Sugar Coating Love Quotes

Tough love and brutal truth from strangers are far more valuable than Band-Aids and half-truths from invested friends, who don’t want to see you suffer any more than you have.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life. Say thank you.

When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.

Again, I am surprised why people seek to eliminate lust and cling to love; as they wish to ignore happiness and cleave unto joy! Now, now, let's not sugar-coat things! Lust has a lot more to do with life and what is the good of life if you do not carry much lust inside of you at all times? And joy is a noble thing, but happiness though fleeting can be found every day and in every small little way!

Love was also an easy word, used carelessly. Felons and creeps could offer it coated in sugar, and users could dangle it so enticingly that you wouldn't notice that it had things attached - heavy things, things like pity and need, that were weighty as anchors and iron beams and just as impossible to get out from underneath.

We, as women, have this slight flaw. Yes, admitting it, we are flawed with a faultless memory in regards to the good and bad in men...Stored within our memory banks is every loving gesture and sugar coated word, thoughtful moments, places, arguments, indiscretions, lies all catalogued, timed and dated...The list, for us, is endless... It is not our fault...You give us so much to remember...

We are fools to believe to believe that we have LOVED when it is just a sugar-coated word for NEED

I don’t believe in love,” he said. “It’s a sugar-coated pill—the first taste is tolerable enough, but you quickly reach the bitter layers beneath.

We entered the cool cave of the practice space with all the long-haired, goateed boys stoned on clouds of pot and playing with power tools. I tossed my fluffy coat into the hollow of my bass drum and lay on the carpet with my worn newspaper. A shirtless boy came in and told us he had to cut the power for a minute, and I thought about being along in the cool black room with Joey. Let's go smoke, she said, and I grabbed the cigarettes off the amp. She started talking to me about Wonder Woman. I feel like something big is happening, but I don't know what to do about it. With The Straight Girl? I asked in the blankest voice possible. With everything. Back in the sun we walked to the edge of the parking lot where a black Impala convertible sat, rusted and rotting, looking like it just got dredged from a swamp. Rainwater pooling on the floor. We climbed up onto it and sat our butts backward on the edge of the windshield, feet stretched into the front seat. Before she even joined the band, I would think of her each time I passed the car, the little round medallions with the red and black racing flags affixed to the dash. On the rusting Chevy, Joey told me about her date the other night with a girl she used to like who she maybe liked again. How her heart was shut off and it felt pretty good. How she just wanted to play around with this girl and that girl and this girl and I smoked my cigarette and went Uh-Huh. The sun made me feel like a restless country girl even though I'd never been on a farm. I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn't everyone have one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse. I gave Joey my cigarette so I could unlace the ratty green laces of my boots, pull them off, tug the linty wool tights off my legs. I stretched them pale over the car, the hair springing like weeds and my big toenail looking cracked and ugly. I knew exactly who I was when the sun came back and the air turned warm. Joey climbed over the hood of the car, dusty black, and said Let's lie down, I love lying in the sun, but there wasn't any sun there. We moved across the street onto the shining white sidewalk and she stretched out, eyes closed. I smoked my cigarette, tossed it into the gutter and lay down beside her. She said she was sick of all the people who thought she felt too much, who wanted her to be calm and contained. Who? I asked. All the flowers, the superheroes. I thought about how she had kissed me the other night, quick and hard, before taking off on a date in her leather chaps, hankies flying, and I sat on the couch and cried at everything she didn't know about how much I liked her, and someone put an arm around me and said, You're feeling things, that's good. Yeah, I said to Joey on the sidewalk, I Feel Like I Could Calm Down Some. Awww, you're perfect. She flipped her hand over and touched my head. Listen, we're barely here at all, I wanted to tell her, rolling over, looking into her face, we're barely here at all and everything goes so fast can't you just kiss me? My eyes were shut and the cars sounded close when they passed. The sun was weak but it baked the grime on my skin and made it smell delicious. A little kid smell. We sat up to pop some candy into our mouths, and then Joey lay her head on my lap, spent from sugar and coffee. Her arm curled back around me and my fingers fell into her slippery hair. On the February sidewalk that felt like spring.

