The Kitchen Daughter Quotes

“In my life I've had good days and bad days. Miserable days. Painful days. And no matter how bad the bad ones get, there's a mercy in them. Every single one of them ends.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“There is no normal. There's only what's right for you and being honest.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I tell myself I’m fine on my own, but am I? No friends to fall back on, no relationships, no support. Left to my own devices, I have no devices.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“If you don’t know how to deal with emotion, other people’s feelings can hit you like a drug.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Panic, panic, can't panic. Think of food. Think of sugar. I am a sugar cube in cold water. I won't dissolve. Precise edges. Made up of tiny, regular, secure parts. If the water were hotter I would worry, but it's cold. I stay together. Precise. Clean. Surrounded, but whole.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Contact.

When someone touches me wrong it isn’t a feeling. It isn’t hate or fear or pain. It is just blackness and a chant in me: get/out/get/out/get/out.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“there is something intriguing about knowing how things are going to turn out, but being constantly surprised about how they'll get there.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“We all have our own patterns, I guess ... And whether we like it or not, they persist.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I want them to bite into a cookie, and think of me, and smile. Food is love. Food has a power.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Food has power. Nonna knew that. Ma did too. I know it now. And though it can't save me, it might help me, in some way. All I have besides food is grief.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Her hand is close to my arm. My options are limited. I can't run away. I can't handle this.

I lose myself in food.

