Slice Of Cake Quotes

Cakes are healthy too, you just eat a small slice.

She craved a tall glass of the fresh-squeezed lemonade from the pitcher she’d left chilling in the fridge. Two glasses served with a generous slice of pound cake with orange glaze icing sounded twice as nice.

Debbie had to get up and slice me a thick piece of cake before she could answer. And I do mean thick. Harry Potter volume seven thick. I could have knocked out a burglar with this piece of cake. Once I tasted it, though, it seemed just the right size.

A slice of cake never made anyone fat. You don't eat the whole cake. You don't eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that's safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what is served on the happiest days of your life.

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.

It's one slice of shit-cake after another with me, isn't it? Why did you marry me?" "God gave you to me." "Did you keep the receipt?" - Amber and Meoraq

People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.

On Saturday, he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon That night he had a stomach ache.

When evening fell the boy would bring the girl a glass of tea, a slice of lemon cake, an apple blossom floating in a blue cup. He would kiss her neck and whisper new names in her ear: beauty, beloved, cherished, my heart.

She gave me a sad smile and did what good friends do—gave me a second slice of cake.

love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it's just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don't love is fighting out all the kind sweetness we deserve and when someone shows up saying they will provide it as you do but their actions seem to break you rather than build you love is knowing whom to choose

I thought Bones looked like a little slice of heaven, but you're the whole cake, aren't you, sugar?

You think you can uncuff me now?" "Sorry, man, I have orders not to do that. Madison said she would bring me a huge slice of cake if I left you cuffed." "You're leaving me like this for cake?" he asked dumbfounded that cake held that kind of power over a boy. He wondered if it was like bloodlust.

So what did you bring? Lip gloss and a hairbrush?” Smirking, she unpacked the sandwiches Mort's cook had made for her, along with an ample slice of chocolate cake. “You owe me an apology.” “Omigod, it's a feast! Okay, you're forgiven.

Like most things, the more we have of something, the less happiness we derive from it. The first slice of cake: awesome. The fifth slice: not so good.

what love looks like what does love look like the therapist asks one week after the breakup and i’m not sure how to answer her question except for the fact that i thought love looked so much like you that’s when it hit me and i realized how naive i had been to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person as if anybody on this entire earth could encompass all love represented as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for would look like a five foot eleven medium-sized brown-skinned guy who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast what does love look like the therapist asks again this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence and at this point i’m about to get up and walk right out the door except i paid too much money for this hour so instead i take a piercing look at her the way you look at someone when you’re about to hand it to them lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation eyes digging deeply into theirs searching for all the weak spots they have hidden somewhere hair being tucked behind the ears as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation on the philosophies or rather disappointments of what love looks like well i tell her i don’t think love is him anymore if love was him he would be here wouldn’t he if he was the one for me wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me if love was him it would have been simple i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat i think love never was i think i just wanted something was ready to give myself to something i believed was bigger than myself and when i saw someone who probably fit the part i made it very much my intention to make him my counterpart and i lost myself to him he took and he took wrapped me in the word special until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me hands only to feel me a body only to be with me oh how he emptied me how does that make you feel interrupts the therapist well i said it kind of makes me feel like shit maybe we’re looking at it wrong we think it’s something to search for out there something meant to crash into us on our way out of an elevator or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore looking the right amount of sexy and intellectual but i think love starts here everything else is just desire and projection of all our wants needs and fantasies but those externalities could never work out if we didn’t turn inward and learn how to love ourselves in order to love other people love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don’t love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve and when someone shows up saying they will provide it as you do but their actions seem to break you rather than build you love is knowing who to choose

Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline; that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life. This is a story of how my life was saved by cake, so, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake.

Chloe, are you in the bathroom fucking that nice slice of man cake?

Mma Ramotsew accepted her large slice of cake and looked at the rich fruit within it. There were at least seven hundred calories in that, she thought, but it did not matter; she was a traditionally built lady and she did not have to worry about such things.

Destiny cuts the cake of love, Three slices to some, To others, a crumb.

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.

But there’s always been just a little tiny piece of me inside the size of a small slice of angel cake that knew somewhere somehow That I deserved better than someone like you.

If Evangeline had a dagger, she imagined she could have sliced into that night as if it were a cake and stolen a piece of it to take a bite of all the wondrous dark.

Me and the plan just need a bit more time’, I used to think, a bit more time and a bottle of wine, a bit more time and one more pipe, a bit more time and a slice of cake, a bit more time and a threesome, for luck.

It was a moment he remembered for years after, as though a special small slice had been cut from the cake of time. If nothing fires between two people, such an instant simply falls back into the general wrack of memory.

Love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it's just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don't love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve

Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake

He lifted the slice of cake and bit into it and turned the page. The old musty album with its foxed and crumbling paper seemed to breathe a reek of the vault, turning up one by one these dead faces with their wan and loveless gaze out toward the spinning world, masks of incertitude before the cold glass eye of the camera or recoiling before this celluloid immortality or faces simply staggered into gaga by the sheer velocity of time. Old distaff kin coughed up out of the vortex, thin and cracked and macled and a bit redundant. The landscapes, old backdrops, redundant too, recurring unchanged as if they inhabited another medium than the dry pilgrims shored up on them. Blind moil in the earth's nap cast up in an eyeblink between becoming and done. I am, I am. An artifact of prior races.

When evening fell, the boy would bring the girl a glass of tea, a slice of lemon cake, an apple blossom floating in a blue cup. He would kiss her neck and whisper new names in her ear: beauty, beloved, cherished, my heart. They had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things—if love can ever be called that.

This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one. A thank you in words to all of those that do not do what they do so well for the thanking. This is to the mothers. This is to the ones who match our first scream with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain and joy and terrified wonder when life begins. This is to the mothers. To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears. To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know, somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin. To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach. This is to the mothers. To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us that cannot fit inside after all they have endured. To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh. This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours. This is to the mothers. To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads. To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the happily married. To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated. This is to the mothers. This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts, the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days. This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way. To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around. To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children have children of their own. To the love. My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere only mothers have seen and know the secret location of. To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier to find and sack lunches no longer need making. This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created. This is to the mothers.

After all, life will hand each one of us our fair share of despair and loss and suffering—and then some. That’s certain. But just as certain: It will also give us slices of chocolate cake, and sunny, seventy-two-degree days, and breezes that rustle the trees. Good things are so easy to overlook, but that doesn’t make them any less there.

It was sort of like Macbeth, thought Fat Charlie, an hour later; in fact, if the witches in Macbeth had been four little old ladies and if, instead of stirring cauldrons and intoning dread incantations, they had just welcomed Macbeth in and fed him turkey and rice and peas spread out on white china plates on a red-and-white patterned plastic tablecloth -- not to mention sweet potato pudding and spice cabbage -- and encouraged him to take second helpings, and thirds, and then, when Macbeth had declaimed that nay, he was stuffed nigh unto bursting and on his oath could truly eat no more, the witches had pressed upon him their own special island rice pudding and a large slice of Mrs. Bustamonte's famous pineapple upside-down cake, it would have been exactly like Macbeth.

A slice of chocolate cake - priorities! - a scoop of chicken potpie, slice of chocolate cake, scoop of yam casserole, slice of chocolate cake, two scoops of mashed potatoes, a slice of chocolate cake, a scoop of buttery green beens, a slice of chocolate cake -

It was one thing to find happiness and lose it, quite another to have someone else's happiness thrust at you like an unwanted second slice of cake. Then again, she'd never refused a second slice of cake.

The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grow stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter.” I tried to imagine growth rings inside me. But the only thing I could picture was a leftover slice of Baumkuchen cake, the kind with treelike rings inside.

Why do you hate me?” griped Marcus. Roni barely resisted the urge to whack her mate over the head. “I just want a little taste.” “So get your own.” “You took the last slice.” “There are other cakes.” “But I don’t like them. I like chocolate cake.” When he just stared at her wearing a sulky expression, she sighed. “Let me put this another way. Do you enjoy sex?” “Yes.” “Then you’ll share with me, and you’ll like it.

While she pleaded for him not to cut through her name, he sliced enormous pieces of cake and plopped them on paper plates. Staring into each other’s eyes, they broke off bites and stuffed them in their mouths. Smacking loudly. Licking fingers. Laughing through icing-smeared grins. Eating cake the way it should be eaten, the way everybody wants to eat it.

What are you doing?" "Eating three slices of cake and five slices of regret, what does it look like I'm doing?

Yes, we could solve for why, but we could also eat another slice of coconut cake.

There’s nothing that can’t be solved with a pot of tea, a slice of cake, and a very dear friend.

She delighted in serving her guests a soothing cup of coffee, a slice of cake, and when the occasion called for it, a prayer of encouragement.

love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding

And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is the practice of eating when you are hungry and ceasing to eat when your brain sends the signal that your stomach is full. ... All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kid's birthday cake.

To eat or not to eat, that is the question: whether 'tis Nobler in the stomach to suffer the Slings and Arrows of outrageous Hunger (while keeping mouthparts in pristine kissing condition) or to take Spoon against Slice of cake, and-- "Yes, please," my stomach pipes up.

As children we see happiness as a thing. A toy train sticking out of a basket or the plastic film around a slice of cake. or a photograph of a scene in which we are at the centre, all eyes on us. As adults it gets more complicated. Happiness is success, work, a man or a woman. All vague, laborious things. Whether it's a word we use to describe our lives or not, it is mostly just that, a word. Childhood taught us something different about happiness, Yui thought, that all you needed to do was reach out your hand in the right direction and you could grasp it.

It is my job, Skeeter! You know well as I do, people won't buy so much as a slice of pound cake from an organization that harbors racial integrationists." "Hilly." I just need to hear her say it. "Just who is all that pound cake money being raised for, anyway?" She rolls her eyes. "The Poor Starving Children of Africa?" I wait for her to catch the irony of this, that she'll send money to colored people overseas, but not across town.

Mind-blowing sex?" I couldn't believe I'd asked, but how could I not? It was like dangling a giant slice of chocolate cake in front of a hungry person on a diet and telling them not to take a bite.

Uncertain, she popped out the first of her test cakes, sliced off a corner, and offered it to him. Fort picked it up between the sides of his hands. He inspected it. Sniffed it. Tried it. Then cried. This type of response will send any artist into a panic. Tears wash away the middle ground - all the infinite permutations of mediocre are eliminated, and two options remain: one sublime, the other catastrophic. For a moment, both interpretations existed in a kind of quantum state for Tress. And people wonder why artists so often abuse drink.

love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don’t love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve

The smallest smile finally graced his face as he handed me a paper plate. Nestled in the center was a slice of lemon cake. I stared at it for a moment before a tear escaped the corner of my eye. Braxton laughed . “You are still the only supe I know to cry about cake.” I sucked down my sob . “There are very few things in this world which can move me to tears.” I hugged the plate close to my chest. “This is just beautiful.” Eve, Jaymin (2015-01-29). Dragon Marked: Supernatural Prison #1 (pp. 307-308). . Kindle Edition.

But to suddenly be greeted by the openness we so often take for granted comes as a warm reminder of normal life, like arriving unannounced at a friend’s house to find a slice of cake waiting for you and the kettle already on the boil.

I'm also getting a piece of chocolate cake... "Can I have a bite?" he asked, his voice smooth and sexy. A bite of what? she wanted to ask, but didn't. She wasn't ready for that level of flirting. "Get your own slice, Gallagher." "I can do that, Blake. I'm in the mood for something sweet it seems.

Life isn't that simple. People aren't that simple. You can't cut them into slices like a cake, then throw away the bits you don't like.

Apples Ma's apple blossoms have turned to hard green balls. To eat them now, so tart, would turn my mouth inside out, would make my stomach groan. But in just a couple months, after the baby is born, those apples will be ready and we'll make pies and sauce and pudding and dumplings and cake and cobbler and have just plain apples to take to school and slice with my pocket knife and eat one juicy piece at a time until my mouth is clean and fresh and my breath is nothing but apple. June 1934

Your best friend is a mirror. Other friends ask after you when you are standing right there. “Where are you?” They ask, “Why are you without your other self?” You two are the ingredients to make something brand new. You cannot unbake a cake. You can only slice. A knife is a mirror. A best friend can be a knife.

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.

Why, you poor dear!” the housekeeper exclaimed in concern. “What happened? I’ll fix you something right away.” As the two prepared a chicken sandwich, some cocoa, and Hannah cut a large slice of cinnamon cake over which she poured hot applesauce, Nancy told of her adventures.

