ESQUIVEL, Laura - Like Water for Chocolate (Spanish: Como agua para chocolate)

Like Water for Chocolate (Spanish: Como agua para chocolate)

by Laura Esquivel

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

It would be nice if she could let that genius know about one little flaw in this perfect plan for taking care of women in their old age. If Tita couldn't marry and have children who would take care of her when she got old?

Pg. 11

How strange that Nacha, who is quite hard of hearing by that time, should have claimed to have heard this conversation.

Pg. 15

Perhaps not you heard what everyone else was afraid to say.

Pg. 15

She started to eat the Christmas Roll Nacha had left out on her bureau, along with a glass of milk; this remedy had proven effective many times. Nacha, with all her experience, knew that for Tita there was no pain that wouldn't disappear if she ate a delicious Christmas Roll. But this time it didn't work.

Pg. 19

Rosaura and Nacha had never been close.

Pg. 30

And so, arms around each other, Nacha and Tita wept until there were no more tears in Tita's eyes. Then she cried without tears, which is said to hurt even more,

Pg. 30

This Chinaman was a crafty fellow: he accepted notes issued by the revolutionary army in the North as payment for the merchandise is sold in the capital, even though the notes were worthless and not negotiable there. Naturally when he took these notes in payment, it was at a fraction of their value, but then he took them to the North, where they were worth their full value, and bought goods with them.

In the north he accepted the notes issued in the capital, at low value, of course, and so we spent the entire revolution, until he wound up a millionaire.

Pg. 32

Only the pan knows how the boiling soup feels, but I know how you feel, so stop crying, you're getting the meringue watery, and it won't set up properly - go now, go.

Pg. 35

She was aware that she, not her sister Rosaura, was the center of attention. The wedding guess we're not just performing a social, the wedding guess we're not just performing a social act, they wanted to observe her suffering, but she wouldn't give them that satisfaction. No. She heard, as she passed, The whispers in the church, and she felt each comment like a stab in her back.

Pg. 36

Tita was the last link in a chain of cooks who had been passing culinary secrets from generation to generation since ancient times, and she was considered the finest exponent of the marvelous art of cooking.

Pg. 48

All at once she seemed to hear Nacha's voice dictating a recipe, a prehispanic recipe involving rose petals.

Pg. 49

Mama Elena was merciless, killing with a single blow. But then again not always. For Tita she had made an exception, she had been killing her a little at a time since she was a child, and she still hadn't quite finished her off.

Pg. 49

If Pedro had asked Tita to run away with him, she wouldn't have hesitated for a moment, but it didn't.

Pg. 56

I have a very good aim and a very bad temper, Captain. The next shot is for you, and I assure you that I can shoot you before they can kill me, so it would be best for us to respect each other. If we die no one will miss me very much, but won't the nation mourn your loss?

Pg. 90

The chickens are filled with ground wheat or oats and then placed, feathers and all, into a glazed earthenware pot. The pot is covered tightly using a narrow strip of cloth; that way the meat can be kept for more than a week. It had been a common practice on the ranch since ancient times, when they had to preserve animals after  a hunting party.

Pg. 92

She set her down in front of the stone metate and set her to grinding the spices with the chiles.

Pg. 93

Unquestionably, I came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying, or dominating, Mama Elena was a pro.

Pg. 97

In this case, the oxygen, for example, we come from the breath of the person you love; a candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, horse sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches.

Pg.115

She envied Tita for having the courage to refuse to go back to the ranch. She wished she could do the same, but she didn't dare. She'd heard talk since she was a child about the bad things that happen to women who disobey their parents and masters and leave the house.

Pg. 127

And although it might have seemed she would benefit from not having to do any other work then cooking and serving my Nama Elena, it wasn't so. At first she received the news with pleasure, but once the shouts and reproaches started, she realized that you can't have a slice without paying for the loaf.

Pg. 133

They all laughed at that, but when Rosaura explained to Alex that he couldn't because this little girl was just to take care of her until the day she died, Tita felt her hair stand on end.

Pg. 150

When the talk turns to eating, a subject of the greatest importance, Only fools and sick men don't give it the attention it deserves.

