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“We can't be friends. That never works. I'd have to be all careful and brave and pathetic, you'd feel guilty all the time and you'd start being nice in weird fake ways to make up for it.' She was starting to cry, but she felt free, she felt relieved as you can only feel when you have wrecked yourself on the rocks and don't have to worry about navigating anymore.”
― Susan Gilbert-Collins, Starting from Scratch

“Light flooded their senses; for a split second Olivia, blinking in its brilliance, thought the light was actually yellow. Then she blinked again, and the room itself was yellow: yellow roses climbing the walls, a white and yellow canopy- of course, a canopy- matching the wadded silk bedspread, braided yellow rugs strewn across the bare wooden floorboards. Abby gave a little cry and ran to the curved windows opposite, where a riot of yellow and pink throw pillows lined the window seat.”
― Susan Gilbert-Collins, Starting from Scratch

“At first she couldn't taste anything but the feta and bacon, but the texture of the shrimp was perfect, resistant than yielding with a gentle pop. And then she tasted it, mild and pink and sea-salty. She could fall in love with this shrimp. She ate another perfect morsel.”
― Susan Gilbert-Collins, Starting from Scratch

“She sighed hard and shook her head, realized she was still staring at the same recipe card in her hand. She propped it against the monitor and read again, Elegant French Pork and Beans, by Carmine Grosz of Huron, South Dakota. She scanned the recipe, which called for haricot beans- a not inelegant bean, Olivia thought. Two kinds of sausage, two cuts of pork. Leeks. Well. This looked like a midwesternized cassoulet- definitely better than the usual "Casserole Corner" fare, which was largely made up of recipes containing endless and minute variations on the same hot dishes, issue after issue. For a couple of years there, chicken and broccoli had been all the rage: Chicken Broccoli Divan, Chicken Broccoli 'Divine', Chicken Broccoli Supreme ("Them's fightin' words," Ruby had told Vivian). Chicken Broccoli Surprise, Chicken Broccoli 'Rice' Surprise (David: "Where's the surprise? You've just listed all the ingredients in the title"). Elegant Company Chicken-Broccoli Casserole. "Which is the inelegant part," Olivia had asked over the phone from college, because she was studying ambiguous reference in her Linguistic Description of Modern English class, "the company or the casserole?”
― Susan Gilbert-Collins, Starting from Scratch

“Saturday afternoon she deboned chicken breasts and put the raw meat aside; then she simmered the bones with green onions and squashed garlic and ginger. She mixed ground pork with diced water chestnuts and green onions and soy sauce and sherry, stuffed the wonton skins with this mixture, and froze them to be boiled the next day. Then she made the stuffing for Richard's favorite egg rolls. It was poor menu planning- Vivian would never have served wontons and egg rolls at the same meal- but she felt sorry for Richard, living on hot dogs as he'd been. Anyway they all liked her egg rolls, even Aunt Barbara.
Sunday morning she stayed home from church and started the tea eggs simmering (another source of soy sauce for Annie). She slivered the raw chicken breast left from yesterday- dangling the occasional tidbit for J.C., who sat on her stool and cried "Yeow!" whenever she felt neglected- and slivered carrots and bamboo shoots and Napa cabbage and more green onions and set it all aside to stir-fry at the last minute with rice stick noodles. This was her favorite dish, simple though it was, and Aunt Rubina's favorite; it had been Vivian's favorite of Olivia's recipes, too. (Vivian had never dabbled much in Chinese cooking herself.) Then she sliced the beef and asparagus and chopped the fermented black beans for her father's favorite dish.”
― Susan Gilbert-Collins, Starting from Scratch

“We used to have rhubarb," Olivia said. "I mean, not like you've got rhubarb... Our mother used to warn us about the leaves."
She remembered how she used to pretend they were fuzzy green elephant ears. Every year she used to pull up a stalk and snap it in two and force herself to take a great bite, even though she knew it would screw her tongue and cheeks into knots and tweak her salivary glands until water rushed in her mouth. She felt a rush of water now, just remembering, and had to swallow.
"Used to make strawberry-rhubarb pie," Mrs. Kilkenny said, "and rhubarb-apricot jam, and sour cream rhubarb cake.”
― Susan Gilbert-Collins, Starting from Scratch

“She was such a scrawny, ugly little thing, and anyway she was sick; her crystalline blue eyes were watery, and she complained a lot. Father tried to point out that 'all' Bernice's Siamese complained a lot, and they all looked ugly to the untrained eye: skinny as snakes, with peevish, triangular faces, ears all out of proportion. Vivian thought J.C. just needed to fill out a bit. She took the cat to the kitchen and let her perch on the kitchen stool, fed her little tidbits as she went about her work. J.C. developed an eclectic and discriminating palate over the next few weeks. She liked goat cheese but not feta, she accepted slivers of toasted garlic but not raw, she ate ratatouille and minced coq au vin and went ecstatic over chicken in aspic.”
― Susan Gilbert-Collins, Starting from Scratch