Julia", I answered breathlessly. "Chloe, are you in the bathroom fucking that nice slice of man cake?" "I'll be there in a second, okay?" I ended the call and shoved the phone back into my bag. I looked up at him, feeling my rational side return after the small interruption. "I should go." "Look, I-" He was cut off as my phone rang again. I answered without bothering to look at the screen. "God, Julia! I’m not in here fucking the piece of man cake!" "Chloe?" Joel's confused voice sounded through the phone. "Oh... hi." Shit. This could not be happening to me.

Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea.

Just slip on something black and low-cut, carve yourself the biggest goddamn slice of whatever cake they said you couldn't have, and be a VILLAIN for a night! Come on. You know they deserve it. You know they ALL deserve it. What's the use of all that rage you got if you don't take it out for spin?

love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it's just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don't love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve and when someone shows up saying they will provide as you do but their actions seem to break you rather than build you love is knowing whom to choose

Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst-- Heaven bless the mark!

hot fury fighting to tear out of him. Mental flashes stabbed his brain of what was done to her—delicate flesh sliced open without care. Oh God. His stomach lurched as his mind suddenly connected the smell that had been in his nostrils since he’d gotten there. Blood. Fresh and dried, no doubt caking her inner thighs all the way to her feet.

I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.

It was a moment he remembered for years after, as though a special small slice had been cut from the cake of time.

one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses.

This was just too fucking weird. Fucked up sprinkles on a slice of psycho shit cake.

If you were starving and had all the time in the world, would you stop eating the greatest slice of cake on earth halfway through? Then why would you quit on your dreams?

Love does not look like a person, love is our actions, love is giving all we can, even if it's just the bigger slice of cake, love is understanding.

We’re southerners, for chrissake. You’re invited inside and insulted over a glass of sweet tea and a slice of cake. Doors are not slammed in your face.

Happy smiles were shared between the bride and groom, but it was the cake their guests remembered - the vanilla custard filling, the buttercream finish, the slight taste of raspberries that had surely been added to the batter. No one brought home any slices of leftover cake to place under their pillow, hoping to dream of their future mate; instead, the guests… ate the whole cake and then had dreams of eating it again. After this wedding unmarried women woke in the night with tears in their eyes, not because they were alone, but because there wasn't any cake left.

Jerry took a large slice of wheaten bread, spread with golden butter, and bit into it with her small white teeth. It was a natural gesture - she was very hungry indeed - but to Sam, there was something symbolic about it. Jerry was like bread, he thought. She was like good wholesome wheaten bread, spread thick with honest farm butter; and the thought crossed his mind, that a man might eat bread forever and ever, and not tire of it, and it would never clog his palate like sweet cakes or pastries or chocolate éclairs.

it occurs to me to wonder why it is that the House gives a greater variety of objects to the Other than to me, providing him with sleeping bags, shoes, plastic bowls, cheese sandwiches, notebooks, slices of Christmas cake etc., etc., whereas me it mostly gives fish. I think perhaps it is because the Other is not as skilled in taking care of himself as I am. He does not know how to fish. He never (as far as I know) gathers seaweed, dries it and stores it to make fires or a tasty snack; he does not cure fish skins and make leather out of them (which is useful for many things). If the House did not provide all these things for him, it is quite possible that he would die. Or else (which is more likely) I would have to devote a great deal of my time to caring for him.

The banquet proceeded. The first course, a mince of olives, shrimp and onions baked in oyster shells with cheese and parsley was followed by a soup of tunny, cockles and winkles simmered in white wine with leeks and dill. Then, in order, came a service of broiled quail stuffed with morels, served on slices of good white bread, with side dishes of green peas; artichokes cooked in wine and butter, with a salad of garden greens; then tripes and sausages with pickled cabbage; then a noble saddle of venison glazed with cherry sauce and served with barley first simmered in broth, then fried with garlic and sage; then honey-cakes, nuts and oranges; and all the while the goblets flowed full with noble Voluspa and San Sue from Watershade, along with the tart green muscat wine of Dascinet.

By the way, I may have misled you by using the word 'tea'. None of your wafer slices of bread-and-butter. We're good trencher-men, we of the Revolution. What we shall require will be something on the order of scrambled eggs, muffins, jam, ham, cake and sardines. Expect us at five sharp." "But, I say, I'm not quite sure - " "Yes, you are. Silly ass, don't you see that this is going to do you a bit of good when the Revolution breaks loose? When you see old Rowbotham sprinting up Piccadilly with a dripping knife in each hand, you'll be jolly thankful to be able to remind him that he once ate your tea and shrimps.

If he had so much as taken a first glance at her cleavage, she’d have been a plonker not to make sure he got a second. But he hadn’t, and when I realized he hadn’t, I started to feel more than a bit panicky, because he hadn’t any excuse not to be taking a first glance. I’m only mildly motivated in that direction myself and I absolutely had taken both a first and a second glance at the cleavage and the bouncy golden curls and shiny pink lips. I think anyone who wasn’t really impervious would have. If you haven’t eaten anything but tasteless slop in years and suddenly someone offers you a slice of chocolate cake, so what if you don’t especially like chocolate cake; if you were interested in food at all, you’d at least think it over before you said no thanks.

Silas baked me a cake for my birthday. It was awful. I think he forgot the eggs. But it was the most beautiful chocolate failure I’ve ever seen. I was so happy that I didn’t even make a gag face when I ate a slice. But, oh god, it was so bad. Best boyfriend ever.

I may not read tea leaves or palms, my lady, but it is easy enough to read faces. Yours is a questioning face, always looking for answers, always seeking the truth, for yourself and for others.” I smiled at her. “I think that is a very polite way of saying I am curious as a cat. And we all know what happened to the cat—curiosity killed her.” Rosalie took the last slice of cake onto her plate. “Yes, but you forget the most important thing about the little cat,” she said, giving me a wise nod. “She had eight lives left to live.

Write some letters.” “Don’t want to.” “Bake a cake to give that boy a slice of.” “He might come while I’m still making it, and then we’d have to make conversation for an hour and a half till it was ready. Anyway, we’ve got some biscuits.” “Well, I give up,” he said.

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.

Life is just a series of dumb decisions and indecisions and coincidences that we choose to ascribe meaning to. School cafeteria out of your favorite pastry today? It must be because the universe is trying to keep you on your diet.. Thanks, Universe! You missed your train? Maybe the train’s going to explode in the tunnel, or Patient Zero for some horrible bird flu (waterfowl, goose, pterodactyl) is on that train, and thanks goodness you weren’t on it after all. Thanks, Universe! No one bothers to follow up with destiny, though. The cafeteria just forgot there was another bow in the back, and you got a slice of cake from your friend anyway. You fumed while waiting for another train, but one came along eventually. No one died on the train you missed. No one so much as sneezed. We tell ourselves there are reasons for the things that happen, but we’re just telling ourselves stories. We make them up. They don’t mean anything.

People I had never seen before flocked in, their faces showing a longing you never saw for cake. People's eyes lit up for a cupcake, cake seemed to signal celebration. But their eyes got filmy, watery, misty when we handed them a slice of pie. Pie was memory. Nostalgia. Pie made people recall simpler, maybe happier times.

I do it for the girls." "What girls?" He smirked. "They think it's sexy." "It's not." "No?" "I assure you." "Not sexy?" "You look khila, like a half-wit." "That hurts," he said. "What girls anyway?" "You're jealous." "I'm indifferently curious." "You can't be both." He took another drag and squinted through the smoke. "I'll bet they're talking about us now." In Laila's head, Mammy's voice rang out. Like a mynah bird in your hands. Slacken your grip and away it flies. Guilt bore its teeth into her. Then Laila shut off Mammy's voice. Instead, she savored the way Tariq had said us. How thrilling, how conspiratorial, it sounded coming from him. And how reassuring to hear him say it like that - casually, naturally. Us. It acknowledged their connection, crystallized it. "And what are they saying?" "That we're canoeing down the River of Sin," he said. "Eating a slice of Impiety Cake." "Riding the Rickshaw of Wickedness?" Laila chimed in. "Making Sacrilege Qurma." They both laughed. Then Tariq remarked that her hair was getting longer. "It's nice," he said. Laila hoped she wasn't blushing. "You changed the subject." "From what?" "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." "You know." "Know what?" "That I only have eyes for you." Laila swooned inside. She tried to read his face but was met by a look that was indecipherable: the cheerful, cretinous grin at odds with the narrow, half-desperate look in his eyes. A clever look, calculated to fall precisely at the midpoint between mockery and sincerity.

Life isn't that simple. People aren't that simple. You can't cut them into slices like a cake, then throw away the bits you don't like.

Diesel scoots closer to Roxy and leans in. “The cake here is to die for, literally, I killed someone for a slice once.

Better to fight back than get sliced up like a cake yourself.

we should be in union and arrayed against the Quality, if only the low whites would wager their crumbs for a slice of the whole cake.

I never knew what Mother knowed, Like how a thread and needle sewed, And how a kiss healed boo-boos fast. Why family knots were made to last. I never knew how Mother saw A caring man in angry pa, A smile beneath the teary gloom, A game inside a messy room. I never knowed what Mother knew, Like how to smile when days were blue, And how to laugh for laughter’s sake, While giving up her slice of cake. I never saw what Mother see’d Like honor pulling garden weeds, Or deep confessions in a look, And hope alive in storybooks. I never knew how Mother knowed To hand out carrots when it snowed, And why hot cocoa liked the rain, While naptime kept a person sane. For mother knowed and see’d it all. A winner in a strike-out ball. A 'yes, please' in a shoulder shrug. A 'love you mostest' in a hug. Perhaps, someday, I’ll come to know What Mother saw and knowed as so. Like how 'I’m right' can be all wrong, And why the night requires a song. But of the things I learned and knew I never doubted one thing true. My mother made it crystal clear, she knowed and loved me ever dear.

Carrot, to whom the word irony meant something to do with metal, picked up his pike and after a couple of impressive rebounds managed to cut the cake into approximately four slices.

There was a strange rumour in Highbury of all the little Perrys being seen with a slice of Mrs. Weston’s wedding-cake in their hands: but Mr. Woodhouse would never believe it.        

How did you know I was up here?' "Other than being able to track you through the bond? You told me in a letter that you'd sit up here waiting for your father to come home." I reach for the plate, then hold it in front of him. "I know chocolate cake isn't going to fix this, but in my defense, I got it for you when I'd just thought you'd had a shit day, before I knew what really happened." He glances at the slice, then leans in and brushes his mouth over mine before grabbing it. "I'm not used to people taking care of me. Thank you." "Get used to it.

Once upon a time Apache land would have stretched farther than the horizon, through New Mexico almost to Texas, but as white men found gold, silver, turquoise, and copper beneath its surface they carved up the territory like children sneaking to the fridge and slicing off a chocolate cake bit by bit: hoping at first that the loss wouldn’t be noticed but ultimately not really caring.

Bake Week is a special kind of entertainment. It’s not just a show for bakers, though obviously that is the main activity. It is something else too, an escape of sorts, a glimpse into a simpler way of being where people are kind to one another and sugar isn’t thought of as junk food, but as something special to be shared and cherished. Where you can say “I love you” with a slice of cake.

Short on firewood? Make a Swedish Flame. Make your cuts like you’re slicing a cake. Leave about six inches at the base. Throw about half a cap of fuel oil in. It will burn for two to three hours.

…But Jessica changed all that. Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea. "Here's your tea and your éclair," he told her. "It would have cost less to buy one of those Tintorettos." "Don't exaggerate," said Jessica cheerfully. "Anyway, there aren't any Tintorettos at the Tate." "I should have had that cherry cake," said Richard. "Then they would have been able to afford another Van Gogh.

Chequers and No. 10 enjoyed surprisingly haphazard security against assassination and terrorism. John Martin recalled that there was a competition in the Foreign Office to see who could get into Downing Street with the least adequate credentials. A railway season ticket and golf club membership card were runners-up, but ‘finally the prize went to a man who walked confidently through the entrance holding out a slice of cake.

I smiled at Logan, so very pleased with him for seeing that Domin, too, needed a slice of Logan cake, needed his attention, validation, trust, and to be told, once and for all, that he mattered, that he, too, was necessary.

Presently we began to have our slices of the national cake,” F. Scott Fitzgerald remembered, “and our idealism only flared up when the newspapers made melodrama out of such stories as Harding and the Ohio Gang or Sacco and Vanzetti.

Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t, she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline, that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life.