The rich, wet texture of melting chocolate. The way good aged goat cheese coats your tongue. The silky feel of pasta dough when it's been pressed and rested just enough. How the scent of onions changes, over an hour, from raw to mellow, sharp to sweet, and all that even without tasting. The simplest magic: how heat transforms.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I find the title How to Be Good. Curious, I open it up. I'm disappointed to find it's fiction.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“They say you learn by doing, but you don't have to. If you learn only from your own experience, you're limited. By reading the Internet you can find out more. What grows in what season. The best way to strip an artichoke. What type of onions work best in French onion soup. Endless detail on any topic. You can learn from people who are experimenting with Swiss buttercream, or perfecting their gluten-free pumpernickel crackers, or taste-testing everything from caviar to frozen pizza to ginger ale. All of their failures keep you from having to fail in the same way.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Ma kept the alcohol for company in the dining room china cabinet. All the sweet after-dinner liqueurs nestle there together. But there is one bottle she never knew about right here in the kitchen. I reach deep into the cabinets and remove Dad's hidden bottle of Lagavulin. I set a tumbler on the counter and pour him two fingers of scotch. 'This is a tumbler, watch it tumble,' he said. The golden brown liquid, more gold than brown, somewhere between weak tea and apple juice. I stare at it. Nothing.
Out loud I say, "This is a tumbler, watch it tumble," an incantation or a toast or both, and drink it down.
It's like drinking a handful of matches. It burns and then smokes. I fight back a cough. There's a note of something deep and earthy, like beets or truffles, which then vanishes, leaving only a palate seared clean.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Innocence isn't a set of house keys. You don't just up and lose it one day. It's a process.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“All I have besides food is grief.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“This is the way I’ve always been. I think of the answer long after the person asking the question has lost interest and walked away.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“You can learn from the Internet but you can't be sure what you're learning is true. Same as life. Be careful.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Strong, good smells clash with each other, garlic against cinnamon, savory against sweet. Two dressings, Ma's traditional corn bread version as well as the stuffing she made last year for a change of pace, a buttery version with cherries and sausage and hazelnuts. The herb-brined turkey, probably larger than we need, and a challenge to manhandle into and out of the refrigerator. A deep dish of creamy, smooth mashed potatoes, riced and dried to make them thirsty, then plumped back up with warmed cream and butter. For dessert, a mocha cake I came up with one day. In the batter is barely sweetened chocolate and dark, strong coffee. The layers are sealed together with more chocolate, warmed up with a hint of ancho powder.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“While I'm waiting, I reach into the cupboard for dried pineapple. I added them to the grocery order because I find them reassuring, but they have to be the right kind. Ma started buying the fancy natural low-sulfur version from Trader Joe's in the past few years. Those are fibrous and taste good for you. These are the ones from my childhood, which just taste good. They are as yellow as lemons, crusted all around with sugar. The inside is as thick and wet as a gumdrop.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“We have so little in common, but we were both avid readers growing up. I read almost nonstop when I was little, and it saved me in school. I hated classes, hated teachers. They always wanted me to do things I didn't want to do. But because I was a reader, they knew I wasn't stupid, just different. They cut me slack. It got me through.
Reading couldn't help me make friends, though. I never got the hang of it. I would talk to kids, and over the years a handful of them even seemed to like me enough to ask to come over, but after that first visit to the house they never lasted. Ma told me what I did wrong but I could never manage to do it right. 'Act interested in what they say,' she said, but they never said anything interesting. 'Don't talk too much,' she said, but it never seemed like too much to me. So it wasn't like people threw tomatoes at me, or dipped my pigtails in inkwells, or stood up to move their desks away from mine, but I never really managed to make friends that I could keep.
And I got used to it. I got used to a lot of things. Writing extra papers to make up for falling short in class participation. Volunteering to do the planning and the typing up whenever we had group work assigned, because I knew I could never really work right with a group. And the coping always worked. Up until three years into college, where despite Ma's repeated demands to try harder, I stalled. Every semester since, I was always still trying to finish that last Oral Communications class, which I had repeatedly failed. This semester I only made it six weeks in before it became obvious I wouldn't pass. I think we'd both finally given up.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I need the comfort. I look for a food memory to calm me and I settle on ceviche. A tart bite, a clean, fresh wave of flavor. Think of the process. Raw fish is translucent, but when you dip the lime juice onto it, it becomes something else. Cubes of white-fleshed fish begin to flake. Shrimp turn pink. Texture becomes color. Visible streaks, almost stripes, show the grain.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I've made countless variations on this recipe. Chai-infused shortbread diamonds. Rosewater shortbread squares. Cocoa shortbread sandwiches spliced with Nutella. But tonight, in honor of Grandma Damson, I make hers, from memory.
In a sense, I fail. No ghosts materialize in the kitchen, not Grandma Damson, not Nonna, not anyone.
But out of the mess I make a dozen ideal shortbread wedges, perfect in shape, size and flavor. Warm and delicate. With a glass of cold milk, they are delicious. When shortbread melts on your tongue, you feel the roundness of the butter and the kiss of the sugar and then they vanish. Then you eat another, to feel it again, to get at that moment of vanishing. I eat myself sick on them.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Maybe I would get along with everyone if I only saw them for three hours once a week. My mother, my sister, they were always around too much. There were too many opportunities for me to screw things up. Dad I saw less, and he liked me more. There could be a connection.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I don't have to move into Amanda's house to be present in her family. Even though I'm not there physically all the time, I want them to have something that says, 'I'm out here. I'm okay. I love you.' I want them to bite into a cookie, and think of me, and smile. Food is love. Food has a power. I knew it in my mind, but now I know it in my heart.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I need something to calm me. Something sweet and rich and decadent. Not chocolate, not pie. There it is. Tres leches cake. A white cake waiting in a white porcelain baking dish. Cream pouring down, not a drizzle, but a thick, steady, heavy stream. Soaking into the dry sponge of the cake. Being drunk up hungrily. Seeming to disappear, but changing everything. Texture. Taste. The cake can't stay the way it is. Without all three milks it's too dry. It has to change.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Amanda is wrong. I do have an instinct about people, and it tells me David is just fine. I wonder if he doesn't cook because his wife did all the cooking until she died. I wonder what she was like. Like Ma, maybe, capable and in charge, always repeating rules and being protective. I felt smothered sometimes but I know Ma always tried to do what was right for me. One of her unsuccessful lessons in how to make and keep friends was 'Be a little mysterious.' Of course I could never find the right level of mystery. If I asserted myself, she said, 'Don't be too insistent,' and if I hung back too much, it was 'Don't be such a little wallflower.' I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense. Maybe that's part of why I love Midnight. Maybe she reminds me of me.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“Think of other foods, other meals. The most complicated menu planning I can think of, my truly desperate resort. The imaginary dinner party I've always wanted to throw, the seven-course "Continental Cuisine" menu, with a dish for each continent. One, the amuse-bouche, ceviche of scallops and shrimp, with the leche de tigre served alongside in a tall shot glass, to wake the appetite. Two, a Moroccan soup, lentils, rich with cardamom and cumin and pepper. Three, the fish course, miso-glazed cod. Four, a white, barely lemon-tinted sorbet, representing Antarctica, because who cooks penguin? Five, Australian lamb, from Paula Wolfert's seven-hour-lamb recipe, so tender it melts in the mouth like butter instead of meat. Six, a small triangle of classically American apple pie, the crust enriched with white cheddar from Vermont. Seven, three European cheeses: tangy Manchego with membrillo, creamy asked Morbier with red pepper honey, sweet Gorgonzola Dolce on-”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I walk out into the hall and remember when Ma chose the paint. Mountain Sage out here, Irish Oatmeal in their bedroom, the master bathroom in Ice Blue Gloss. She gave me the samples from the paint store and I cut them out in little identical squares, playing the game of remembering which was which, knowing every color by its name.
The carpets on the second floor are soft under my bare feet. The next room down is Amanda's, a pale buttery yellow called Chardonnay on the walls, boxes of shoes still under the bed.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter