“
The first time Avis knelt on a chair and stirred eggs into flour to make a vanilla cake, she had an inkling of how higher orders of meaning encircle the chaos of life. Where philosophy, she already intuited, created only thought- no beds made, no children fed- in other rooms there were good things like measuring spoons, thermometers, and recipes, with their lovely, interwoven systems and codes. Avis labored over her pastries: her ingredient base grew, combining worlds: preserved lemons from Moro
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”
― Birds of Paradise
― Birds of Paradise
“
I sent messengers across Italy: to our farms for wood pigeons, dormice, capons, and heaping baskets of grapes, apples, and beets; to the fields beyond Rome for fresh pears; to Nomentanum for amphorae of wine, some more than forty years old; to Praeneste for hazelnuts; and to the plains between Ostia and Lavinium for wild boar and deer. I sent men to Ostia for fresh, salty mackerel and mussels and to Mount Hymettus for the finest honey to dilute the Falernian wine we had on stock at home for the
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”
― Feast of Sorrow
― Feast of Sorrow