not anything that roamed wild through South America.

Saturday, I slipped out to the farmers' market. Waiting for me were crates of pears in shades of green, gold, and rose. I fell in love. I brought home a flat of Comice pears and placed them on my dining room table. I pulled out a chair so that I could look at them at eye level. Pears. Pear cake, pear sauce, caramelized pears, baked pears. Pear tart. Everybody liked tarts. I could flavor it with vanilla for depth, lemon zest for brightness, and cardamom as a surprise. I could make it as a galette, a free-form tart, and use a buttery puff-pastry crust. If I wanted to get my hands into food, puff pastry was a good place to do it. The process of making the laminated dough, folding butter into already buttery dough over and over---depending on your mood, it could be hypnotically soothing or mind-numbingly tedious. It sounded perfect.

This year, Merida saw rashers, poached eggs in a fragrant sauce, canceled wedding buns spread with a bit of dripping butter, boar meat made into warm, onion-scented drinking broth. Tarts golden and fragrant with cheese and scraps of pastry, mushrooms simmered in broth and browned with leeks in goose fat. Preserved pears in bowls, figs soaked in whisky, even little biscuits with rabbits stamped on them. Their private feast was always all the bits and bobs and failed experiments left over from preparing the public one. If this was the odd-ends, Merida could only imagine what the proper feast would be like later. Cranky Aileen was a wonder.

His fantasies were nurturing, not predatory. If he could have Jess, he would feed her. Laughable, antique, confusingly paternal, he longed to nourish her with clementines, and pears in season, fresh whole-wheat bread and butter, wild strawberries, comte cheese, fresh figs and oily Marcona almond, tender yellow beets. He would sear red meat, if she would let him, and grill spring lamb. Cut the thorns off artichokes and dip the leaves in fresh aioli, poach her fish- thick Dover sole in wine and shallots- julienne potatoes, and roast a whole chicken with lemon slices under the skin. He would serve a salad of heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and just-picked basil. Serve her and watch her savor dinner, pour for her, and watch her drink. That would be enough for him. To find her plums in season, and perfect nectarines, velvet apricots, dark succulent duck. To bring her all these things and watch her eat.

Sentimentally, he thought of Jess. Irrationally, he despaired of having her. But this was not a question of pursuit. Raj would laugh at him, and Nick would look askance. His fantasies were nurturing, not predatory. If he could have Jess, he would feed her. Laughable, antique, confusingly paternal, he longed to nourish her with clementines, and pears in season, fresh whole-wheat bread and butter, wild strawberries, comte cheese, fresh figs and oily Marcona almonds, tender yellow beets. He would sear red meat, if she would let him, and grill spring lamb. Cut the thorns off artichokes and dip the leaves in fresh aioli, poach her fish- thick Dover sole in wine and shallots- julienne potatoes, and roast a whole chicken with lemon slices under the skin. He would serve a salad of heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and just-picked basil. Serve her and watch her savor dinner, pour for her, and watch her drink. That would be enough for him. To find her plums in season, and perfect nectarines, velvet apricots, dark succulent duck. To bring her all these things and watch her eat.

She didn't know that the brioches in her breakfast basket had been formed by my hand. She didn't know the macarons----two each night, sent in a small box----were mine. But I did. In moments of weakness, I'd close my eyes and try to imagine her soft lips parting over jewel-bright confections, pink tongue tasting the flavors of me----achieved by the strange alchemy of whipping egg whites, infusing creams, and straining ripe fruits, all melded together into an intense burst of flavor. Had she preferred the inky-black chicory chocolate, the butter-rich caramel and burnt pear? Or did she moan for the juicy brightness of the grapefruit honey or blood orange and rose? It was enough to make a man hard.

pie Week 2 DAYS/ MEALS DAY 1 DAY 2 DAY 3 DAY 4 DAY 5 DAY 6 DAY 7 BREAK- -FAST Banana-Amarnath Porridge Coconut-Almond Risotto Breakfast Tofu Scramble Beet Greens Smoothie Pear Oats with walnuts Breakfast Tofu Scramble Beet Greens Smoothie SNACK Classic Hummus Roasted Corn with poblano-cilantro butter Mushroom bun sliders Roasted Cauliflower Hummus Puffed Rice Balls Latkes Red cabbage with apples and pecans LUNCH Tofu Stir-Fry Zucchini and Avocado Salad with garlic herb dressing Tofu summer rolls Quinoa Vegetable salad Tamale Casserole Autumn Wheat Berry Salad Moroccan Lasagna SNACK An apple Easy garlic roasted potatoes Stuffed mushroom One ounce of water Latkes An orange Classic Hummus DINNER Curried Rice Salad Grilled tofu Caprese Clean Vegan Pad Thai Seitan Satay Warm rice and Bean Salad Mushroom Lasagna Spicy Asian Quinoa Salad