In order to embrace holiness without the stumbling blocks of attractive sin, we must stop sugar-coating and glamorizing what slips and sneakily slides off the straight and narrow. Putting lipstick and diamonds on a corpse will not prevent it from rotting!

I never really thought about being in love with a person. Movies romanticize everything. They make being in love seem sugar-coated, a roller coaster, surreal. I think love is sacrifice. True love is being with someone through the hard times, through sickness, through poverty.

Yes, it was a "beautiful" sermon, tugging the emotions and conjuring up pictures of greatness and peace. But were they talking about the decent peppery ordinary old man he knew, or had the subject strayed to the story of some saint of the past? Or were there perhaps two men being buried under the same name? One perhaps had shown himself to Ross, while the other had been reserved for the view of men like William-Alfred. Ross tried to remember Charles before he was ill, Charles with his love of cockfighting and his hearty appetite, with his perpetual flatulence and passion for gin, with his occasional generosities and meannesses and faults and virtues, like most men. There was some mistake somewhere. Oh well, this was a special occasion...But Charles himself would surely have been amused. Or would he have shed a tear with the rest for the manner of man who had passed away?

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word.

There's one big difference between the poor and the rich,' Kite says, taking a drag from his cigarette. We are in a pub, at lunch-time. John Kite is always, unless stated otherwise, smoking a fag, in a pub, at lunch-time. 'The rich aren't evil, as so many of my brothers would tell you. I've known rich people -- I have played on their yachts -- and they are not unkind, or malign, and they do not hate the poor, as many would tell you. And they are not stupid -- or at least, not any more than the poor are. Much as I find amusing the idea of a ruling class of honking toffs, unable to put their socks on without Nanny helping them, it is not true. They build banks, and broker deals, and formulate policy, all with perfect competency. 'No -- the big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich are blithe. They believe nothing can ever really be so bad, They are born with the lovely, velvety coating of blitheness -- like lanugo, on a baby -- and it is never rubbed off by a bill that can't be paid; a child that can't be educated; a home that must be left for a hostel, when the rent becomes too much. 'Their lives are the same for generations. There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you're comfortably middle-class, what's the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90 per cent and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine -- but maybe cheaper -- go on holiday -- but somewhere nearer -- and pay off your mortgage -- although maybe later. 'Consider, now, then, the poor. What's the worst a government policy can do to them? It can cancel their operation, with no recourse to private care. It can run down their school -- with no escape route to a prep. It can have you out of your house and into a B&B by the end of the year. When the middle-classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats -- their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives. 'Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us -- no walking around National Trust properties, or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful; dying in mines, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate, then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor -- that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better, later. We live now -- for our instant, hot, fast treats, to prep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. 'You must never, never forget, when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad postcode, It's a miracle when someone from a bad postcode gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.

Love was also an easy word, used carelessly. Felons and creeps could offer it coated in sugar, and users could dangle it so enticingly that you wouldn't notice it had things attached—heavy things, things like pity and need, that were as weighty as anchors and iron beams and just as impossible to get out from underneath.

FRENCH TOAST I like to cook up a batch, then refrigerate or freeze individual slices in zip-top bags. A quick heating in the toaster or microwave oven and breakfast is ready. Substitute a tablespoon of brown sugar for the dates if you wish. The turmeric is for color; if you don’t have it, just leave it out. PREP: 10 MINUTES | COOK: 15 MINUTES • MAKES 12 SLICES 2 cups Cashew Milk 3 tablespoons chopped, pitted dates 1⁄8 teaspoon ground cinnamon Dash of ground turmeric 12 slices whole wheat bread Pure maple syrup, fruit sauce, or fruit spread, for serving Process 1 cup of the Cashew Milk and the dates, cinnamon, and turmeric in a blender until smooth. Add the remaining 1 cup Cashew Milk and blend a few more moments. Pour the mixture into a bowl and dip slices of bread in it, one at a time, coating them well. Heat a nonstick griddle or skillet over medium heat. Cook as many slices as your pan will handle at a time, turning until both sides are evenly browned. Serve warm with toppings of your choice.

