The Farewitch of Foxe Holler Quotes

“We dragged a table outside for a picnic in the gardens, and flowers burst in color around us in the golden hour sun. The herb-scented air is almost as delicious as the food we’ve spread out. Benedictine and pimento cheese sandwiches, coleslaw, cornbread muffins, icebox banana pudding, ambrosia salad, and a huge pitcher of sweet tea.
At the end of the table, Governess Zeen chats with Ms. Buchanan, while Silas and Rett keep Beauregard occupied with a ball nearby. Every time the poodle bounds too close to a flower bed, the Warlock winces.
“I’m guessing the flavor is sugar?” Arna Jean asks me from her seat next to Ms. Zeen.
“A honey and thyme cake,” I reply. A halo of frosted watercress leaves and thyme sprigs crown the Warlock’s cake, encircling a piped Happy Birthdays, plural.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Remember to be patient and kind. A little bit of thyme and honey goes a long way.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“We visit neighbors across the Holler to borrow flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, butter, eggs, oil, vanilla, walnuts, pecans, bananas, powdered sugar, and cream cheese. I've already got these items in my own kitchen, but Momaw Frost's note makes it clear, the ingredients don't matter as much as where they come from. The trick to curing a wasting disease that develops and worsens with isolation and burnout isn't about the final product at all, but how the baking comes together. The magic is the process. The process is the magic.
A herald of a Southern summertime, hummingbird cake is not ungodly popular or secretly obscure. Its flavors aren't out of the ordinary, if a little odd grouped together, like a small town of eccentric personalities.
Foxe Holler, this community, is the key.
This means explaining to my neighbors why I'm visiting them in the first place: Marigold Frost is dying. The Frosts can't hide anymore. If we never ask for help, no one knows to give it.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Did you know they have this monstrous thing in the vending machine called a Cow Tale?” he asks, approaching my bed. “Even worse, something called pig ears—”
“Pork rinds,” Silas corrects.
“Regardless, you have your choice of any part of the animal.” He holds up… snacks. A Warlock is hand-delivering me junk food.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Weisenberger stone-ground yellow grits. Burners click to life. Water boils. Shrimp dance in a sauté pan on the stove. I stir my grits until they bite back like al dente pasta, and then fold in cream, cheddar cheese, and butter, of course. Buttermilk and paprika, freshly cracked black pepper, too. No bland grits in this house. The soundtrack at my fingertips is always the best way to channel the angry thrum under my pulse, the growl in my stomach.
As I stand over the hot stove, temples sweating, my mind fogs for a second, but then the dizzy sensation is gone. Maybe I'm hungrier than I realized. But that doesn't mean the Warlock is right.
Finishing touch: I add molasses to the sizzling sauce. The salty bite of the grits will wear it well. Everything sharp needs a little sweet.
In under an hour, I've rage-cooked something gorgeous. Sautéed butter shrimp with Southern cheddar grits. How a person can create something from nothing and have immediate, delicious evidence to prove it— this is the real magic in the world.
I plate the plump shrimp onto a pillow of grits, ley lines of butter creating a glorious foundation. Then I plop down at the kitchen table and eat every. Last. Shrimp. The grits, too, for good measure.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“If their love language is food, seek forgiveness in flour, not flowers.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Biscuits are super versatile, you know,” I say, still battling to get another smile out of him. “Buttermilk cheddar biscuits will fix a sprained ankle. Biscuits and gravy? Broken bones. Biscuits with honey butter?”
“Let me guess, broken ego?”
“Broken heart.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“She holds up a dress the exact shade of pink rock salt.
“I wasn’t aware this color was in your vocabulary,” I say, earning another scowl. But with a closer look, I see it’s not a dress at all. It’s a seventies-ish satin nightgown, sleeveless, freed from its housecoat. It looks like it’s never been worn. “This is too nice. I can't wear it.”
“Take it and let this be the end of it. The color suits your angel food cake complexion.”
Even if I’ve just been insulted… she’s right. There are no jewel tones in my future. I slip the delicate fabric over my skin. Ms. Zeen has an hourglass figure I don’t, so I grab the tie from one of my aprons and fasten it around my waist in a small bow.
Now I look more cocktail hour than sleepover. Better.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I wanted a better life for you, Honey. Less stress. More joy."
"I'll take that on a sticker for my thermos," Silas murmurs.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Embarrassment tingles up my spine. Caught. Half naked. Again. And not just in an old oversized shirt, no, that would be too easy on me. It happens to be the one with an illustration of fried chicken pieces forming the shape of Kentucky on the front, with the proclamation Gettin’ Lucky in Kentucky!
He smirks. “You’re lucky they weren’t very hungry.”
I guess this is a lesson about not purchasing clothing at a random gas station in a small town like Hell for Certain, Kentucky.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Mom, I have to go. I have a succulent situation.”