The better classes tended to talk of money as if there was a finite amount of it, as if it were a cake. They had their slice and didn’t want to part with it. But they kept adding extra slices to their plate, using their first portion to justify why they were entitled to a second, and a third. Before long, the original cake was twice the size – a celebration cake! what a triumph to be British! – and yet the rest of us were still waiting obediently for a single piece.

I want two of the four piece fried chicken dinners.  Both with mashed potatoes and green beans.  I also want two orders of grilled corn on the cob and a side of macaroni salad.  Three slices of the banana cream pie and a piece of German chocolate cake.

There was a time when it might have mattered, but I now found unmatched china to be remarkably insignificant. It occurred to me that I had never cared about such things as a girl. Nana served dinner on whatever was available. If a cup was broken, nobody threw out the saucer that went with it, because it made a good plate for a slice of cake. I was confident my guests would all appreciate a good meal and overlook a mismatched dish or two. There was fresh asparagus from my garden. Who could want for more?

He’d taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He’d made them see that it was better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake.

The dessert is a chocolate fondue. Make it on a clear day- cloudy weather dims the gloss on the melted chocolate- with seventy percent dark chocolate, butter, a little almond oil, double cream added at the very last minute, heated gently over a burner. Skewer pieces of cake or fruit and dip into the chocolate mixture. I have all their favorites here tonight, though only the gâteau de savoie is meant for dipping. Caro claims she cannot eat another thing, but takes two slices of the dark-and-white chocolate roulade bicolore.

We feared them and hated them, perhaps more than we feared and hated the Quality who held us, for all of us were low, we were all Tasked, and we should be in union and arrayed against the Quality, if only the low whites would wager their crumbs for a slice of the whole cake.

Alice made a simple supper of Welsh rarebit (toast points smothered in a sauce of cheddar, cream, dry mustard, and spices) with tomato slices, from Nellie's cookbook, and barbecued sausages, along with a "fluffy white cake" that turned out not to be that fluffy but was still delicious.

When he had finished the second slice, he looked at the Trunchbull, hesitating. “Eat!” she shouted. “Greedy little thieves who like to eat cake must have cake! Eat faster boy! Eat faster! We don’t want to be here all day! And don’t stop like you’re doing now! Next time you stop before it’s all finished you’ll go straight into The Chokey and I shall lock the door and throw the key down the well!” The boy cut a third slice and started to eat it. He finished this one quicker than the other two and when that was done he immediately picked up the knife and cut the next slice. In some peculiar way he seemed to be getting into his stride. Matilda, watching closely, saw no signs of distress in the boy yet. If anything, he seemed to be gathering confidence as he went along. “He’s doing well,” she whispered to Lavender. “He’ll be sick soon,” Lavender whispered back. “It’s going to be horrid.” When Bruce Bogtrotter had eaten his way through half of the entire enormous cake, he paused for just a couple of seconds and took several deep breaths. The Trunchbull stood with hands on hips, glaring at him. “Get on with it!” she shouted. “Eat it up!

Funnel The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost-new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. The children honored their separate arts; two became moderately famous, three married and fattened their delicate share of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was a concert pianist. She had a notable career and wore cropped hair and walked like a man, or so I heard when prying a childhood car into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan. One died a pinafore child, she stays her five years forever. And here is one that wrote- I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive words and scratch out my short marginal notes and finger my accounts. back from that great-grandfather I have come to tidy a country graveyard for his sake, to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake. I like best to think of that Bunyan man slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan of culture to do it big. On this same scale he built seven arking houses and they still stand. One, five stories up, straight up like a square box, still dominates its coastal edge of land. It is rented cheap in the summer musted air to sneaker-footed families who pad through its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew. Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying through the mist. Where those eight children danced their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing, that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced his gifts in numbers. Back from that great-grandfather I have come to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake, to question this diminishing and feed a minimum of children their careful slice of suburban cake.

She slapped a few slices of bacon on the heated griddle. Sizzling started immediately and the scent of rising coconut cake mingled with the smoky salt of bacon. "Heaven." She buttered day-old baguettes to toast, then cracked a few eggs for breakfast sandwiches. "Now some cheese. Brie? Emmental? Mmm, smoky onion cheddar.

The girl, as it turned out, was no ordinary girl either, although she would certainly have told you that she was. She believed that mirrors don't lie, and her mirror showed a remarkably unremarkable reflection. The magic that existed in her world sang only in poetry, paintings, colors, or an excellent slice of almond cake.

I'm so good that I'll do what you want me to do--for I feel there's something else you want me to do." "I'm in a scrape and I've been in it all summer. You see"--Emily was very sober--"I am a poetess." "Holy Mike! That is serious. I don't know if I can do much for you. How long have you been that way?" "Are you making fun of me?" asked Emily gravely. Father Cassidy swallowed something besides plum cake. "The saints forbid! It's only that I'm rather overcome. To be after entertaining a lady av New Moon--and an elf--and a poetess all in one is a bit too much for a humble praste like meself. Have another slice av cake and tell me all about it.

Creamy-looking custards were followed by beautifully decorated slices of cake. Crisp-shelled pastries were set down next to gooey-centered pies. Dainty little goblets featuring ice cream and sorbet came out on a silver tray, and a pungent aroma rose off a long wooden board that was dotted with more kinds of cheese than Gladys had ever seen,

We passed the Irish club, and the florist’s with its small stiff pink-and-white carnations in a bucket, and the drapers called ‘Elvina’s’, which displayed in its window Bear Brand stockings and knife-pleated skirts like cloth concertinas and pasty-shaped hats on false heads. We passed the confectioner’s – or failed to pass it; the window attracted Karina. She balled her hands into her pockets, and leant back, her feet apart; she looked rooted, immovable. The cakes were stacked on decks of sloping shelves, set out on pink doilies whitened by falls of icing sugar. There were vanilla slices, their airy tiers of pastry glued together with confectioners’ custard, fat and lolling like a yellow tongue. There were bubbling jam puffs and ballooning Eccles cakes, slashed to show their plump currant insides. There were jam tarts the size of traffic lights; there were whinberry pies oozing juice like black blood. ‘Look at them buns,’ Karina would say. ‘Look.’ I would turn sideways and see her intent face. Sometimes the tip of her tongue would appear, and slide slowly upwards towards her flat nose. There were sponge buns shaped like fat mushrooms, topped with pink icing and half a glace cherry. There were coconut pyramids, and low square house-shaped chocolate buns, finished with a big roll of chocolate-wrapped marzipan which was solid as the barrel of a cannon.

I think about her serving this cake at Salt, the slice still warm, the aroma of corn filling the whole bakery like the branches of a tree stretching in all directions. It tasted buttery, and savory, and with just the right hint of sour, which I guess came from the cheese. It was perfectly salted and spicy, cinnamon's contribution to the cake.

Adelgunde and Herrmann weren't allowed to eat cake, because they couldn't digest it, their parents explained, so instead each of them had a small biscuits that the huntsman had to take out of a box they had brought with them. But Felix and Christlieb ate up the big slices of cake that their kind mother handed them, and felt happy and cheerful.

Please tell me all the chocolate is for us.' The House had stocked the table between the armchairs with piles of chocolate truffles and confections and bars of it. Along with cookies and small finger cakes. And a platter of cheeses and fruit. And carafes of water and various juices. Gwyn surveyed the table. 'Did you go to all this trouble?' 'Oh, no,' Emerie said, eyes glowing. 'Nesta's been holding out on us.' Nesta scoffed, but Emerie said, 'The House will get you anything you want. Just say it aloud.' At Gwyn's raised brows, Emerie said, 'I'd like a slice of pistachio cake, please.' A plateful of one appeared before her. As well as a bowl of whipped cream topped with raspberries. Gwyn blinked. 'You live in a magic house.' 'It likes to read,' Nesta admitted, patting a stack of the romances. 'We've bonded over that.' Gwyn whispered to the room, 'What's your favourite book?' One thumped on the table beside Emerie's cake, and Gwyn squawked in surprise. But then rubbed her hands together. 'Oh, this is delightful.' 'That smile means trouble,' Emerie said. Gwyn's grin just widened.

While Mr Loveday aired my lady's sheets, I set to scratching up a supper. With not even time to change from my own damp clothes I had in one-half hour some welcoming tea steaming and hot brandy to mix a punch. Our bill of fare was the remnants of Mrs Garland's Yorkshire Pie, still sound and savory, fried bacon, and a hillock of roasted rabbits that disappeared as quickly as I made them. The last of the seed cake was eaten too, with a douse of brandy sprinkled over it to warm us. 'She will not eat those beggarly scraps,' said Jesmire, the spiteful old cat, when I took a tray of food to my lady's door. Yet I did see a slice of brandied cake disappear. I knew my mistress well enough by then, and she was a slave to her sugar tooth.

The King Cake is a large doughnut-shaped coffee cake, sprinkled with purple, green, and gold sugar with a plastic doll hidden inside. At these parties, the cake is sliced, everyone gets a piece and whoever gets the hidden doll in their piece, must give the next party. Parties are expected to happen weekly for the entire Mardi Gras season. This is only about six weeks.

Each course was more delectable than the last. Phoebe would have thought nothing could have surpassed the efforts of the French cook at Heron's Point, but this was some of the most delicious fare she'd ever had. Her bread plate was frequently replenished with piping-hot milk rolls and doughy slivers of stottie cake, served with thick curls of salted butter. The footmen brought out perfectly broiled game hens, the skin crisp and delicately heat-blistered... fried veal cutlets puddled in cognac sauce... slices of vegetable terrine studded with tiny boiled quail eggs. Brilliantly colorful salads were topped with dried flakes of smoked ham or paper-thin slices of pungent black truffle. Roasted joints of beef and lamb were presented and carved beside the table, the tender meat sliced thinly and served with drippings thickened into gravy.

I got up and took the cake out from under its cake-shaped cover. I had made it at three o'clock in the morning in a desperate attempt to comfort myself. And it was an enormous comfort, standing alone in the kitchen in my nightgown, sifting fresh ground nutmeg with allspice and cloves by the little light over the sink. I peeled the apples with ridiculous care, taking the skins off in long, even ribbons that spiraled down to the floor without breaking. I didn't think of any of them while I peeled those apples. I didn't work anything out in my mind. I just relaxed into the creaming of butter and sugar, the sweet expansion of every egg. I had hoped the mixer wouldn't wake anyone up.The last thing I had wanted was company. I cut off big, hulking slices and slid them onto dessert plates. The apples were soft and golden, the cake was a rust color.

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive—as follows: Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie liens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry. Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water—not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Mungo didn’t know how to respond to that. His mother was like a carnival magician, she was forever working some sleight of hand, sucking in her paunch, or turning different faces to these men. Jodie had said it was like how McCallum’s the baker kept turning their old wedding cakes in their window when the icing had yellowed in the sunlight. By the time some poor punter sliced into the fruit cake, it’d be too late to complain that it was claggy and unappetizing and soaked in rank old booze.

The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead... ...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and her wrists dipped in blood that smelt of tin. It was a day that abounded in peculiar traditions. Pass any candy store in the city and there'd be marzipan skulls and sugar fish and little white chocolate bones for 5 cents each. Pass any bakery and you'd see cakes slathered in blue icing, cakes sprinkled with sea-salt.If you made a Day of the Dead cake at home you always hid a coin in it, and the person who found it was supposed to live forever. Once, when she was four, Georgia had swallowed the coin and almost choked. It was still one of her favourite stories about herself. In the afternoon, there'd be costume parties. You dressed up as Lazarus or Frankenstein, or you went as one of your dead relations. Or, if you couldn't think of anything else, you just wore something blue because that was the colour you went when you were buried at the bottom of the ocean. And everywhere there were bowls of candy and slices of special home-made Day of the Dead cake. Nobody's mother ever got it right. You always had to spit it out and shove it down the back of some chair. Later, when it grew dark, a fleet of ships would set sail for the ocean cemeteries, and the remembrance service would be held. Lying awake in his room, he'd imagine the boats rocking the the priest's voice pushed and pulled by the wind. And then, later still, after the boats had gone, the dead would rise from the ocean bed and walk on the water. They gathered the flowers that had been left as offerings, they blew the floating candles out. Smoke that smelt of churches poured from the wicks, drifted over the slowly heaving ocean, hid their feet. It was a night of strange occurrences. It was the night that everyone was Jesus... ...Thousands drove in for the celebrations. All Friday night the streets would be packed with people dressed head to toe in blue. Sometimes they painted their hands and faces too. Sometimes they dyed their hair. That was what you did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then, sooner or later, you turned blue forever.