At first Alexander could not believe it was his Tania. He blinked and tried to refocus his eyes. She was walking around the table, gesturing, showing, leaning forward, bending over. At one point she straightened out and wiped her forehead. She was wearing a short-sleeved yellow peasant dress. She was barefoot, and her slender legs were exposed above her knee. Her bare arms were lightly tanned. Her blonde hair looked bleached by the sun and was parted into two shoulder-length braids tucked behind her ears. Even from a distance he could see the summer freckles on her nose. She was achingly beautiful. And alive. Alexander closed his eyes, then opened them again. She was still there, bending over the boy’s work. She said something, everyone laughed loudly, and Alexander watched as the boy’s arm touched Tatiana’s back. Tatiana smiled. Her white teeth sparkled like the rest of her. Alexander didn’t know what to do. She was alive, that was obvious. Then why hadn’t she written him? And where was Dasha? Alexander couldn’t very well continue to stand under a lilac tree. He went back out onto the main road, took a deep breath, stubbed out his cigarette, and walked toward the square, never taking his eyes off her braids. His heart was thundering in his chest, as if he were going into battle. Tatiana looked up, saw him, and covered her face with her hands. Alexander watched everyone get up and rush to her, the old ladies showing unexpected agility and speed. She pushed them all away, pushed the table away, pushed the bench away, and ran to him. Alexander was paralyzed by his emotion. He wanted to smile, but he thought any second he was going to fall to his knees and cry. He dropped all his gear, including his rifle. God, he thought, in a second I’m going to feel her. And that’s when he smiled. Tatiana sprang into his open arms, and Alexander, lifting her off her feet with the force of his embrace, couldn’t hug her tight enough, couldn’t breathe in enough of her. She flung her arms around his neck, burying her face in his bearded cheek. Dry sobs racked her entire body. She was heavier than the last time he felt her in all her clothes as he lifted her into the Lake Ladoga truck. She, with her boots, her clothes, coats, and coverings, had not weighed what she weighed now. She smelled incredible. She smelled of soap and sunshine and caramelized sugar. She felt incredible. Holding her to him, Alexander rubbed his face into her braids, murmuring a few pointless words. “Shh, shh…come on, now, shh, Tatia. Please…” His voice broke. “Oh, Alexander,” Tatiana said softly into his neck. She was clutching the back of his head. “You’re alive. Thank God.” “Oh, Tatiana,” Alexander said, hugging her tighter, if that were possible, his arms swaddling her summer body. “You’re alive. Thank God.” His hands ran up to her neck and down to the small of her back. Her dress was made of very thin cotton. He could almost feel her skin through it. She felt very soft. Finally he let her feet touch the ground. Tatiana looked up at him. His hands remained around her little waist. He wasn’t letting go of her. Was she always this tiny, standing barefoot in front of him? “I like your beard,” Tatiana said, smiling shyly and touching his face. “I love your hair,” Alexander said, pulling on a braid and smiling back. “You’re messy…” He looked her over. “And you’re stunning.” He could not take his eyes off her glorious, eager, vivid lips. They were the color of July tomatoes— He bent to her—

Gulab jamun, am I right?" Puffy Fay asked with his mouth full. "The inspiration for this cupcake?" Vik nodded. "A friend once told me she loved to take her favorite desserts and make them into something else." He glanced at me briefly. Gulab jamun. I'd had it plenty of times in India. Creamy fried dumplings soaked in a sugar syrup, flavored with cardamom and- "Rosewater," said Puffy Fay, "can be a tricky ingredient. But-" he smacked his lips- "you've done an excellent job. And you somehow managed to mimic the flavor of that very sweet dessert without making your cupcake too sweet. Fascinating." "I coated rose petals in sugar and salt," said Vik. "Sugar for laughter, and salt for tears.