“What did I tell you, just shave in the right direction—”
“G’nightMomIloveyoubye.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Sex is fun, but farmers’ markets are better than any I’ve had in my thirty-one years.
Especially on the first morning of May, when the world is blooming and and the sun glows with near-summer energy, no sign of clucking church ladies or Widow Witches.
Farmers’ markets in Foxe Holler are an institution, filling the town square in front of our small courthouse every weekend. A rural holler might not have a Starbucks, but we’re lousy with farms. Jeweled beets, lacy collard greens, strawberries red and glossy, dried lavender, handsewn quilts, jars of preserves with no labels because they came directly from someone’s kitchen.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Opposites can be great complements, especially when it comes to texture. Animal crackers hold their crunch in banana pudding better than vanilla wafers, and their drier texture supports the intense sweetness of the pudding. They are one of the rare, perfect secret ingredients that Do The Most. Except when they're a mortifying means of unintentional seduction.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Garden-fresh cucumber Benedictine will keep tongues— and tempers— cool.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Salt. Vanilla. Spice. The smallest ingredients have the biggest flavor.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“But I don’t mind the hard work. It reminds me of the Apothakery, and a twinge of homesickness for that butter-yellow door pinches me.
Unsurprisingly, no matter how hard we clean, I can still smell soil.
Though I don’t mind it, now that dirt isn’t on my countertops. It smells like summer, like the produce harvests that come with my favorite holidays on a Farewitch’s calendar: rosemary and lavender for Beltane on the first of May, lemons and tomatoes for Litha and the summer solstice, corn for Lughnasadh in August”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Ms. Zeen, you should have eaten some of my fried green tomatoes. The oil might help grease your insides so you can pass that stick through your colon.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Any Farewitch knows fried green tomatoes are good for curing the blues, especially seasonal affective disorder. But my affinity is memory magic. When I touch someone with intention, they show me a memory of a meal, their body’s way of telling me what it’s craving, what it needs. That’s where I should begin treatment. The strongest cures come from the strongest flavors: the ones we’ve had before.”
“That’s the magic.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I’m here for my mom, and I’m a Frost to my core, made of grit and gristle (which also happens to be the name of the only late-night restaurant in town, the Grit & Gristle).”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“People-pleasing is a trauma response, dear.”
Surprising that the fifth member of The Golden Girls is online enough to know that vocabulary, but I keep that retort to myself.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“The Frosts have always worked alongside modern medicine. A chamomile and lavender cookie can brighten someone's day, but with a Farewitch's spell, it can literally help a patient get some calm rest to help their recovery. Lemon and olive oil cake distracts a fussy baby whose tired parents have been up all night, but with one of my sigils baked into the bottom, it can deliver a little boost of anxiety-fighting goodness.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I steel my nerves, take a few breaths, grounding myself in the comforting buttery atmosphere. Strong as cast iron. I let the peace and quiet of the kitchen work its own charm. Food is magic, and so is alone time.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I cut the cornbread into plump golden bricks on a tray. In the hands of a Farewitch, cornbread can cure the common cold or general under-the-weather malaise. Mom has a stunning recipe with an old incantation to go along with it that makes the bread particularly buttery and makes it work faster than unregulated Sudafed.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I glance at the vaulted brick wall next to the oven, where hangs the Frost family’s vast collection of cast iron. Skillets and grill pans and cornbread molds in the shape of whole ears of corn dangle from the chipped brick, seasoned under generations of strong butter, stronger magic, and the strongest women. Despite the delightful floral aroma of the honeysuckle butter cooling over the nutty cornbread, my heart clenches.
I’d trade one of these priceless, magic-imbued skillets for my mom to be here with me right now. If only to see this batch of cornbread, which looks perfect, humility be damned. Rich gold crust to match everything else in this place.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I free two cast-iron skillets of cornbread from the oven just in time and leave them to cool. Frost women do not burn their cornbread. With a pastry brush, I Van Gogh some honeysuckle butter onto the perfectly golden full moons.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“The smell of butter hugs me the moment I slide into the peace of the kitchen. I inhale, nostrils greedy. Our neighbors and customers are important, sure. Our town has relied on the Frost family’s food and baking magic for decades, ever since the Holler was no more than a whisper. And a Farewitch is nothing without a town, without the folks who depend on her culinary cures.
But the kitchen… I might not be the Farewitch my mom is, but the kitchen is home.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“Beauregard Buchanan is a beauty of a standard poodle, his midnight fur like licorice candy and as glossy as the glaze on my jam cake.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler

“I pass a still-warm honey bourbon bread pudding over the head of the chatty old woman to the man behind her, for his insomnia.”
― Ellen Pauley Goff, The Farewitch of Foxe Holler