Whitehall cake by the Conservatives was spoliation when the privilege of cutting was found to have so much exceeded what had been expected. Were not they, the Liberals, the real representatives of the people, and, therefore, did not the cake in truth appertain to them? Had not they given up the cake for a while, partly, indeed, through idleness and mismanagement, and quarrelling among themselves; but mainly with a feeling that a moderate slicing on the other side would, upon the whole, be advantageous?

Eleanor unpacked the picnic basket and spread Mrs. Stevenson's goodies across it. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the four of them ate ham sandwiches and Cox's Orange Pippins and far too much cake, washing it all down with fresh ginger beer. Edwina watched the proceedings imploringly, snaffling up each small tidbit as it came her way. But really, the heat for October was uncanny! Eleanor undid the small pearl buttons at her wrist, rolling her sleeves back once, and then twice, so they sat in neat pleats. A somnolence had come over her after lunch, and she lay back on the blanket. Closing her eyes, she could hear the girls bickering lazily over the last slice of cake, but her attention drifted, sailing beyond them to pick out the 'plink' of water as gleaming trout leapt in the stream, the thrum of hidden crickets on the rim of the woods, the warm rustling of leaves in the nearby orchard. Each sound was an exaggeration, as if a bewitching spell had been cast over this small patch of land, like something from a fairy tale, one of Mr. Llewellyn's stories from her childhood.

Grated potato was added to the crepe batter, creating a thick and chewy Crepe Alsacienne! Yukihira realized this was meant as a wrap for the ingredients... ... and that spurred his idea to mix cheese, sliced potato and sardines together to make a crispy Galette de Pomme as a garnish to the dish! Look what that does to the dish! It gives it contrasting textures of crispy and chewy, along with the invigorating saltiness of seafood, none of which are present in the traditional recipe! *Galette de Pomme is a lightly fried cake of julienned potatoes.*

On 20 November, front-line troops got 500 grams of bread per day, factory workers received 250, and everyone else 125 (that is, two slices). ‘Twigs were collected and stewed,’ records an historian of the siege. ‘Peat shavings, cottonseed cake, bonemeal was pressed into use. Pine sawdust was processed and added to the bread. Mouldy grain was dredged from sunken barges and scraped out of the holds of ships. Soon Leningrad bread was containing 10% cottonseed cake that had been processed to remove poisons. Household pets, shoe leather, fir bark and insects were consumed, as was wallpaper paste which was reputed to be made with potato flour. Guinea pigs, white mice and rabbits were saved from vivisection in the city’s laboratories for a more immediately practical fate. ‘Today it is so simple to die,’ wrote one resident, Yelena Skryabina, in her diary. ‘You just begin to lose interest, then you lie on your bed and you never get up again. Yet some people were willing to go to any lengths in order to survive: 226 people were arrested for cannibalism during the siege. ‘Human meat is being sold in the markets,’ concluded one secret NKVD report, ‘while in the cemeteries bodies pile up like carcasses, without coffins.

then they walked back to the wicker picnic basket and sat on a plaid blanket eating cold fried chicken, salt-cured ham and biscuits, and potato salad. Sweet and dill pickles. Slices of four-layer cake with half-inch-thick caramel icing. All homemade, wrapped in wax paper. He opened two bottles of Royal Crown Cola and poured them into Dixie cups—her first drink of soda pop in her life. The generous spread was incredible to her, with the neatly arranged cloth napkins, plastic plates and forks. Even minuscule pewter salt and pepper shakers. His mother must have packed it, she thought, not knowing he was meeting the Marsh Girl. They talked softly of sea things—pelicans

Relax, princess. If your prince arrives, I'll vacate. Just keeping you company. Besides, he should know better than to leave a beautiful girl waiting on him; someone else might swoop in and steal his prize." This man is insufferable. "I'm neither a princess nor a prize, nor a girl if you want to be specific about it." "I notice you didn't mind my calling you beautiful." The waitress comes over and asks what he would like. I begin to tell her he isn't staying, but he talks right over me. "The three-wine flight and a slice of the chestnut cream cake, please." Damn his eyes! That was the dessert I was most interested in: layers of chestnut cream, apricot glaze, and dark chocolate ganache.

You see I'm wearing the tie," said Bingo. "It suits you beautiful," said the girl. Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex; but poor old Bingo simply got all flustered with gratification, and smirked in the most gruesome manner. "Well, what's it going to be today?" asked the girl, introducing the business touch into the conversation. Bingo studied the menu devoutly. "I'll have a cup of cocoa, cold veal and ham pie, slice of fruit cake, and a macaroon. Same for you, Bertie?" I gazed at the man, revolted. That he could have been a pal of mine all these years and think me capable of insulting the old tum with this sort of stuff cut me to the quick. "Or how about a bit of hot steak-pudding, with a sparkling limado to wash it down?" said Bingo. You know, the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate. This chappie before me, who spoke in that absolutely careless way of macaroons and limado, was the man I had seen in happier days telling the head-waiter at Claridge's exactly how he wanted the chef to prepare the sole frite au gourmet au champignons, and saying he would jolly well sling it back if it wasn't just right. Ghastly! Ghastly! A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn't been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them, and Mabel hopped it.

After that, we don't talk much until she brings out a ginger cake from the larder. "An old family recipe," she says. "I've been experimenting with the quantities of cloves and Jamaica ginger. Tell me what you think." And she pushes a slice toward me. I try not to gobble for it, for I am starving. "The most important thing with this cake is to beat in every ingredient, one by one, with the back of a wooden spoon," she says. "Simply throwing everything in together and then beating produces a most unsuccessful cake. I know because my first attempt was as heavy as a brick---quite indigestible!" She gives a rueful smile and asks if I think it needs more ginger. I feel the crumb, dense and dark, melt on my tongue. My mouth floods with warmth and spice and sweetness. As I swallow, something sharp and clean seems to lift through my nose and throat until my head swims. "I can see you like it." Miss Eliza watches me and smiles. And then I blurt something out. Something I know Reverend Thorpe and his wife would not like. But it's too late, the words jump from my throat of their own accord. "I can taste an African heaven, a forest full of dark earth and heat." The smile on Miss Eliza's face stretches a little wider and her eyes grow brighter. And this gives me the courage to ask a question that's nothing to do with my work. "What is the flavor that cuts through it so keenly, so that it sings a high note on my tongue?" She stares at me with her forget-me-not eyes. "It's the lightly grated rinds of two fresh lemons!

She was too narcoleptic to speak. Or move. How long had this been going on? Was she like this yesterday? Had I missed her illness in my quest to prove to my brain that my dick wasn’t the one behind this train wreck’s wheel? I touched her forehead again. It sizzled. “Sweetheart.” “Please get out.” The words clawed past her throat. “Someone needs to take care of you.” “That someone definitely isn’t you. You made that clear these past couple days.” I said nothing. She was right. I hadn’t bothered to check on her. Perhaps I’d wished she’d check on me. In truth, she’d already gone beyond any expectations in trying to make whatever it was between us work. Meanwhile, I’d shut her down. Repeatedly. “Shortbread, let me get you some medicine and tea.” “I don’t want you to nurse me to health. Do you hear me?” She must have hated that I’d seen her like this. Weak and ill. “Call Momma and Frankie. It’s them I want by my side.” I swallowed but didn’t argue. I understood she didn’t want to feel humiliated. To be taken care of by the man who ensured she understood her insignificance to him. How did her bullshit meter not fry? How could she think I really felt nothing toward her? “First, I’ll get you medicine, tea, and water. Then I’ll call for Hettie to stay with you. Then I’ll notify your mother.” I tugged her comforter up to her chin. “No arguments.” She tried to wave me out, groaning at the slightest movement. “Whatever. Just go. I don’t want to see your face.” I gave her what she wanted, though as always, not in the way she expected. The sequence of actions didn’t proceed as promised. First, I contacted Cara to dispatch the private jet to Georgia. Then I called my mother-in-law and Franklin—separately—demanding their presence. Only then did I enter the kitchen to grab water, tea, and ibuprofen for Shortbread’s fever. Naturally, like the chronic idler he often proved to be, Oliver still sat at the island, now enjoying an extra-large slice of red velvet cake I was pretty sure was meant to be consumed by Dallas. “What are you still doing here?” I demanded, collecting the things I needed for her. He scratched his temple with the handle of his fork, brows pulled together. “You invited me here. You wanted to watch a soccer game, remember?” I did not remember. I didn’t even remember my own address right now. “Get out.” “What about the—” I snatched the plate from his fingers, admitting to myself that I’d treaded into feral grounds. “This cake wasn’t for you to eat.” “You’ve gone insane in the ten minutes you were gone.” Oliver gawked at me, wide-eyed. “What happened to you? Did Durban not get her hands on the latest Henry Plotkin book and take her anger out on you?” Shit. The Henry Plotkin book. I shoved Oliver out with a fork still clutched in his grimy fist, dialing Hettie with my free hand. She half-yawned, half-spoke. “Yes?” “Dallas is ill. You need to come here and take care of her until my in-laws arrive in about two hours.” “Oh, yeah?” Her energy returned tenfold. “And what the hell are you gonna do during this time?” “Freeze my balls off.”(Chapter 58)

Then just when I thought I was going to really break down for a good cry, I remembered a large bag of pistachio nuts in the back of the pantry. I don't know what made me think of them. I had hidden them beneath several packages of dried pasta. Sam liked pistachio nuts. I bought them for a cake recipe I had seen in Gourmet. I stood up like a sleepwalker, my hands empty of sheets or shoes. I would take care of all this once the cake was in the oven. The recipe was from several months ago. I didn't remember which issue. I would find it. I would bake a cake. My father liked exotic things. On the rare occasions we went out to dinner together over the years, he always wanted us to go to some little Ethiopian restaurant down a back alley or he would say he had to have Mongolian food. He would like this cake. It was Iranian. There was a full tablespoon of cardamom sifted in with the flour, and I could imagine that it would make the cake taste nearly peppered, which would serve to balance out all the salt. I stood in the kitchen, reading the magazine while the sharp husks of the nuts bit into the pads of my fingers. I rolled the nut meat between my palms until the bright spring green of the pistachios shone in my hands, a fist full of emeralds. I would grind the nuts into powder without letting them turn to paste. I would butter the parchment paper and line the bottom of the pan. It was the steps, the clear and simple rules baking, that soothed me. My father would love this cake, and my mother would find this cake interesting, and Sam wouldn't be crazy about it but he'd be hungry and have a slice anyway. Maybe I could convince Camille it wasn't a cake at all. Maybe I could bring them all together, or at least that's what I dreamed about while I measured out the oil.

Golden Rule #17 Don’t mine stone with your bare hands. Long, long ago, there was a noob named Steven. He harvested wood with his bare hands because he thought using tools was a waste of resources. Why reduce tool durability? Why bother crafting axes at all? Steven’s hands had no durability, as far as he knew. Even if it took him longer to chop down trees this way, he could save materials. He could punch and punch all day and never waste any crafting tools. Steven was the kind of guy who, after loaning his best friend a wooden sword six months earlier, would ask for exactly one stick and two oak planks to be returned. Once, Steven and two friends bought a cake together. The cake cost six emeralds and was cut into six slices. That meant each person had to pay two emeralds. However, one of Steven’s cake slices was slightly smaller than the rest, so he argued that he should have to pay only 1.75 emeralds instead.

Happy birthday, Kya,” he said. “You’re fifteen.” A two-tiered bakery cake, tall as a hatbox and decorated with shells of pink icing, rose from the basket. Her name scripted on top. Presents, wrapped in colorful paper and tied with bows, surrounded the cake. She stared, flabbergasted, her mouth open. No one had wished her happy birthday since Ma left. No one had ever given her a store-bought cake with her name on it. She’d never had presents in real wrapping paper with ribbons. “How’d you know my birthday?” Having no calendar, she had no idea it was today. “I read it in your Bible.” While she pleaded for him not to cut through her name, he sliced enormous pieces of cake and plopped them on paper plates. Staring into each other’s eyes, they broke off bites and stuffed them in their mouths. Smacking loudly. Licking fingers. Laughing through icing-smeared grins. Eating cake the way it should be eaten, the way everybody wants to eat it.

I owe so much to the Other’s generosity. Without him I would not sleep snug and warm in my sleeping bag in Winter. I would not have notebooks in which to record my thoughts. That being said, it occurs to me to wonder why it is that the House gives a greater variety of objects to the Other than to me, providing him with sleeping bags, shoes, plastic bowls, cheese sandwiches, notebooks, slices of Christmas cake etc., etc., whereas me it mostly gives fish. I think perhaps it is because the Other is not as skilled in taking care of himself as I am. He does not know how to fish. He never (as far as I know) gathers seaweed, dries it and stores it to make fires or a tasty snack; he does not cure fish skins and make leather out of them (which is useful for many things). If the House did not provide all these things for him, it is quite possible that he would die. Or else (which is more likely) I would have to devote a great deal of my time to caring for him.