Sarah's first introduction was the signature sugardoodle. Big, billowy, and buttery, sparkling with a generous coating of sugar crystals and cinnamon, it has the perfect savory-sweet balance that comes from creamed butter and sugar. When she created it, the bakery's cookie menu was dominated by chocolaty options. She was looking to add something with a different flavor profile. Then, for the 2013 holiday season, she was playing with recipe ideas that would evoke nostalgia and home baking and struck upon the ginger spice cookie, a soft, sweet molasses number with the bite of ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It was so popular it stuck around beyond the holidays and became a year-round best seller. Then came the killer red velvet. Rich from cocoa, savory from a cream-cheese center, and crunchy from its sugar-dusted top, it gives red velvet lovers a whole new creation to die for.

Mondays are for baklava, which she learned to make by watching her parents. Her mother said that a baklava-maker should have sensitive, supple hands, so she was in charge of opening and unpeeling the paper-thin layers of dough and placing them in a stack in the tray. Her father was in charge of pastry-brushing each layer of dough with a coat of drawn butter. It was systematic yet graceful: her mother carefully unpeeling each layer and placing them in the tray where Sirine's father painted them. It was important to move quickly so that the unbuttered layers didn't dry out and start to fall apart. This was one of the ways that Sirine learned how her parents loved each other- their concerted movements like a dance; they swam together through the round arcs of her mother's arms and her father's tender strokes. Sirine was proud when they let her paint a layer, prouder when she was able to pick up one of the translucent sheets and transport it to the tray- light as raw silk, fragile as a veil. On Tuesday morning, however, Sirine has overslept. She's late to work and won't have enough time to finish preparing the baklava before starting breakfast. She could skip a day of the desserts and serve the customers ice cream and figs or coconut cookies and butter cake from the Iranian Shusha Bakery two doors down. But the baklava is important- it cheers the students up. They close their eyes when they bite into its crackling layers, all lightness and scent of orange blossoms. And Sirine feels unsettled when she tries to begin breakfast without preparing the baklava first; she can't find her place in things. So finally she shoves the breakfast ingredients aside and pulls out the baklava tray with no idea of how she'll find the time to finish it, just thinking: sugar, cinnamon, chopped walnuts, clarified butter, filo dough....

One day, because I was bored in our usual spot, next to the merry-go-round, Françoise had taken me on an excursion – beyond the frontier guarded at equal intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar sellers – into those neighbouring but foreign regions where the faces are unfamiliar, where the goat cart passes; then she had gone back to get her things from her chair, which stood with its back to a clump of laurels; as I waited for her, I was trampling the broad lawn, sparse and shorn, yellowed by the sun, at the far end of which a statue stands above the pool, when, from the path, addressing a little girl with red hair playing with a shuttlecock in front of the basin, another girl, while putting on her cloak and stowing her racket, shouted to her, in a sharp voice: ‘Good-bye, Gilberte, I’m going home, don’t forget we’re coming to your house tonight after dinner.’ That name, Gilberte, passed by close to me, evoking all the more forcefully the existence of the girl it designated in that it did not merely name her as an absent person to whom one is referring, but hailed her directly; thus it passed close by me, in action so to speak, with a power that increased with the curve of its trajectory and the approach of its goal; – transporting along with it, I felt, the knowledge, the notions about the girl to whom it was addressed, that belonged not to me, but to the friend who was calling her, everything that, as she uttered it, she could see again or at least held in her memory, of their daily companionship, of the visits they paid to each other, and all that unknown experience which was even more inaccessible and painful to me because conversely it was so familiar and so tractable to that happy girl who grazed me with it without my being able to penetrate it and hurled it up in the air in a shout; – letting float in the air the delicious emanation it had already, by touching them precisely, released from several invisible points in the life of Mlle Swann, from the evening to come, such as it might be, after dinner, at her house; – forming, in its celestial passage among the children and maids, a little cloud of precious colour, like that which, curling over a lovely garden by Poussin,15 reflects minutely like a cloud in an opera, full of horses and chariots, some manifestation of the life of the gods; – casting finally, on that bald grass, at the spot where it was at once a patch of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the blonde shuttlecock player (who did not stop launching the shuttlecock and catching it again until a governess wearing a blue ostrich feather called her), a marvellous little band the colour of heliotrope as impalpable as a reflection and laid down like a carpet over which I did not tire of walking back and forth with lingering, nostalgic and desecrating steps, while Françoise cried out to me: ‘Come on now, button up your coat and let’s make ourselves scarce’, and I noticed for the first time with irritation that she had a vulgar way of speaking, and alas, no blue feather in her hat.

