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Quote by Agnès Desarthe

“The beetroots come out of the oven and I shower them with walnut vinegar. The chard gushes into the colander and I sprinkle it with lemon juice and pepper. My worktop is a battlefield: pips, tops, droplets, stains, leaves and peelings- everything piles up and oozes. I melt at the sight of pink beetroot blood on a cucumber heart.”

Quote by Agnès Desarthe

Book:Chez Moi: A Novel
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Chez Moi: A Novel

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Agnès Desarthe

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“There was loads of food set up on a large picnic table just outside the kitchen door. Potato salad with green beans. Sautéed squash with onions and garlic. Tomatoes on their own, or stuffed with cream cheese, or with rice and peppers. Bowls of salad, dressed and undressed. Fresh bread. Berry pie, berry cobbler, berries and cream. Pretty much everything had been grown by the class, and it was enormously satisfying to eat it all.”

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“Everywhere I look, everywhere I turn: salad. Potato salad. Pasta salad. Tuna salad. Ham salad. There aren't any leafy green ones, although some, like my aunt's beloved cottage cheese lime Jell-O salad, are decidedly green. No, the bowls lining the tables and windowsills are filled with the kinds of salads I grew up with in Michigan, most containing some combination of proteins and carbs, the ingredients bound up with a spoonful of mayonnaise or its zesty cousin, Miracle Whip, my mother's all-time favorite condiment. She told me she'd never met a recipe that couldn't be improved by a spoonful of Miracle Whip. That, and maybe a dash of rum.”

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