Camille, did you know that when your mother was a little girl she baked her own birthday cakes?" "That's weird," Camille said. "At first she baked birthday cakes for all her friends in school and then one year, I think she was nine, I was having a party for her and she asked if she could bake her own cake. Nine was very young, I thought. It was a complicated cake. I don't remember what kind it was now. I think she made it up." "Do you remember what kind of cake it was, Mom?" I shook my head no, but of course I remembered. The first cake I ever made for myself was a landmark in my personal baking history. It was a lemon glow chiffon that I sliced into twelve half-inch layers, spread with strawberry jam, reassembled, and covered in seven-minute icing. Looking back, such a cake would appear to have been a monstrosity, but to a nine-year-old it was a glamorous, ambitious cake that had the aura of something very French, even though I had no idea what that meant at the time.

With orchards and gardens bursting with delicious Kentish apples, now is the time to fetch out those favourite recipes. Spiced Apple Cake is simple to make and a nice change from a pie. It works well served warm with custard, or cold with a cup of tea in place of a traditional fruit cake. 3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced 2 tsp golden syrup 1 tbsp butter 1 tsp ground cinnamon Sponge mix: 4 oz butter 2 tbsp golden syrup 4 oz caster sugar 2 eggs 4 oz self-raising flour 1 tbsp milk Simmer the apples with the syrup, butter and cinnamon for a few minutes until tender but not mushy. To prepare the topping, soften the butter and golden syrup in a bowl over a basin of hot water. Remove from the heat and beat in the sugar and eggs. Fold in the flour, adding milk to give the consistency of lightly whipped cream. Place the apple chunks in a greased tin or ovenproof dish and pour over the topping. Bake at Gas Mark 4 for 25 to 30 minutes until the sponge is golden brown and springy to touch.

He was just a child himself, she saw. And lonely. He was the kind of man who probably always would be. 'Would you like some cake?' she tried. His countenance brightened. He would like some cake, he realized. He would like some cake very much indeed; he would like it above anything. When Sarah brought a slice of fruitcake up on a pretty blue-rimmed plate, she found that Mary was now also in the breakfast room, sitting stiffly on an upright chair near the young clergyman; she look round, heavy-eyed, when Sarah came in. Sarah had the distinct impression that she had disturbed not a conversation but a silence. Mary must be struggling to converse with him -- Sarah could sympathize -- too much time spent with books had not fitted her to be easy with herself, and other people. The young lady got up abruptly, and went to the window, and Mr. Collins got up too, looking relieved. He took the plat from Sarah and was profuse in his thanks, but then, with Mary there, did not know what to do with the cake after all.

It was all planned this way, it had to be, for Ryland's Jail was not a jail for criminals. Sprawling two city blocks, it was a warehouse for the Tasked who'd been caught running away or were being held before being sold. The jail was a daily reminder that no matter their freedoms, these coloreds of Starfall existed in the shadow of an awesome power, which, at a whim, could clap them back into chains. Ryland's Jail was run and staffed by the Low. These men became rich off the flesh trade, but their names were of too recent vintage and their work of such ill repute that they could never rise above their designation. It was the strong association between the jail and the low whites who fed and served it that gave them the name Ryland's Hounds. We feared them and hated them, perhaps more than we feared and hated the Quality who held us, for all of us were low, we were all Tasked, and we should be in union and arrayed against the Quality, if only the low whites would wager their crumbs for a slice of the whole cake.

How bad,' he asked, his voice hoarse. 'How bad was your injury,' Rhys said mildly, 'or how badly did we have our asses kicked?' Cassian blinked again. Slowly. As if whatever sedative he'd been given still held sway. 'To answer the second question,' Rhys went on, Mor and Azriel backing away a step or two as something sharpened in my mate's voice, 'we managed. Keir took heavy hits, but... we won. Barely. To answer the first...' Rhys bared his teeth. 'Don't you ever pull that kind of shit again.' The glaze wore off Cassian's eyes as he heard the challenge, the anger, and tried to sit up. He hissed, scowling down at the red, angry slice down his chest. 'Your guts were hanging out, you stupid prick,' Rhys snapped. 'Az held them in for you.' Indeed, the Shadowsinger's hands were caked in blood- Cassian's blood. And his face... cold with- anger. 'I'm a soldier,' Cassian said flatly. 'It's part of the job.' 'I gave you an order to wait,' Rhys growled. 'You ignored it.' I glanced to Mor, to Azriel- a silent question of whether we should remain. They were too busy watching Rhys and Cassian to notice. 'The line was breaking,' Cassian retorted. 'Your order was bullshit.' Rhys braced his hands on either side of Cassian's legs and snarled in his face, 'I am your High Lord. You don't get to disregard orders you don't like.' Cassian sat up this time, swearing at the pain lingering in his body. 'Don't you pull rank because you're pissed off-' 'You and your damned theatrics on the battlefield nearly got you killed.' And even as Rhys spat the words- that was panic, again, in his eyes. His voice. 'I'm not pissed. I'm furious.' 'So you're allowed to be mad about our choices to protect you- and we're not allowed to be furious with you for your self-sacrificing bullshit?' Rhys just stared at him. Cassian stared right back. 'You could have died,' was all Rhys said, his voice raw. 'So could you.' Another beat of silence- and in its wake, the anger shifted. Rhys said quietly, 'Even after Hybern... I can't stomach it.' Seeing him hurt. Any of us hurt. And the way Rhys spoke, the way Cassian leaned forward, wincing again, and gripped Rhys's shoulder.... I strode out of the tent. Left them to talk. Azriel and Mor followed behind me.

Servers moved among the guests with trays of hors d'oeuvres and the signature cocktail, champagne with a honey infused liqueur and a delicate spiral twist of lemon. The banquet was bursting with color and flavor- flower-sprinkled salads, savory chili roasted salmon, honey glazed ribs, just-harvested sweet corn, lush tomatoes and berries, artisan cheeses. Everything had been harvested within a fifty-mile radius of Bella Vista. The cake was exactly what Tess had requested, a gorgeous tower of sweetness. Tess offered a gracious speech as she and Dominic cut the first slices. "I've come a long way from the city girl who subsisted on Red Bull and microwave burritos," she said. "There's quite a list of people to thank for that- my wonderful mother, my grandfather and my beautiful sister who created this place of celebration. Most of all, I'm grateful to Dominic." She turned to him, offering the first piece on a yellow china plate. "You're my heart, and there is no sweeter feeling than the love we share. Not even this cake. Wait, that might be overstating it. Everyone, be sure you taste this cake. It's one of Isabel's best recipes.

Mamá was mixing bread dough by the kitchen window, pressing and pulling in a culinary tug of war. It took all her strength to mix four loaves at once, flour up to her elbows, tendrils of hair escaping from her bun, but it hardly made sense to do less. Her good bread disappeared as fast as she made it. Why, her family could hammer away a whole loaf in one sitting. Mamá smiled, then crossed herself against the sin of pride. Modesta was always saying, “That’s too much work! Why not just buy a loaf at the store?” Those sickly soft things they call bread? Mamá snorted as she slapped her dough. It was a sin to call such cotton bread! Her bread could stand up to thick bacon sandwiches and homemade blackberry jam. Hers melted in your mouth like cake. Indeed, after supper Father often buttered a big slice for dessert. At the thought of her husband, Mamá crossed herself again, this time not for pride, but for love. Everything she did was done for him. She meant to work for God, to make her life a prayer, but since the first time she saw Manuel, long before they were married, his was the face she pictured as she wiped her brow, bent her back to the task at hand. She shrugged. Perhaps her daughters would do better...

I'd give me two eyes for a slice of apple pie." She was brain-cracked, but spoke for them all. Then Tabby Jones joined in, holding forth on the making of the best apple pie: the particular apples, whether reinettes or pippins, the bettermost flavorings: cinnamon, cloves, or a syrup made from the peelings. Slowly, groans of vexation turned to appreciative mumblings. Someone else favored quince, another lemon. Apples, they all agreed, though the most commonplace of fruit, did produce an uncommon variety of delights: pies and puddings, creams and custards, jellies and junkets, ciders and syllabubs. The time passed a deal quicker and merrier than before. Janey, the whore who had once been famed in Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, told them, in her child's voice, that the best dish she ever tasted was a Desert Island of Flummery, at a mansion in Grosvenor Square. "It was all over jellies and candies and dainty figures, and a hut of real gold-leaf. Like eating money, it were. I fancied meself a proper duchess." She knew what Janey meant. When she had first met Aunt Charlotte she had gorged herself until her fingers were gummy with syrup and cream. There was one cake she never forgot; a puffed conceit of cream, pastry, and pink sugar comfits.

My mouth- always so active, alert- could now generally identify forty of fifty states in the produce or meat I ate. I had taken to tracking those more distant elements on my plate, and each night, at dinner, a U.S. map would float up in my mind as I chewed and I'd use it to follow the nuances in the parsley sprig, the orange wedge, and the baked potato to Florida, California, and Kansas, respectively. I could sometimes trace eggs to the county. All the while, listening to my mother talk about carpentry, or spanking the bottle of catsup. It was a good game for me, because even though it did command some of my attention, it also distracted me from the much louder and more difficult influence of the mood of the food maker, which ran the gamut. I could be half aware of the conversation, cutting up the meat, and the rest of the time I was driving truck routes through the highways of America, truck beds full of yellow onions. When I went to the supermarket with my mother I double-checked all my answers, and by the time I was twelve, I could distinguish an orange slice from California from an orange slice from Florida in under five seconds because California's was rounder-tasting, due to the desert ground and the clear tangy water of far-flung irrigation.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. Withfinocchioin fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

FOOD Adobo (uh-doh-boh)--- Considered the Philippines' national dish, it's any food cooked with soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and black peppercorns (though there are many regional and personal variations) Bibingka (bih-bing-kah)--- Lightly sweetened rice cake, commonly consumed around Christmas. There are many varieties, but the most common is baked or grilled in a banana leaf-lined mold and topped with sliced duck eggs, butter, sugar, and/or coconut. Buko (boo-koh)--- Young coconut Champorado (chahm-puh-rah-doh)--- Sweet chocolate rice porridge Lambanog (lahm-bah-nohg)--- Filipino coconut liquor Lumpia (loom-pyah)--- Filipino spring rolls (many variations) Matamis na bao (mah-tah-mees nah bah-oh)--- Coconut jam (also known as minatamis na bao) Pandan (pahn-dahn)--- Tropical plant whose fragrant leaves are commonly used as a flavoring in Southeast Asia. Often described as a grassy vanilla flavor with a hint of coconut. Pandesal (pahn deh sahl)--- Lightly sweetened Filipino rolls topped with breadcrumbs (also written pan de sal) Patis (pah-tees)--- Fish sauce Pinipig (pih-nee-pig)--- Young glutinous rice that's been pounded flat, then toasted. Looks similar to Rice Krispies. Salabat (sah-lah-baht)--- Filipino ginger tea Tuyo (too-yoh)--- Dried, salted fish (usually herring) Ube (oo-beh)--- Purple yam

HEJ HEJ! CAFÉ MENU RULLEKEBAB Original (Rullekebab)----shaved seasoned beef, fresh flatbread, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, kebab sauce Blue Kebab (Rullekebab med blåmögelost)----Original Rullekebab with blue cheese Shroom Kebab (Rullekebab med champinjoner)----Original Rullekebab with mushrooms Hej Hej! Special Rullekebab----Original Rullekebab with pineapple, blue cheese, jalapeños HAMBURGARE Hand-patted, local grass-fed beef, homemade buns The Classic----beef, choice of cheese, bun The Gettysburg----caramelized shallots, mushrooms, blue cheese, bacon, balsamic glaze The Farfar----two patties, four slices of American cheese, four pieces of bacon The Gruff Burger----goat cheese, fries (on top!), caramelized shallots, poutine gravy to dip The Valedictorian----pepper-jack cheese, bacon, guacamole (from Rosa's) POMMES FRITES Fresh-cut fries Plain----with cheese or gravy to dip Loaded Kebab Fries----fresh-cut fries, chopped kebab meat, red and white kebab sauces, crumbled feta, diced jalapeños and tomatoes Goat Cheese Poutine----fresh-cut fries, house-made gravy, goat cheese crumbles MUNKAR Äpple Munk----fresh donut, cinnamon sugar, filled w/ apple and sweet cream Bär Munk----fresh donut, sugar, seasonal berry jam, sweet cream Munkhål----baby donuts (holes), cinnamon sugar Special Munk----daily and seasonal specials CUPCAKES Vanilla Wedding Cake, Devil's Food, Lemon, Strawberry Cheesecake, Weekly Specials SEASONAL TREATS Homemade Apple Crisp à la Mode Apple Fritters Pumpamunk Saffron Buns

A plane in mathematics is not merely a flat surface but a flat surface of infinite thinness and size. Trivial? Not to us. When I say plane, I'm not thinking of a tabletop or sheet of glass or a piece of paper. You might point to any one of these objects; but all of them are precisely that: objects. They exist in the world. And because they do, they are defined by their breadth and reach. To a mathematician, a tabletop is no more a plane than a slice of rum cake is. In the world we know, in fact, the only thing that can actually be called a plane--or a portion of one, anyhow--is a shadow. You see? Words fail us. Even the world fails us. Are there not a thousand forms of sorrow? Is the sorrow of death the same as the sorrow of knowing the pain in a child's future? What about the melancholy of music? Is it the same as the melancholy of a summer dusk? Is the loss I was feeling for my father the same I would have felt for a man better-fit to the world who might have thrown a baseball with me or taken me out in the mornings to fish? Both we call grief. I don't think we have words for our feeling any more than we have words for our thoughts. I don't even believe that we actually do the things we call thinking and feeling. We do something, but it is only out of crudeness that we call it thinking; and when we do the other thing, we call it feeling. But I can tell you, if you asked Archimedes ... or Brahmagupta ... or Hilbert ... when they'd first known that they'd solved their great problem, I suspect they'd all say they had a feeling.

