Through the steam of my coffee I could see a miniature set of shiny red shoes swinging back and forth underneath the counter at the diner. A little girl had been sitting atop the red stool since I had arrived, just sitting watching the cook flip pancakes all morning long with a mature sense of fascination. Up and down, and up and down, over and over again, the batter always formed into delicious solid creations, some with blueberries, some with chocolate, some just plain and simple. The cook sported a wonderful apron that looked like it had been around forever, cooked a million pancakes, and still lived to tell its tale of the oils and toppings and syrups it had seen in its day. The old man’s red shirt could be seen through the burn holes in the apron, as if they were war wounds.
The cook didn’t seem to mind the heat of the stove, or stir at all when the burning oil from the pan spat at his flesh. He was caked in a film of grease, butter and batter, and only occasionally broke from his cooking rituals to wipe his forehead with the sopping wet rag that was slung over his left shoulder. Each pancake was a delicate creation that the old man prepared with great consideration and effort, making each one perfect, but none the same. Never would the man be compared to any machine- every one was original, every one special. The special of the day was peanut butter pancakes, although I didn’t see anybody order that one.
The little girl with the shiny shoes, who had been there sinc...
This one night at Greasy Lake wasn’t as typical as the other nights. A series of events happen at Greasy Lake that would change the narrator character after all. First after just throwing “two dozen raw eggs at mailboxes and hitchhikers” (par 4) the narrator friend Digby decides to play a practical joke on, what looks like someone he knows car, by leaning on the horn and turning the high beams on to t...
The meal, and more specifically the concept of the family meal, has traditional connotations of comfort and togetherness. As shown in three of Faulkner’s short stories in “The Country”, disruptions in the life of the family are often reinforced in the plot of the story by disruptions in the meal.
3.?Against the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and angular, one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast, while the other held a lamp. The light on a level with her chin, drew out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of the hand that clutched the quilt, and deepened fantastically the hollows and prominences of her high-boned face under its rings of crimping-pins. To Ethan, s...
The cakes that Mildred baked were not the ordinary cakes that sold on the marketplace. Her cakes had the extra touch that made people admire them. They were so beautiful and delicious that the orders increased as well as her confidence. She knew that baking cakes could lead her to have a better future as a businesswoman. Her second opportunity came while working in a restaurant where she knew that this could be a great place to get to be known for her talent in baking delic...
On a rainy Monday, I had come to San Francisco to do a cuisine comparison, sort of a tour guide-cum-restaurant review, covering the soup kitchens that I remembered from my time in SF—my two years of living on the fringes. Those years seemed distant now—I am a university student, and I feel suddenly distant from my old days. I am hipper now, I thought. I felt the smugness of a wise-ass. I had thought before I made the trip: here’s a twist on the old restaurant review. I can talk about worn-out things: the bouquet of the food, the ambience of the place. How original. I had felt like slapping my own back.
In the city of Havana in Cuba back in 1989, was a little spot restaurant called La Cocina Ramona. A young girl named Selena Rivera had been working there as a dishwasher for about a year now. She started at age 13 working in the kitchen and busing tables. At the same time, she would look and watch the cooks work. She could remember when she was 10 after coming home from martial arts training, her mother would teach her and her sisters the art of cooking. Sylvia Fierro, the chef, needed help with getting ingredients prepped. “This is the list of what I need,” She said, holding the paper up in the air. Without waiting for an answer, Selena snatches the list from Sylvia's hand “I’ll do it” she says, and started going to work chopping lettuce,
There are few novels that nosedive and soar so sporadically as that of Twain’s Huck Finn. It began as a capitalization on his prior work of Tom Sawyer, but quickly turned into a magnum opus of Americana. In order to fit that theme, the material must break the mold entirely. People say often (similar to Kubrick’s Full-Metal Jacket) that you should really stop experiencing the art around the end of the third quarter of the book. In that way it is wholly American, messy and composed. It is also a terribly ambiguous story. For all of the caricatures and pageantry, it is a very ambiguous book, just at the semi-threatening prelude would suggest, definitely the most neutral book I’ve ever read, and I’ve read six of those things.
We walk up to the gingerbread colored house as the pea stones crunch underneath our feet and a summer breeze hits our faces. We open the rickety white storm door and push the heavy ginger bread colored door into the kitchen. The kitchen has a rustic smell to it, surrounded with furniture from the 1970s. I continue through the kitchen, glancing at the monk cookie jar on top of the refrigerator.