Every New Year's Day, my parents had a big party, and their friends came over and bet on the Rose Bowl and argued about which of the players on either team were Jewish, and my mother served her famous lox and onions and eggs, which took her the entire first half to make. It took her so long, in fact, that I really don't have time to give you the recipe, because it takes up a lot of space to explain how slowly and painstakingly she did everything, sautéing the onions over a tiny flame so none of them would burn, throwing more and more butter into the pan, cooking the eggs so slowly that my father was always sure they wouldn't be ready until the game was completely over and everyone had gone home. We should have known my mother was crazy years before we did just because of the maniacal passion she brought to her lox and onions and eggs, but we didn't. Another thing my mother was famous for serving was a big ham along with her casserole of lima beans and pears. A couple of years ago, I was in Los Angeles promoting Uncle Seymour's Beef Borscht and a woman said to me at a party, "Wasn't your mother Bebe Samstat?" and when I said yes, she said, "I have her recipe for lima beans and pears. " I like to think it would have amused my mother to know that there is someone in Hollywood who remembers her only for her lima beans and pears, but it probably wouldn't have. Anyway, here's how you make it: Take 6 cups defrosted lima beans, 6 pears peeled and cut into slices, 1/2 cup molasses, 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1/2 onion chopped, put into a heavy casserole, cover and bake 12 hours at 200*. That's the sort of food she loved to serve, something that looked like plain old baked beans and then turned out to have pears up its sleeve. She also made a bouillabaisse with Swiss chard in it. Later on, she got too serious about food- started making egg rolls from scratch, things like that- and one night she resigned from the kitchen permanently over a lobster Cantonese that didn't work out, and that was the beginning of the end.

We'll start with a '95 Kistler-Dutton Ranch." She poured one for herself and tasted it. Ah, yes, she thought. Intense and lively with layers of pear, spice, vanilla, and nutmeg. And a hint of honey, if she wasn't mistaken. She smacked her lips. Her foray entered into, she was relaxing and beginning to enjoy herself. She grinned with glee as she wrapped herself into her oversize apron. "As I am a culinary orphan, I have chosen dishes from a wide range of influences. We're starting with classical French. In France, to begin, they often offer you what they call 'amuse bouches.' Amusements for the mouth. Here are yours." She set before him a platter filled with baby profiteroles, little puffs of pastry sliced in the middle and filled with a surprise. Troy reached out and brought one to his lips. His face flushed with pleasure as he bit into the creamy filling. "Yes," she said. "Finely chopped cooked lobster mixed with finely chopped cooked mushrooms sautéed in lobster butter. All bound with hot béchamel sauce.

People by Maisie Aletha Smikle Annatto top Rust top Cotton top Butter top Night top Tight curls Loose curls No curls Tail length Ear length Lambs’ wool Goat strands Cotton ball Fur ball Spongy tall Donkey eyes Monkey eyes Triangle nose Square nose Pear nose Fat lip Flat lip Colorful tone Colorless tone People atone down to the bone

Red and white wine/Manischewitz cocktails Apple cider challah/homemade date honey Potato and apple tart with horseradish cream Old-Fashioned braised brisket with tomatoes and paprika Tzimmes duo: Honeyed parsnips with currants and saffron, sweet potatoes with dried pears and prunes Stuffed cabbage Mini Jewish apple cakes with honeycomb ice cream "What's the difference between 'Jewish apple cake' and regular apple cake?" Rachel asks. I shrug. "Not sure. Maybe the fact that it's made with oil instead of butter? I think it's a regional thing.

she could sell in the café provisions she baked in her own time with a shelf life longer than pastries. When she thought of it there had been a rush of certainty she could do it, and a prickling of pride in having conceived a way to make money on her own. It would double at least what she was making now. Without Nicholas it might never had occurred to her. The other day he had stuck a label, which he had found in the junk drawer, on a plastic-wrapped loaf of banana bread. He wrote on the label with a marker, "From the Summer Kitchen Bakery." She had found the gesture adorable at the time and hugged him, but something about it had evidently started percolating in the recesses of her mind, and now she was lapping at the brew like someone tasting it for the first time and wondering how she had never before tasted such ambition. She was thinking of cellophane-packaged chocolate brownies and caramel blondies and orange-and-almond biscotti and pear and oat slices and butter shortbread and Belgian chocolate truffles, marmalades, chutney, relishes, and jellies beautified in jars with black-and-white gingham hats and black-and-white ribbon tied above skirted brims. She could even sell a muesli mix she had developed, full of organic cranberries and nuts and the zest of unwaxed lemons. And she wouldn't change Nicholas's label at all. A child's handwriting impressed that the goods were homemade. She would have his design printed professionally, in black and white, too, old world, like the summer kitchen itself.

After escargots swimming in garlic butter, steak with the crispiest, thinnest fries imaginable, and simple salads of butter lettuce in a peppery Dijon vinaigrette, we share a cheese course, followed by a trio of desserts: lemon tart for me, blueberry bread pudding for Jean, and a poached pear for Ruth.

In a ready crust of crushed walnuts, flour, and butter, D'Ours lays the pear slices in a pinwheel design. Because they've soaked up the red wine, their edges are etched in burgundy while their centers are white, giving them a candy cane appearance. A perfect Christmas dessert. Next, he crumbles the Roquefort over the pears, noting the irony of fruit desserts. Pairing fruit with sweet ingredients such as honey or sugar brings out the fruit's tartness while tangy cheese can make the fruit seem sweeter. Which might explain why my grandfather salted his grapefruit. "Roquefort has an intriguing history," he says while tapping a traditional flan filling of cream, sugar, and eggs. "You might be surprised to learn..." I stick up my hand and before D'Ours can object, I explain how Roquefort, like most blue cheeses, attributes its blue veins to penicillin mold and that in the past, Roquefort makers (there are only, like, nine in the world), used to put wrapped cheese next to humongous moldy rye bread in caves and let the spores from the rye bread seep into the cheese.