Piña Colada Cheesecake This tropical twist on my mother’s old-fashioned cheesecake was a hit at cruiser gatherings. For the crust 1 cup graham cracker crumbs 1⁄2 cup sweetened shredded coconut 1⁄3 cup melted butter For the filling 11⁄2 pounds cream cheese, softened 2⁄3 cup sugar 4 eggs 3 tablespoons dark rum 1 cup sour cream 3⁄4 cup cream of coconut (see Tips, below) 2⁄3 cup well-drained crushed pineapple (about 1 19-oz can) 1. Preheat oven to 350°F. 2. To make the crust, combine graham cracker crumbs and coconut with melted butter. Press into the bottom of a 10-inch springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes until lightly browned. Set aside to cool while you make the filling. 3. To make the filling, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, beating until blended. Mix in rum, sour cream, cream of coconut, and well-drained pineapple. 4. Spread evenly on prepared crust and bake about 50–60 minutes on middle rack of preheated oven, until edges are set and center moves just slightly when you shake the pan. 5. Run a knife around the inside of pan to loosen cheesecake. Allow cake to cool completely on a wire rack. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled or overnight. Remove from springform pan before serving. Serves 16 Tips • Garnish the cheesecake with slices of tropical fruit, such as fresh pineapple or mango. • Don’t confuse cream of coconut with coconut milk or coconut cream. Used to make drinks (such as piña coladas) and desserts, cream of coconut is thick, syrupy, heavily sweetened coconut milk. Coco Lopez is one popular brand.

Dear Kitty, Another birthday has gone by, so now I’m fifteen. I received quite a lot of presents. All five parts of Sprenger’s History of Art, a set of underwear, a handkerchief, two bottles of yoghurt, a pot of jam, a spiced gingerbread cake, and a book on botany from Mummy and Daddy, a double bracelet from Margot, a book from the Van Daans, sweet peas from Dussel, sweets and exercise books from Miep and Elli and, the high spot of all, the book Maria Theresa and three slices of full-cream cheese from Kraler. A lovely bunch of peonies from Peter, the poor boy took a lot of trouble to try and find something, but didn’t have any luck. There’s still excellent news of the invasion, in spite of the wretched weather, countless gales, heavy rains, and high seas. Yesterday Churchill, Smuts, Eisenhower, and Arnold visited French villages which have been conquered and liberated. The torpedo boat that Churchill was in shelled the coast. He appears, like so many men, not to know what fear is—makes me envious! It’s difficult for us to judge from our secret redoubt how people outside have reacted to the news. Undoubtedly people are pleased that the idle (?) English have rolled up their sleeves and are doing something at last. Any Dutch people who still look down on the English, scoff at England and her government of old gentlemen, call the English cowards, and yet hate the Germans deserve a good shaking. Perhaps it would put some sense into their woolly brains. I hadn’t had a period for over two months, but it finally started again on Saturday. Still, in spite of all the unpleasantness and bother, I’m glad it hasn’t failed me any longer. Yours, Anne

We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud

The broth... it's made with a mix of soy milk and charred miso. But how could you get a flavor this robust with just those?" "I mixed in grated ebi taro root. It's a strongly flavored tuber that mashes easily into a smooth, thick paste. Adding that to the broth gave it a creamy texture and a richer flavor." "Weird. All of a sudden I'm starting to feel warm." "That's the chili oil and grated raw garlic and ginger taking effect. The soy milk took the edge off of the spicy bite... so now it just gently warms the body without burning the tongue." "The rest of the ingredients are also a parade of detailed work. Thin slices of lotus root and burdock deep-fried to a crispy golden brown. Chunky strips of carrot and turnip grilled over an open flame until lightly charred and then seasoned with just a little rock salt to bring out their natural sweetness. Like a French buffet, each side ingredient is cooked in exactly the best way to bring out its full flavor! But the keystone to it all... ... is the TEMPEH!" TEMPEH Originating in Indonesia, tempeh is made of soybeans fermented into a cake form. Soybeans are lightly cooked and then wrapped in either banana or hibiscus leaves. When stored, the naturally occurring bacteria in the leaves causes the soybeans to ferment into tempeh. Traditional food with a history over four hundred years long, tempeh is well-known and often used in Indonesian cuisine. "Mm! Wow! It's really light, yet really filling too! Like fried rice." "It has a texture a lot like that of a burger patty, so vegetarians and people on macrobiotic diets use it a lot as a meat substitute. I broiled these teriyaki style in a mix of soy sauce and sake.

Camille's eyes fluttered and then closed. The cake was warm and her fork went down again. "Oh," she said quietly. There was a time I cared: a meat, a vegetable, a starch, some cake. Life had an order, but now the point only seemed to be eating. Here was my daughter, eating, devouring, she was almost through with the cake. "Did you make this with honey?" Camille asked. There was something in her voice I nearly recognized. It sounded like interest, kindness. "I did." "Because sometimes-" She couldn't finish her sentence without stopping for another bite. "You use brown sugar?" "It's another recipe." "I like the honey." "The problems they're having with bees these days," Sam began, but I held up my hand and it silenced him. There was too much pleasure in the moment to hear about the plight of the bees. My mother took a long, last sip of her drink and then went to the counter to get the cake, the knife, and three more plates. "First the two of you are having a drink on a Tuesday, now we're all eating cake before we finish our dinner." She cut four pieces and gave the first one to Camille, whose plate was empty. "It's madness. Anarchy. It must make you wonder what's coming next," Sam said. My mother handed me my plate. I don't eat that much cake, but I never turn down a slice. The four of us ate, pretending it was a salad course. Camille was right to pick up on the honey. It was the undertone, the melody of the cake. It was not cloying or overly sweet but it lingered on the tongue after the bite had been swallowed. I didn't miss the frosting at all, though it would have been cream cheese. I could beat cream cheese longer than most people would have thought possible. I could beat it until it could pass for meringue.

1. His back is full of knives. Notes are brittle around the blades. 2. He sleeps face down every night in a chalk outline of himself. 3. He has difficulties with metal detectors. 4. At birthday parties, someone might politely ask, may I borrow one of those knives to slice this chocolate cake? 5. He likes to stand with his back to walls. At restaurants, he likes the corner tables. 6. There is a detective who calls to ask him about the brittle notes. Also: a biographer, a woman who'd like to film a documentary, a curator of a museum, his mother. I can't read them, he says. They're on my back. 7. It would be a mistake for anyone to assume he wants the knives removed. 8. Most of the brittle notes are illegible. One of them, even, is written in French. 9. Every Halloween, he goes as a victim of a brutal stabbing. Once he tried going as a whale, but it was a hassle explaining away the knives. 10. He always wears the same bloody suit. 11. When he walks, he sounds like a tree still full of dead leaves holding on. 12. It is ok for children to count on his knives, but not to climb on them. 13. He saw his own shadow in a park. He moved his body to make the knives reach other people's shadows. He did it all evening. In the shadows, his knives looked like soft outstretched arms. 14. His back is running out of space. 15. On a trip to Paris, he fell in love and ended up staying for a few years. He got a job performing on the street with the country's best mimes. 16. The knives are what hold him together. It is the notes that are slowly killing him. 17. He is difficult to hold when he cries. 18. He will be very old when he dies and the Doctor will say, he was obviously stabbed, brutally and repeatedly. I'm sorry, the Doctor will say to a person in the room, but he's not going to make it.

In theory, toppings can include almost anything, but 95 percent of the ramen you consume in Japan will be topped with chashu, Chinese-style roasted pork. In a perfect world, that means luscious slices of marinated belly or shoulder, carefully basted over a low temperature until the fat has rendered and the meat collapses with a hard stare. Beyond the pork, the only other sure bet in a bowl of ramen is negi, thinly sliced green onion, little islands of allium sting in a sea of richness. Pickled bamboo shoots (menma), sheets of nori, bean sprouts, fish cake, raw garlic, and soy-soaked eggs are common constituents, but of course there is a whole world of outlier ingredients that make it into more esoteric bowls, which we'll get into later. While shape and size will vary depending on region and style, ramen noodles all share one thing in common: alkaline salts. Called kansui in Japanese, alkaline salts are what give the noodles a yellow tint and allow them to stand up to the blistering heat of the soup without degrading into a gummy mass. In fact, in the sprawling ecosystem of noodle soups, it may be the alkaline noodle alone that unites the ramen universe: "If it doesn't have kansui, it's not ramen," Kamimura says. Noodles and toppings are paramount in the ramen formula, but the broth is undoubtedly the soul of the bowl, there to unite the disparate tastes and textures at work in the dish. This is where a ramen chef makes his name. Broth can be made from an encyclopedia of flora and fauna: chicken, pork, fish, mushrooms, root vegetables, herbs, spices. Ramen broth isn't about nuance; it's about impact, which is why making most soup involves high heat, long cooking times, and giant heaps of chicken bones, pork bones, or both. Tare is the flavor base that anchors each bowl, that special potion- usually just an ounce or two of concentrated liquid- that bends ramen into one camp or another. In Sapporo, tare is made with miso. In Tokyo, soy sauce takes the lead. At enterprising ramen joints, you'll find tare made with up to two dozen ingredients, an apothecary's stash of dried fish and fungus and esoteric add-ons. The objective of tare is essentially the core objective of Japanese food itself: to pack as much umami as possible into every bite.

Let’s say a man really loves a woman; he sees her as his equal, his ally, his colleague; but she enters this other realm and becomes unfathomable. In the krypton spotlight, which he doesn’t even see, she falls ill, out of his caste, and turns into an untouchable. He may know her as confident; she stands on the bathroom scale and sinks into a keening of self-abuse. He knows her as mature; she comes home with a failed haircut, weeping from a vexation she is ashamed even to express. He knows her as prudent; she goes without winter boots because she spent half a week’s paycheck on artfully packaged mineral oil. He knows her as sharing his love of the country; she refuses to go with him to the seaside until her springtime fast is ended. She’s convivial; but she rudely refuses a slice of birthday cake, only to devour the ruins of anything at all in a frigid light at dawn. Nothing he can say about this is right. He can’t speak. Whatever he says hurts her more. If he comforts her by calling the issue trivial, he doesn’t understand. It isn’t trivial at all. If he agrees with her that it’s serious, even worse: He can’t possibly love her, he thinks she’s fat and ugly. If he says he loves her just as she is, worse still: He doesn’t think she’s beautiful. If he lets her know that he loves her because she’s beautiful, worst of all, though she can’t talk about this to anyone. That is supposed to be what she wants most in the world, but it makes her feel bereft, unloved, and alone. He is witnessing something he cannot possibly understand. The mysteriousness of her behavior keeps safe in his view of his lover a zone of incomprehension. It protects a no-man’s-land, an uninhabitable territory between the sexes, wherever a man and a woman might dare to call a ceasefire. Maybe he throws up his hands. Maybe he grows irritable or condescending. Unless he enjoys the power over her this gives him, he probably gets very bored. So would the woman if the man she loved were trapped inside something so pointless, where nothing she might say could reach him. Even where a woman and a man have managed to build and inhabit that sand castle—an equal relationship—this is the unlistening tide; it ensures that there will remain a tag on the woman that marks her as the same old something else, half child, half savage.

