Let's Flavor Our Lives!

Oooh ma gooosh!  I’ve just read the cutest book ever, and I have to tell you all about it.  The book is “Like Water for Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel.   It is written in a way that is absolutely adorable.  I could not put it down from the second I started reading it at the dentist's office. There are really no words to accurately express the way it makes you feel - truly fullest range of emotions. I think everyone can relate to it one way or another.

The author calls it “a novel in monthly installments with recipes, romances, and home remedies”, but I would actually call it “the secrets of love and life as revealed by the kitchen”.  Really, she does give you advice on everything from how to do laundry to how to get rid of bed bugs.  So I highly recommend, if not for the delicious recipes and practical remedies, at least for the pleasure of experiencing how the words come together in this bankless river of gratifying enjoyment.

There is one touching passage that I really passion, and I want you all to share it.  

“My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help.  In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion.  A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it.  Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn’t find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted. 

If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body is left behind, cold and defenseless, is capable of providing that food.”

It's amazing how much there is in this book that is left up to the interpretation and imagination.
Life is truly magic.  Great books like this make you treasure it even more.