I slowly opened the front door -- the same old creak echoed its way throughout the old house, announcing my arrival just seconds before I called out, "Grandma!" She appeared around the corner with the normal spring in her steps. Her small but round 5'1" frame scurried up to greet me with a big hug and an exclamation of, "Oh, how good to see you." It was her eighty-fifth birthday today, an amazing feat to me, just part of everyday life to her. The familiar mix of Estee Lauder and old lotion wafted in my direction as she pulled away to "admire how much I've grown." I stopped growing eight years ago, but really, it wasn't worth pointing this fact out. The house, too, smelled the same as it's ever smelled, I imagine, even when my father and his brothers grew up here more than forty years ago -- musty smoke and apple pie blended with the aroma of chocolate chip cookies. The former was my grandfather's contribution, whose habit took him away from us nearly five years ago; the latter, of course, comes from the delectable delights from my grandmother's kitchen. Everything was just as it should be.
Food has been a great part of how he has grown up. He was always interested in how food was prepared. He wanted to learn, even if his mother didn’t want him to be there. “I would enter the kitchen quietly and stand behind her, my chin lodging upon the point of the hip. Peering through...
To keep a young person interested, an author must weave an interesting story. Kitchen is fascinating because the premise of the story is original: A Japanese twenty-something's grandmother dies and is taken in by an employee of her grandmother's favorite flower shop and his transvestite mother. Along the course of the story, the heroine discovers a passion for cooking, the young man dreams a dream with the heroine, and a crazy admirer kills the transvestite mother. In the end, the heroine and the young man realize their love for each other, without even having shared a passionate kiss. Such a plot is interesting to the average teenager who craves the out-of-the-ordinary; she wants escape. Kitchen certainly provides something different, but it does so in a familiar way. When the heroine Mikage finds out that Yuichi's m...
The coffee shop I decided to do my observation was the well known Starbucks just a couple blocks away. The reason I chose this coffee shop was because of it 's style inside, it attracted me. For example, one side of the wall has a glass top, and the lower part of the wall, made of wood and painted in a bright red color, which was one thing that attracted me and stood out. Outside of the shop people can actually see through the glass wall and get to see what’s happening inside of the coffeeshop. By the entrance you see these two red ceiling lamps which were shaped in a flower bud and these two tall green plants. Once you were in, on the right of the shop there was a counter with food and things to put in your drinks such as milk, sugar, chocolate, etc and the colors and how the food was displayed and served was appealing to my eyes. Behind that counter there was a long table with different electronic devices plugged into the wall. On the middle of the those there is a fridge just for ice and when I turned to the other side and I noticed a big menu on the wall. Further more into the shop, there was an area filled with tables, chairs, and sofas. The tables were in different shapes, one was round and the others rectangular, also there was four bamboo baskets and I looked around and noticed that the walls in that area were decorated with paintings.
It started as a normal Monday morning; Emily crawled out of bed attempting not to wake her mother. She grabbed the tethered clothing that she had worn the day previously and began to dress. Every move she made seemed to echo the floor with creaks from the wood. She walked into the kitchen as if walking on red hot ash to make her mother coffee trying to avoid the usual routine beatings. Emily rushed out the door as she heard rustling coming from her mother’s room. She walked to the bus stop noticing the old, deteriorating houses with trash in the yards.
We all grabbed our lawn chairs and cozied up next to the roaring red fire. I always sat a little too close, enough to where the fire burnt a hole straight through my favorite pair of flip-flops, assuring me to never make that mistake again. S’mores was all of our favorite bed time snack time and a perfect way to end the night. Every time I would roast my marshmallow until it became slightly brown, mushy, and not too hot in the center; then I 'd put it between two graham crackers and extra pieces of chocolate. One too many s’mores and a belly like later I laid back in my chair and listened as Nancy told us stories. Before going to bed Nancy told us about her favorite past times here as a child and how just like the little girl we saw fishing, she was also afraid of fishing. She told us stories about how much the campground has evolved since she was a child and how every year she promises to take us here and to keep it a tradition. At bedtime Alicia and I crawl into our tents and snuggle up in our warm sleeping bags. We talked to each other about how sad we felt that it was almost the end of summer, and how nervous we felt to start our freshman year of high school. However, our conversations ended when Nancy yelled at as from the other tent to keep quiet and go to bed. I’d fallen asleep that night to the sound of the fire crackling out and the crickets chirping
“Oh honey,” I answered, sadly acknowledging my daughter’s hunger, “ I wish it was. Actually, I’m not quite sure what it is. Help me clean it off, will you?” Emily and I began scrubbing the dilapidated, seaweed covered object in the warm waves of the Atlantic. “Wow, That’s not at all I expected.” I answered as I rolled an old bottle in the water. “At least we can get some money for this at the recycling center. Not much, but if we collect enough bottles we could get some lunch!” I looked hopelessly at the bottle.