When Florence Allen took a bite of her dessert the expression on her face changed completely. She looked puzzled at first, as if she wasn't at all sure it was cake that she was eating. She cut herself another bite and then held up her fork and looked at it for a minute before slipping it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, as if she were a scientist engaged in an important experiment. She lifted up her plate and held it up to the light, studied it from different angles. Then she dipped down her nose and inhaled the cake. "This is sweet potato." I dabbed at my eyes again and told her that it was. "Sweet potatoes and raisins and... rum? That's a spiked glaze?" I nodded. She took another bite and this time she ate it like a person who knew what she was getting into. She closed her eyes. She savored. "This is," she said. "This is..." "Easy," I said. "I can give you the recipe." She opened up her eyes. She had lovely dark eyes. "This is brilliant. This is a brilliant piece of cake." In my family people tended to work against the cake. They wished it wasn't there even as they were enjoying it. But Florence Allen's reaction was one I rarely saw in an adult: She gave in to the cake. She allowed herself to love the cake. It wasn't that she surrendered her regrets (Oh well, I'll just have to go to the gym tomorrow, or, I won't have any dinner this week). She had no regrets. She lived in the moment. She took complete pleasure in the act of eating cake. "I'm glad you like it," I said, but that didn't come close to what I meant. "Oh, I don't just like it. I think this is-" But she didn't say it. Instead she stopped and had another bite. I could have watched her eat the whole thing, slice by slice, but no one likes to be stared at. Instead I ate my own cake. It was good, really. Every raisin bitten gave a sweet exhalation of rum. It was one of those cakes that most people say should be made for Thanksgiving, that it was by its nature a holiday cake, but why be confined? I was always one to bake whatever struck me on any given day. Florence Allen pressed her fork down several times until she had taken up every last crumb. Her plate was clean enough to be returned to the cupboard directly. "I've made sweet potato pies," she said. "I've baked them and put them in casseroles, but in a cake? That never crossed my mind." "It isn't logical. They're so dense. I think of it as the banana bread principle.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. With finocchio in fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

I want you to be happy. Eat it.” A wry smile curved Rose’s lips. “Am I to find happiness in a piece of chocolate cake?” Eve already had a forkful en route to her mouth. “I stake my reputation on it.” “Oh,” she replied dryly. “Surely heaven is just a bite away.” “Speaking of heaven,” Eve said a few minutes later when Rose thought she might expire from the bliss the dessert inspired, “tell me about your evening at Saint’s Row.” “Shh!” Her paranoid gaze darted around to see if anyone had overheard, but there was no one standing close enough to their whitewashed bench. “Don’t shush me, Rose Danvers. I’m your best friend and you’ve kept me waiting four whole days! I demand details.” Cheeks flushed, Rose stared at the half-eaten cake on her plate. Eve’s timing might leave something to be desired, but at least she’d stopped Rose from eating the entire slice. “What do you want to know?” Eve’s expression was incredulous. “Everything, of course.” Then, as though realizing who she was talking to, she sighed. “Did you find him?” Rose nodded. “I did.” The fire in her cheeks burned hotter, and she looked away. “Oh, Eve!” Her friend grabbed her wrist, clattering fork against plate. “That arse didn’t hurt you did he?” “No!” Then lowering her voice, “And he’s not an arse.” Using such rough language made her feel daring and bold. The scowl on Eve’s face eased. “Then…he was good to you?” Rose nodded, leaning closer. “It was the most amazing experience of my life.” The blonde giggled, bringing her head nearer to Rose’s. “Tell me everything.” So Rose did, within reason, looking up every once in awhile to make sure no one could hear. Afterward, when she was finished, Eve looked at her with a peculiar expression. “It sounds wonderful.” “It was.” Eve’s ivory brow tightened. “So, why do you sound so…disappointed?” Rose sighed. “It’s going to sound so pathetic, but when I saw Grey the next day he didn’t recognize me.” “But I thought you didn’t want him to know it was you.” Rose laughed darkly. “I don’t. That’s the rub of it.” She turned to more fully face her friend. “But part of me wanted him to realize it was me, Eve. I wanted him to see me as a woman, not as his responsibility or burden.” “I’m sure he doesn’t view you as any such thing.” Shaking her head Rose set the plate of cake aside, her appetite gone for good. "I thought this scheme would make everything better, and it's only made things worse." Worse because her feelings for Grey hadn't lessened as she'd hoped they might, they'd only deepened. Eve worried her upper lip with her bottom teeth. "Are you going to meet him again?" Another shake of her head, vehement this time. "No." "But. Rose, he wants to see you." "Not me, her." This was said with a bit more bitterness than Rose was willing to admit. He might have whispered her name, but it wasn't her he wanted to meet. Eve chuckled. "But you are her." She squeezed her wrist again. "Rose, don't you see? You're who he wants to see again, whether he knows it was you or not." Rose hadn't looked at it that way. She wasn't quite convinced her friend was right, but it was enough to make her doubt her own conclusions. She shook her head again. Blast, but she was making herself lightheaded. "I just don't know." "You'll figure it out," Eve allowed. "You always do.

MONKEY BREAD   Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 1 and ¼ cups white (granulated) sugar 1 and ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon 4 cans (7.5 ounce tube) unbaked refrigerated biscuits (I used Pillsbury) 1 cup chopped nuts of your choice (optional) 1 cup chocolate chips (optional) (that’s a 6-ounce size bag) ½ cup salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) Hannah’s 1st Note: If you prefer, you can use 16.3 ounce tubes of Pillsbury Grands. If you do this, buy only 2 tubes. They are larger—you will use half a tube for each layer. Tony’s Note: If you use chocolate chips and/or nuts, place them between each biscuit layer. Spray the inside of a Bundt pan with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Set your prepared pan on a drip pan just in case the butter overflows. Then you won’t have to clean your oven. Mix the white sugar and cinnamon together in a mixing bowl. (I used a fork to mix it up so that the cinnamon was evenly distributed.) Open 1 can of biscuits at a time and break or cut them into quarters. You want bite-size pieces. Roll the pieces in the cinnamon and sugar mixture, and place them in the bottom of the Bundt pan. Sprinkle one-third of the chopped nuts and one-third of the chocolate chips on top of the layer, if you decided to use them. Open the second can of biscuits, quarter them, roll them in the cinnamon and sugar, and place them on top of the first layer. (If you used Pillsbury Grands, you’ll do this with the remainder of the first tube.) Sprinkle on half of the remaining nuts and chocolate chips, if you decided to use them. Repeat with the third can of biscuits (or the first half of the second tube of Grands). Sprinkle on the remainder of the nuts and chocolate chips, if you decided to use them. Repeat with the fourth can of biscuits (or the rest of the Grands) to make a top layer in your Bundt pan. Melt the butter and the remaining cinnamon and sugar mixture in a microwave safe bowl on HIGH for 45 seconds. Give it a final stir and pour it over the top of your Bundt pan. Bake your Monkey Bread at 350 degrees F. for 40 to 45 minutes, or until nice and golden on top. Take the Bundt pan out of the oven and let it cool on a cold burner or a wire rack for 10 minutes while you find a plate that will fit over the top of the Bundt pan. Using potholders or oven mitts invert the plate over the top of the Bundt pan and turn it upside down to unmold your delicious Monkey Bread. To serve, you can cut this into slices like Bundt cake, but it’s more fun to just let people pull off pieces with their fingers. Hannah’s 2nd Note: If you’d like to make Caramel Monkey Bread, use only ¾ cup of white sugar. Mix it with the cinnamon the way you’d do if it was the full amount of white sugar. At the very end when you melt the butter with the leftover cinnamon and sugar mixture, add ¾ cup of brown sugar to the bowl before you put it in the microwave. Pour that hot mixture over the top of your Bundt pan before baking and it will form a luscious caramel topping when you unmold your Monkey Bread. Hannah’s 3rd Note: I don’t know why this is called “Monkey Bread”. Norman thinks it has something to do with the old story about the monkey that couldn’t get his hand out of the hole in the tree because he wouldn’t let go of the nut he was holding in his fist. Mike thinks it’s because monkeys eat with their hands and you can pull this bread apart and eat it with your hands. Mother says it’s because monkeys are social animals and you can put this bread in the center of the table and everyone can sit around it and eat. Tracey says it’s because it’s a cute name. Bethie doesn’t care. She just wants to eat it.

love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding

You tend to think that you are mainly the big blotches on the canvas: the big splashes that you want to draw attention to (you're aiming for the Olympics one day, you're into drag racing, you're working for a luxury company in Paris, so on and so forth). But those big blotches that you want to draw attention to aren't you, at the end of the day. At the end of the day, you are the tiny dots that you've pulled together, the small dots on your canvas which you've pulled together that make up the fundamental person that you are: the way you put a flower on your slice of cake, the way you mop your floor three times because once isn't good enough, the way that you nurture another person who is growing on the same path you have already been through, so on and so forth. You are the accumulation of the attention that you put into your daily, mundane actions which lend life to your existence. Or character to your daily life. That is you. That is what you have to give. That is your energy. Your big blotches have no power if your little dots are not accounted for.

I help myself to another slice of cake. No wonder Craig goes for younger women – they’ve had less time to pile on the pounds.

Strawberry Cake About 16 Servings Ingredients Cake 2 cups self-rising flour 2 cups sugar 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 teaspoons lemon juice 1 cup canola or coconut oil 1 cup milk 1/4 cup sweetened strawberries, mashed 1 small box strawberry gelatin Icing 2 cups sliced strawberries 1 cup butter, softened 3 cups confectioners' sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Preparation Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix all cake ingredients and pour into greased 9×13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. While the cake bakes, prepare the icing. Mix together all icing ingredients until smooth. Add more powdered sugar, if needed. Icing should be spreadable but not runny. Once the cake is cool, spread the icing on the cake. Refrigerate for at least two hours. Serve chilled.

Narcissistic people tend to approach the world as a five-year-old would, expecting each child to get the same number of cookies, or blocks, or slices of birthday cake.

Fruitcake really is the queen of cakes!’ she insists as she passes a thick, crumbling slice. ‘There is just nothing better — nothing!’ Tasting it, you have to agree. The crude jokes about fruitcake seem silly and unfounded as its moist richness blooms on the tongue, stirring both memories of Christmases past and anticipation of those to come.

From my bag, I took out a Moleskine notebook and a pen that I always carried for essay ideas and made notes on the setting. The clothes and attitudes of the passersby, the kind of shops that populated the hallways, the cakes in the case, so different from what I'd see at Starbucks in the US- these heavier slices, richer and smaller, along with an array of little tarts. I sketched them, finding my lines ragged and unsure at first. Then as I let go a bit, the contours took on more confidence. My pen made the wavy line of a tartlet, the voluptuous rounds of a danish. The barista, a leggy girl with wispy black hair, came from behind the counter to wipe down tables, and I asked, "Which one of those cakes is your favorite?" "Carrot," she said without hesitation. "Do you want to try one?" If I ate cake every time I sat down for coffee, I'd be as big as a castle by the time I went back to skinny San Francisco. "No, thanks. I was just admiring them. What's that one?" "Apple cake." She brushed hair off her face. "That one is a brandenburg, and that's raspberry oat.

Nanny Piggins was very prudish about gambling because the Ringmaster had once bet that if he tampered with the trajectory of her cannon, he could blast her over the top of the Eiffel Tower. Of course Nanny Piggins had triumphantly sailed over the famous French landmark, but she was very cross to pass the Jules Verne restaurant at the top and not be able to stop for a slice of cake. She had been against gambling ever since.

A matter of despair as regards bad butter is, that at the tables where it is used, it stands sentinel at the door to bar your way to every other food. You turn from your dreadful half-slice of bread, which fills your mouth with bitterness, to your beef-steak, which proves virulen with the same poison; you think to take refuge in vegetable diet, and find the butter in the string beans, and polluting the innocence of early peas; it is in the corn, in the succotash, in the squash; the beets swim in it, and the onions have it poured over them. Hungry and miserable, you think to solace yourself at the dessert; but the pastry is cursed, the cake is acrid with the same plague. You are ready to howl with despair and your misery is great upon you--especially if this is a table where you have taken board for three months with your delicate wife and four small children. Your case is dreadful and it is hopeless because of long use and habit rendered your host is incapable of discovering what is the matter. ‘Don’t like the butter, sir? I assure you I paid an extra price for it, and it’s the very best in the market. I looked over as many as a hundred tubs, and picked out this one.’ You are dumb, but not less despairing

I wanted more than that even though I’ve never had anything. Not one person to call if I changed my dollar in for quarters to ask what they thought about it. But there’s always been just a little tiny piece of me inside the size of a small slice of angel cake that knew somewhere somehow That I deserved better than someone like you.