TREASURE CHEST COOKIES (Lisa’s Aunt Nancy’s Babysitter’s Cookies) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. The Cookie Dough: ½ cup (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) salted butter, room temperature ¾ cup powdered sugar (plus 1 and ½ cups more for rolling the cookies in and making the glaze) ¼ teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons milk (that’s cup) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 and ½ cups all-purpose flour (pack it down when you measure it) The “Treasure”: Well-drained Maraschino cherries, chunks of well-drained canned pineapple, small pieces of chocolate, a walnut or pecan half, ¼ teaspoon of any fruit jam, or any small soft candy or treat that will fit inside your cookie dough balls. The Topping: 1 cup powdered (confectioners) sugar To make the cookie dough: Mix the softened butter and ¾ cup powdered sugar together in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Beat them until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the salt and mix it in. Add the milk and the vanilla extract. Beat until they’re thoroughly blended. Add the flour in half-cup increments, mixing well after each addition. Divide the dough into 4 equal quarters. (You don’t have to weigh it or measure it, or anything like that. It’s not that critical.) Roll each quarter into a log shape and then cut each log into 6 even pieces. (The easy way to do this is to cut it in half first and then cut each half into thirds.) Roll the pieces into balls about the size of a walnut with its shell on, or a little larger. Flatten each ball with your impeccably clean hands. Wrap the dough around a “treasure” of your choice. If you use jam, don’t use over a quarter-teaspoon as it will leak out if there’s too much jam inside the dough ball. Pat the resulting “package” into a ball shape and place it on an ungreased cookie sheet, 12 balls to a standard-size sheet. Push the dough balls down just slightly so they don’t roll off on their way to your oven. Hannah’s 1st Note: I use baking sheets with sides and line them with parchment paper when I bake these with jam. If part of the jam leaks out, the parchment paper contains it and I don’t have sticky jam on my baking sheets or in the bottom of my oven. Bake the Treasure Chest Cookies at 350° F. for approximately 18 minutes, or until the bottom edge is just beginning to brown when you raise it with a spatula. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the sheets for about 5 minutes. Place ½ cup of powdered sugar in a small bowl. Place wax paper or parchment paper under the wire racks. Roll the still-warm cookies in the powdered sugar. The sugar will stick to the warm cookies. Coat them evenly and then return them to the wire racks to cool completely. (You’ll notice that the powdered sugar will “soak” into the warm cookie balls. That’s okay. You’re going to roll them in powdered sugar again for a final coat when they’re cool.) When the cookies are completely cool, place another ½ cup powdered sugar in your bowl. Roll the cooled cookies in the powdered sugar again. Then transfer them to a cookie jar or another container and store them in a cool, dry place. Hannah’s 2nd Note: I tried putting a couple of miniature marshmallows or half of a regular-size marshmallow in the center of my cookies for the “treasure”. It didn’t work. The marshmallows in the center completely melted away. Lisa’s Note: I’m going to try my Treasure Chest Cookies with a roll of Rollo’s next time I make them. Herb just adores those chocolate covered soft caramels. He wants me to try the miniature Reese’s Pieces, too. Yield: 2 dozen delicious cookies that both kids and adults will love to eat.

