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Quote by Jeffrey Stepakoff

“You want to test our apples?" Carter asked. "I want to find out what makes them taste so special so that we can share that with other people, maybe lots of them." Grace saw Carter's perplexed expression. "You ever had a fruit-flavored soft drink?" "Like an orange soda?" "Exactly. Well, somebody found the perfect orange somewhere, studied it carefully, and then made a formula based on its special flavor so that anyone anywhere in the world could taste it." "In a can of soda." "Right." "Very cool." "Do you like peach ice cream?" "Yes!" "Well, a lot of the 'all-natural peach flavoring' that you taste in that ice cream is really Gamma-Aldehyde C-14, a molecule created by Nanjing Yuance Trade Company, which I'm sure is based on a perfect peach they found somewhere." "So you're like a scientist-cook," Carter said excitedly. "Something like that." Grace smiled.”

Quote by Jeffrey Stepakoff

Work

The Orchard

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Author

Jeffrey Stepakoff
Jeffrey Stepakoff

Jeffrey Stepakoff is a renowned television writer whose works have gained widespread recognition in the industry. Detailed information about his life and achievements is limited. more

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“Grace leaned forward, studying him up close, able to make out some of his facial features in the clay mask: strong brow, broad cheekbones, prominent jawline and chin. As a flavorist, she was familiar with kaolin clay, a virtually tasteless edible mineral often used as an anti-caking agent in processed foods, various toothpastes, and originally kaopectate. But she'd never encountered the raw product out of the lab, and certainly not like this. She leaned closer to him. He smelled of sediment and mostly sweat, a decidedly masculine note, the precise replication of which one could base an entire career, and then some. Even the most skilled perfumers in the world, experts in the animal secrets of civet and ambergris, couldn't get it just right. It was a human thing. And she'd studied it, androstadienone and most of the known male pheromones, and she knew the effects certain concentrates could have on certain women. She'd written the reports and seen the CT scans of activity in women's brains. Still, knowing about it intellectually and rationally did not in any way lessen what it was doing to her right now, the effect it was having on her senses and her body. 'Can he tell?' she wondered. Lean and broad-shouldered, he had the build of a man who spent his days using his body in labor. She could see it in the way the mud set into the ridged musculature of his forearms, like the russeting across a firm apple. Still, the inner details of him escaped her. His hair was caked with dry clay, and she thought of the figures she'd seen artists craft in their hillside studios in Montmartre, with the Sacre-Coeur church on the summit above and the bawdy Moulin Rouge crowds teeming below. He looked like that, an unglazed unfinished sculpture of a man, but for his eyes, vast and deep, and very much alive, as if he were trapped inside his statued body.”

“After several hours of preparing, cooking, eating, and laughing together, the kitchen was now lit by the glow of candlelight, and the entire house filled with the glorious aroma of freshly roasted heritage turkey. While Dylan had readied the bird with a few sprigs of chopped rosemary, ground black peppercorn, and a splash of maple syrup, Grace and Carter gathered fall beans and bush squash and a few little sugar pie pumpkins, and cooked the vegetables along with the sweet corn that Carter had brought home.”

“The rapid growth of Message- combined with an outpouring of florists offering consultations in the language of flowers to the streams of brides Marlena and I turned away- caused a subtle but concrete shift in the Bay Area flower industry. Marlena reported that peony, marigold, and lavender lingered in their plastic buckets at the flower market while tulips, lilac, and passionflower sold out before the sun rose. For the first time anyone could remember, jonquil became available long after its natural bloom season had ended. By the end of July, bold brides carried ceramic bowls of strawberries or fragrant clusters of fennel, and no one questioned their aesthetics but rather marveled at the simplicity of their desire. If the trajectory continued, I realized, Message would alter the quantities of anger, grief, and mistrust growing in the earth on a massive scale. Farmers would uproot fields of foxglove to plant yarrow, the soft clusters of pink, yellow, and cream the cure to a broken heart. The prices of sage, ranunculus, and stock would steadily increase. Plum trees would be planted for the sole purpose of harvesting their delicate, clustered blossoms and sunflowers would fall permanently out of fashion, disappearing from flower stands, craft stores, and country kitchens. Thistle would be cleared compulsively from empty lots and overgrown gardens.”

“They were no longer standing the way he'd stood them, no longer engaged in the glorious basking that overwhelmed him on the headland. They were leaning toward the light now, craning toward it. He’d been dead wrong about the blitheness. The buttercups now seemed to know — to understand with that purely physical knowledge that all living things possess — that something was wrong. Their craning was like a cry: they were calling out with all the body language they possessed for a life or a place they had no minds with which to remember.”