Food allergies are no joking matter. We have a friend who left a Paris restaurant on a gurney because a waiter took it upon himself to interpret her stated Capsicum annuum (bell peppers) allergy as merely an intolerance. Another friend is fatally allergic to Arachis hypogaea (peanuts). Serious allergy sufferers carry epinephrine pens that can inhibit some allergic reactions. They never take risks, because the appearance of EMTs—emergency medical technicians—and a stretcher kills the vibe of any celebration. And any veteran chef who’s seen a severe allergy attack unfold at a party will work in good faith to make damn sure it never happens again. But more and more Americans dress up mild intolerances and preferences for food in allergy drag, perhaps to absolve themselves of the rudeness of expecting to be served a customized plate. Chefs and waiters share stories of such behavior constantly: guests who are “allergic” to dairy until the chocolate pudding comes out for dessert. The “celiac” who needs his first course and second course gluten-free and then asks for a second slice of cake. “It’s every party now,” Robb Garceau, now executive chef at Neuman’s Kitchen, told us. “Guest says: ‘I need a vegan first course!’ So we build a special salad just for her. And then we send her a vegan main. But she’s seen somebody else’s salmon. Captain tells me: ‘She wants the fish course.’ And I’m like: ‘What?! You were vegan half an hour ago!

Kiko is the worst kind because she hides her hand. That bitch would stab you in the back, wipe the knife clean, and then cut you a slice of cake with it to make you feel better.

love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it's just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don't love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve

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

WHITE PEACH AND BLUEBERRY SALAD WITH ROSE SYRUP Salade de Pêches Blanches à la Rose It's nearly impossible to improve on the white peaches in Provence, but I did find a bottle of locally made rose syrup in the boulangerie that piqued my interest. This makes a quick but surprisingly elegant dessert for guests. 4 perfectly ripe white peaches, cut into 1/2-inch slices 1 cup blueberries 1-2 teaspoons rose syrup Combine all the ingredients. Serves 4. Tip: Rose syrup is available online and from some specialty supermarkets. A small bottle will keep forever in the fridge. You can use it to make champagne cocktails or raspberry smoothies, or to flavor a yogurt cake. You may find rosewater, which is unsweetened (and very concentrated), at a Middle Eastern grocery. Use it sparingly (a few drops plus 1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar for this recipe), otherwise your fruit salad will taste like soap.

If we slice a cake so thin, we would end up with crumbs instead of a celebration!

Slushy spiked lemonade/beer Boiled peanuts/homemade pickles/kettle corn Mini corn dogs with chili ketchup, curried mustard, and cheese sauce Turkey leg confit Deep-fried Brussels sprouts Poker-chip potatoes Ginger-pear sno-cones and cotton candy Pumpkin funnel cake "What the hell are poker-chip potatoes?" "I'm going to slice the potatoes paper thin- like poker chips or carnival tokens- and line them up in a baking dish, accordion-style, with thyme, shallots, and garlic, and bake them until they're crispy around the edges but tender in the middle.

Every time we were at Billy's, AJ got the banana cupcake with cream cheese frosting, a house specialty. I usually felt it my duty to try something new- like the Hello Dolly, a graham-cracker-crusted bar, layered with a tooth-achingly sweet mélange of chocolate chips, pecans, butterscotch, and coconut, perhaps a big old slice of German chocolate cake, or just a modest sugar-dusted snickerdoodle. But today- out of alliance or nervousness, I wasn't sure- I had also ordered a banana cupcake: a wise choice, as it was especially spongy and fresh.

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.

Red and white wine (TBD) Victory Brewing Company Prima Pilsner Soft pretzel bread/spicy mustard sauce Cheesesteak arancini/homemade marinara sauce Deconstructed pork sandwich: braised pork belly, sautéed broccoli rabe, provolone bread pudding Lemon water ice Commissary carrot cake I'm particularly proud of my riff on the pork sandwich, one of Philadelphia's lesser-known specialties. Everyone presupposes the cheesesteak is Philadelphia's best sandwich, when, in fact, my favorite has always been the roast pork. Juicy, garlicky slices of pork are layered with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone on a fresh roll, the rich juices soaking into the soft bread while the crunchy crust acts like a torpedo shell, keeping everything inside. The flavors explode in your mouth in each bite: the bitter broccoli rabe, the assertive cheese, the combination of garlic and spices and tender pork.

The first two square tarts, pistachio-raspberry and pear-grapefruit, were both built upon thick, moist shortbread crusts, the only difference between them being the beautiful marzipan center of the pistachio-raspberry slice. The third cake was a dreamy dark chocolate creation that included layers of praline, mousse, and ganache.

During a lull in Adam's act, Juanita appears with my carrot cake, an eight-inch tower of spiced cake, caramelized pecan filling, cream cheese frosting, and toasted coconut. Miraculously, none of the frosting stuck to the foil- a small triumph. Juanita starts cutting into the cake, but I shoo her away and volunteer to serve the cake myself. If Adam wants to cut me out of the conversation, fine, but no one will cut me out of my culinary accolades. I hand a fat slice to Sandy, whose eyes widen at the thick swirls of frosting and gobs of buttery pecan goo.

They walked past offerings displayed on trestle boards and tables... puddings, sliced beef, boiled eggs, paper scoops filled with pickles, olives, salted nuts, or hot green peas glistening with bacon fat. There were roasted potatoes wrapped in waxed paper, crisp slivers of fried fish, smoked oysters crusted with salt, and cones of hardbake sweetmeats or brandy balls. Just a few minutes earlier, Keir had been willing to overlook his hunger in favor of more important concerns. Now that he was surrounded by this profusion of food, however, his empty stomach informed him that nothing else would happen until it was filled. Merritt stopped at a stall featuring sandwiches, bread and butter, and cake. "Evenin', milady," the stallkeeper said with a respectful tip of his hat. "Mr. Gamp," she said warmly. "I've brought this gentleman to try the best ham sandwich in London." "Smoked Hampshire ham, that's the secret," the stallkeeper said proudly as he set out a pasteboard box. "That, and the missus bakes the bread herself. Barm-leavened, to make it soft and sweet.

Popular fiction is supposed to be essentially story-driven; the proof that it works is the sound of the pages turning. But a few of the great pop writers were stylists, above all, and their success is measured by a different sound, that of the snort of appreciation followed by a phrase read out loud to a half-sleeping spouse in bed at night. The pages stop turning while we admire the sentences. Few readers of Raymond Chandler can recall, or even follow, the plot of Farewell, My Lovely - Chandler himself couldn't always follow his plots. What they remember is that Moose Malloy on a Los Angeles street was as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel-food cake. Of all the pop formalists, the purest and strangest may be Damon Runyon... Runyon's appeal came from his mastery of an American idiom. We read Runyon not for the stories but for the slang, half found on Broadway in the nineteen-twenties and thirties and half cooked up in his own head...

Apple Kuchen In the story, Jace and Grant both love sweets. This apple kuchen is something Cora Lee would have made that they both enjoyed. Happy baking! Apple Kuchen Cake 1 cup flour 2 tablespoons sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup butter, softened Blend together with a fork, or pastry blender, until crumbly and well mixed. Pat into a greased 9” x 9” or 8” x 8” square pan. Set aside. Filling 4 cups apples, peeled and sliced (Granny Smith works great) 1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon Mix apples with sugar and cinnamon. Layer over cake batter. Topping 1/3 cup flour 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup butter, softened 1 teaspoon cinnamon Use a fork to combine. Sprinkle on top of apples. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until edges are lightly browned. Serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream or ice cream. Refrigerate leftovers – if you have any!

Caroline is so very fond of Jane,” he announced. “Perhaps not as much as yourself, Elizabeth. But as dearly as a sister.” At this little treacling colloquy, Darcy looked over at Elizabeth. She had been slicing dessert, but stopped and stood poised with a cake knife in her hand. They both looked at the devoted Caroline, who hummed as she inspected her nails. Then Darcy’s gaze leapt back to his wife, possibly expecting to see Caroline’s trepanned cranium creating a crimson stain upon the carpet at their feet.

The buttery, brown sugary pineapple juice that seeps down into the cake from the slices on top make the cakes so moist, soft, and buttery.

Lilly Samson, The Switch, Quotes, shameless manipulation of. Allergies disclaimer: I would like to stress that this book is not exactly for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I've created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a "Pavlovian" reaction to Elena's BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I'm silent and trembling. 'My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.' I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer's Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady's knickers. Nope, she's allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don't you like it? And then he "squirts onto her wrist, playfully.

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.

We took our seats and spent the next few hours enjoying bruschetta, fried squid, heaping plates of penne puttanesca, and saltimbocca di pollo. Being full wasn't an option---the meal only ended once we'd proved consumption of a slice of olive oil cake.

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.

I assembled the breakfast while Sam set up the coffee urns. I arranged one platter beautifully, with peach rolls, apple cider doughnuts, mixed fruit turnovers, and healthy slices of cinnamon streusel coffee cake. On the other, breakfast burritos---Eddie's favorite---mini spinach and crab quiches, and bagels with smoked salmon, cream cheese, and chives.

The vegetation grew so dense the road looked like a square slice of cake taken out clean with a knife. Although the wet tropics covers less than one percent of Australia, it contains almost half of our bird species, a third of our mammal species, more than half of our butterfly species, and over seven hundred plant species endemic to the area. The rain forest seemed to inhale and exhale in a sweaty tangle of heaving bio matter.

The caterer would like to use your sideboard buffet for the skull platters, raven plates, and broomstick-style forks. The florist will provide a bouquet of black roses. The cauldron punch and batwing cups will go on the dining room table." "Menu?" Amelia requested. "We'd discussed finger food last week. What did you finally decide?" Grace ticked off the items. "All the food is easy to eat while standing," she assured Amelia. "Chicken-witch fingers, miniature goblin burgers, chocolate crescent witch hats, ghost sugar cookies, pumpkin Bundt cake, sliced caramel apples, small popcorn balls, and a big bowl of candy corn.

I know you don't like mangoes." A faint curl of humor danced on his lips. "You know?" How? How did he know this? "I've been feeding you this whole time, remember?" With his hot buttered voice, it sounded dirty, illicit. "I remember." I sounded far too breathless. He clearly noticed, that small private smile moved to his eyes. "You never eat the mango slices when I put them in any meals." Understanding hit me, and I recalled that while I'd had breakfast fruit trays with mangoes, they'd stopped being included after the second time. Wide eyed, I silently gaped back at him. Lucian's long clever fingers delicately picked up a cream puff. "Which is why I made some of these with vanilla-ginger cream." Had I been gaping before? My mouth fell wide open. Behind me, I heard Dougal sigh, as if impressed. But I could only stare at Lucian, who looked smug but oddly shy as well. "You did that for me?" I croaked. His broad shoulder moved under his jacket. "That, and the combination of vanilla, ginger, and mango mirrored what Delilah and Saint had wanted in their original cake." I could fall for this man. Fall hard. Maybe I already had, because my heart was too big, beating too fast. He gave me another small, barely there smile, his pale eyes gleaming with something soft and intent. "Come now, honeybee," he murmured. "Try my cream." I sputtered out a shocked laugh, and my face flamed, but as he'd commanded, I opened my mouth. Lucian's nostrils flared. His hand shook a little as he lifted the cream puff and placed it one the edge of my lips. I opened my mouth wider, my tongue flicking out for that first sweet taste. Rich, almost nutty caramel, the gentle crust of pastry, a burst of smooth light cream with a hint of vanilla and ginger spice. Slowly, I chewed, my eyes locked with his, my body tight, and my mouth in heaven. He stayed with me, feeding me another bite, cream getting on his thumb. My tongue slipped over the blunt end, and he grunted. Hard.

Selene loves to spent her nights curled up on her sofa, with a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Or a Pepsi and a bag of chips with a Pride and Prejudice variation in her hands.

After all, I would be served only one portion — no temptation to “sliver, slice, slab, slob” an entire cake.

Now the scent of souffled root vegetables, crispy, brown-sugar-glazed slices of cheese, bowls of frostberries, spiced apple cake and whorls of pastry dripping with salted caramel sauce summoned her hunger.