I love watching him eat. Teaspoon after teaspoon disappears into his mouth; his saliva coats the spoon’s surface with stuck granules that change its color from silver to a crusty white. I cannot decide if he did me a favor or if I’m a victim. When I try to think, all I can feel is the sugar fluid, and a rage that comes when I find myself, after our feedings, somewhat hungry.

The birth of a better world is not ultimately up to you, though I know, each day, there are grown men and women who tell you otherwise. The world needs saving precisely because of the actions of these same men and women. I am not a cynic. I love you, and I love the world, and I love it more with every new inch I discover. But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful—the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you—the women around you must be responsible for their bodies in a way that you never will know. You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie. You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold.

I piled the cookies, their lovely violet color peeping through a light coating of powdered sugar, on a plate. I studied the offering, then added a small bowl of vanilla ice cream as well as a serving of my ube halaya, the purple-yam jam I'd used to create the cookies, to the dish. Perfect.

love potion The cherry-vanilla combination in this cocktail is somewhat reminiscent of childhood, but given that those flavors are mixed with sake and prosecco here, this drink is very grown-up. Finishing off the cocktail’s highball with chocolate sugar is a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself; the pitch-perfect end result is practically dessert. TIME: 5 MINUTES SERVES: 1 2 tablespoons coconut sugar 1½ teaspoons unsweetened cacao powder ½ ounce Vanilla Syrup 1½ ounces sake 3 ounces cherry juice Prosecco On a small round plate, mix the coconut sugar and cacao powder until fully combined. Using a sponge or paper towel, moisten the highball glass rim with a bit of vanilla syrup. Dip the rim in the chocolate coconut sugar, without twisting. Make sure the rim is thoroughly coated. Fill the rimmed glass three-quarters full with ice. Add the sake, cherry juice, and vanilla syrup. Top with prosecco. Stir briefly with a barspoon. Serve and enjoy.

hibiscus mimosa The hibiscus mimosa is lovely in its simplicity, a beautiful mix of prosecco and hibiscus that begs for a toast (or to be served alongside toast, at brunch). Sub in a nonalcoholic sparkling wine for kids and teetotalers. TIME: 3 MINUTES SERVES: 1 ⅓ cup dried hibiscus flowers ⅓ cup sugar 1 lemon wedge Prosecco ½ ounce hibiscus syrup (from one 8.8-ounce jar of hibiscus flowers in syrup) ½ ounce fresh lemon juice Hibiscus flower (from one 8.8-ounce jar of hibiscus flowers in syrup), for garnish Combine the hibiscus flowers and sugar in a food processor. Pulse until the flowers are pulverized. (Be certain to use the pulse method to ensure the sugar doesn’t melt or heat up.) Pour the hibiscus sugar onto a small plate. Rub the rim of a champagne flute with the lemon wedge. Dip the rim in the hibiscus sugar and twist it to coat. Fill the rimmed champagne flute halfway with prosecco, making certain to tilt the glass when pouring the prosecco to ensure the liquid does not overflow. Add the hibiscus syrup and lemon juice; stir with a barspoon. Use a barspoon to add a hibiscus flower to the bottom of the glass. Top off with additional prosecco. Serve and enjoy.

Cool Blue pays the boys in a Trench Coat.

We stuck with the traditional Äpple Munk and the favorite munkhål, but we also added a seasonal one I'd been working on in Mrs. Bixler's room during this dramatic lull in school-apple leftovers. I'd perfected a pumpkin cream cheese filling to go with a cinnamon sugar coating. It was like if pumpkin pie and donuts had a baby, and that baby turned out to be the Chosen One from the prophecy. Pumpamunk.

Lies tripping and coating themselves in sugar.

