The School of Essential Ingredients Quotes

“Each person's heart breaks in it's own way. Every cure will be different, but there are some things we all need. Before anything else, we need to feel safe.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Life is beautiful. Some people just remind you of that more than others.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“I am starting to think that maybe memories are like this dessert. I eat it, and it becomes a part of me, whether I remember it later or not.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“I used to know a sculptor... He always said that if you looked hard enough, you could see where each person carried his soul in his body. It sounds crazy, but when you saw his sculptures, it made sense. I think the same is true with those we love... Our bodies carry our memories of them, in our muscles, in our skin, in our bones. My children are right here." She pointed to the inside curve of her elbow. "Where I held them when they were babies. Even if there comes a time when I don't know who they are anymore. I believe I will feel them here.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Sometimes, niña, our greatest gifts grow from what we are not given.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“The name for the cocoa tree is theobroma, which means "food of the gods." I know that chocolate is meant for us, however, because the melting point for good chocolate just happens to be the temperature within your very human mouth.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“If you live in your sense, slowly, with attention, if you use your eyes and your fingertips and your taste buds, then romance is something you’ll never need a greeting card to make you remember.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“We are all just ingredients, Tom What matters is the grace with which you cook the meal”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Being around her, he found even every day experiences were deeper, nuanced. Satisfaction and awareness slipped in between the layers of life like love notes hidden in the pages of a textbook.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“When she realized that there are many kinds of love and not all of them are obvious. That some wait like presents in the back of the closet until you are able to open them.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“I've been wondering," Isabelle commented reflectively over dessert, "if it is foolish to make new memories when you know you are going to lose them.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“It was like trying to teach subtlety to a thunderstorm.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Lillian sometimes wondered why psychologists focused so much on a couple’s life in their bedroom. You could learn everything about a couple just watching their kitchen choreography as they prepared dinner.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Every time we prepare food we interrupt a life cycle. We pull up a carrot or kill a crab- or maybe just stop the mold that's growing on a wedge of cheese. We make meals with those ingredients and in doing so we give life to something else. It's a basic equation and if we pretend it doesn't exist, we're likely to miss the other important lesson which is to give respect to both sides of the equation.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Isabelle had always thought of her mind as a garden, a magical place to play as a child, when the grown-ups were having conversations and she was expected to listen politely-- and even, although she hated to admit this, later with Edward, her husband, when listening to the particularities of his carpet salesmanship wore her thin. Every year the garden grew larger, the paths longer and more complicated. Meadows of memories.

Of course, her mental garden hadn't always been well tended. There were the years when the children were young, fast-moving periods when life flew by without time for the roots of deep reflection, and yet she knew memories were created whether one pondered them or not. She had always considered that one of the luxuries of growing older would be the chance to wander through the garden that had grown while she wasn't looking. She would sit on a bench and let her mind take every path, tend every moment she hadn't paid attention to, appreciate the juxtaposition of the one memory against another.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“I loved to walk in her garden after dinner; it felt alive, even in the winter. She always told me that rosemary grows in the garden of a strong woman. Hers were like trees.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“When a couple came to class together, it meant something else entirely - food as a solution, a diversion, or, occasionally, a playground.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“They walked back to the chopping block, Claire carrying the crab in her hands. Helen paused. "You know, I'd like to ask you something a friend asked me once, if you don't think it's too personal."

"What is it?"

"What do you do that makes you happy? Just you?"

Claire looked at Helen for a moment and thought, the crab resting on the block beneath her hands.

"I was just wondering," Helen continued. "No one ever asked me when I was your age, and I think it's a good thing to think about."

Claire nodded. Then she took the cleaver and cut the crab into ten pieces.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“If you live in your senses, slowly, with attention, if you use your eyes and your fingertips and your taste buds, then romance is something you’ll never need a greeting card to make you remember.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“While the egg yolks cooled, he directed the beaters at the egg whites, setting the mixer on high speed that sent small bubbles giggling to the side of the bowl, where a few became many until they were a white froth rising up and then lying down again in patters and ridges, leaving an intricate design like the ribs of a leaf in the wake of the beaters”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“I used to know a sculptor," Isabella said, nodding. "He always said that if you looked hard enough, you could see where each person carried his soul in his body. It sounds crazy, but when you saw his sculptures, it made sense. I think the same is true with those we love," she explained. "Our bodies carry our memories of them, in our muscles, in our skin, in our bones. My children are right here." She pointed to the inside curve of her elbow. "Where I held them when they were babies. Even if there comes a time when I don't know who they are anymore, I believe I will feel them here.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Marriage is a leap of faith. You are each other’s safety net.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“When it was mixed together, the salsa was a celebration of red and white and green, cool and fresh and alive. On a tortilla, with a bit of crumbled white 'queso fresco,' it was both satisfying and invigorating, full of textures and adventures, like childhood held in your hand.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Maybe your mind won't remember what I cooked last week, but your body will.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“What did she do that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn’t the issue. Nor the only one, Claire realized. Because in order to consciously do something that made you happy, you’d have to know who you were. Trying to figure that out these days was like fishing on a lake on a moonless night—you had no idea what you would get.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Isabelle realized that parents most often know when their children are stalling to hold off the end of something they want to hold on to. When she realized that there are many kinds of love and not all of them are obvious, that some wait, like presents in the back of a closet, until you are able to open them.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Her mother had always said if you are lost, just stand still until someone finds you.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“We’re all just ingredients, Tom. What matters is the grace with which you cook the meal.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“If you stop to think about it, every meal you eat, you eat time—the weeks it takes to ripen a tomato, the years to grow a fig tree. And every meal you cook is time out of your day”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients

“Perhaps, Lillian thought, smells were for her what printed words were for others, something alive that grew and changed.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The School of Essential Ingredients