We are fools to believe that we have loved when it is just a sugar-coated word for need

On a frosty December morning, with her best handbag, hat, and a small suitcase she handed over the keys to their flat to her maid and asked her to keep their most precious belongings safe there... Then she joined the disorderly progression of Jews heading for the Veletržní palác. Instead of taking something necessary and useful like tinned fish or packet soup, Anka carried a large hat box tied with string. In it were three dozen of her maid's delicious sugar-coated donuts, [her husband's] favorite treat... The young bride kept brushing her hair and reapplying her makeup. [The people around her] were even more intrigued when she knelt on the floor in her fine stockings to use her eyelash curlers. "I just wanted to look my best for the man I loved." A passage about Anka Bergman, a Czech Holocaust survivor, being transferred to the Theresienstadt ghetto

On a frosty December morning, with her best handbag, hat, and a small suitcase she handed over the keys to their flat to her maid and asked her to keep their most precious belongings safe there... Then she joined the disorderly progression of Jews heading for the Veletržní palác. Instead of taking something necessary and useful like tinned fish or packet soup, Anka carried a large hat box tied with string. In it were three dozen of her maid's delicious sugar-coated donuts, [her husband's] favorite treat... The young bride kept brushing her hair and reapplying her makeup. [The people around her] were even more intrigued when she knelt on the floor in her fine stockings to use her eyelash curlers. "I just wanted to look my best for the man I loved." A passage about Anka Bergman, a Czech Holocaust survivor, being transferred to the Theresienstadt ghetto.

Think for but a moment of what God has accomplished through his Christians in the United States. Christians have spent the last couple of hundred years going out as missionaries and bringing the gospel to the lost. There is no corner or place where the message has not been carried, and in some quarters it has been received with such great force that we now find those countries sending missionaries back to evangelize our country. It is well, when we criticize all the sins of the United States, that we also remember all those great Christians who gave their lives sharing the gospel.             But no matter how sugar-coated it is made, the United States stands as far from the gospel as it has in decades. What can be done for an old heart like ours? I do believe the one lesson to be taken from this great awakening is that we must come together in prayer. We must wait upon God, but we wait in expectation, knowing that he loves this people of this world more than we ever could. We have the assurance through the Word, that when we pray God listens, and when we pray for something that he has already commanded us to pray for—that he send more laborers into the harvest field—we may be confident of his answer. Let us look, then, to the harvest fields and see what God might turn our hands toward. How blessed is the God who uses such earthen vessels of clay to proclaim his majesty!

I am not perfect and I don't pretend to be. My brand is about dealing with life after it happens and not sugar coating the fact that I'm a human who makes mistakes.

Love is like a drug that can either kill you, weaken you or make you stronger. Like a poison that finds it way through you body with each kiss, each touch and each look. It makes you feel euphoric. Makes you feel like you can take on anything that comes on your path. Whether it walks behind, in front or beside you. No mountain is high enough, no ocean deep enough and the sky had no limit. It can make you feel weak. Make you question everything around except the person who the love is for. But it can also destroy you in a way you never would have imagined was even possible. It hurts like a thousand knives twisting against your spine, paralyzing you. It can make you feel like the world just caved in around you, beneath you. You ask yourself if this is all worth it. Worth the euphoric feeling of someone loving you. Worth everything. I can tell you that in the end, it is. Because now you may feel destroyed, but keep in mind that a feeling is something that can be changed. There is someone who will build you up. Who will climb the highest mountain or cross the deepest oceans. Who makes you feel alive all for the right reasons. Someone who will not sugar coat his intentions. Who will not say he's someone he actually is not. Someone who wants you in his life. Who shows you off like a show pony to show everyone how proud he/she is to have you in his/her life. The feeling of destruction will fade when you meet someone who is willing to build you up. Who doesn't care how deep your roots have rooted itself into the earth to keep yourself grounded. Who will find every last stone to make sure your as strong as ever when everything else came crumbling down.

It’s as though the blinkers have been removed and I’m seeing clearly for the first time in a long while. Real-life romance is not the sugar-coated version you see in films and books and musicals.