Pg. 156

Ingredients for the chocolate

2 pounds Soconusco chocolate beans

2 pounds Maracaibo chocolate beans

2 pounds Caracas chocolate beans

4 to 6 pounds sugar, to taste

Pg. 164

It's very important to pay attention to this sort of detail, since the goodness of the chocolate depends on three things, namely: that the chocolate beans used are good and without defect, that you mix several different types of beans to make the chocolate, and, finally, the amount of toasting.

Pg. 165

While Tita was forming the squares, she mourned for the Three Kings' days of her childhood, when she didn't have such serious problems. Our biggest worry then was that the Magi never brought her what she asked for, but instead what Mama Elena thought best for her.

Pg. 167

It was called a little movie, because it was an apparatus for projecting images on the wall using a petroleum lamp as a light source, producing an effect like a movie; but its real name was "zoetrope."

Pg. 167

Tita began the Three Kings' Day bread at last.

Ingredients

30 grams fresh yeast

1 1/2 kilos flour

8 eggs

1 Tablespoon salt

2 Tablespoons orange-blossom water

1 1/2 cups milk

300 grams sugar

300 grams butter

250 grams candied fruit

2 porcelain doll

Pg. 168

She didn't know how she would react to what "they" would say if Pedro left her, she couldn't stand it. Her only consolation was that at least she had her daughter Esperanza, who was obliged to stay with her forever.

Pg. 171

The commission had been earned by sheer hard work, she fought like mad on the field of battle. Leadership was in her blood, and once she joined the army, she began a rapid ascent through powerful positions until she arrived at the top;

Pg. 178

That was chocolate prepared like it used to be. Eyes closed, Gertrudis offered up a silent prayer, asking that Tita be granted many more years in which to prepare the family recipes. Neither she nor Rosaura knew how to make them; when Tita died, her family's past would die with her.

Pg. 179

Much to her surprise she found that the beans still weren't done, despite the hours they had been cooking. Something strange was going on. Tita remembered that Nacha had always said that when people argue while preparing tamales, the tamales won't get cooked. They can be heated day after day and still stay raw, because the tamales are angry. In a case like that, you have to sing to them, which makes them happy; then they'll cook.

Pg. 219

MURPHY, Jim - An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

AN AMERICAN PLAGUE: 

THE TRUE AND TERRIFYING STORY OF
THE YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC OF 1793

by Jim Murphy

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

Washington was then president of the United States, and Philadelphia was the temporary capital of the young nation and the center of its federal government.

Pg. 3

Naturally, the French Republic had time to the United States for help, only to have President Washington hesitate.

Pg. 5

"There was something in the heat and drought," the good doctor, [Dr. Rush], speculated, "which was uncommon, in their influence upon the human body."

Pg. 6

The Reverend J. Henry C. Helmuth of the Lutheran congregation, too, thought something was wrong in the city, though it had nothing to do with sickness of the body. It was the souls of its citizens he worried about. "Philadelphia... seemed to strive to exceed all other places in the breaking of the Sabbath," he noted. An increasing number people shunned church and went instead to the taverns, where they drank and gambled; too many others spent their free time in theaters which displayed "rope dancing and other shows." Sooner or later, he warned, the city would feel God's displeasure.

Pg. 6

Eight deaths in the space of a week in two houses on the same street... But the city did not take notice. Summer fevers were common visitors to all American cities in the eighteenth century, and therefore not headline news.

Pg. 9

He, [Dr. Benjamin Rush], was passionate and outspoken in his beliefs, no matter what the subject. He opposed slavery, shelf that alcohol and tobacco should be avoided, urged that the corporal punishment of children be stopped, and thought that the best way to keep a democracy strong was by having universal education.

Pg. 12

The sickness begin with chills, headache, and a painful aching in the back, arms, and legs. A high fever developed, accompanied by constipation. This stage lasted around three days, and then the fever suddenly broke and the patients seem to recover. But only for a few short hours. The next stage saw the fever shoot up again. The skin and eyeballs turned yellow, as red blood cells were destroyed, causing the bile pigment bilirubin to accumulate in the body; nose, gums, and intestines begin bleeding; and the patient vomited stale, black blood. Finally, the pulse grew weak, the tongue turned a dry brown, and the victim became depressed, confused, and delirious. Rush noted another sign as well; tiny reddish eruptions on the skin. ...they "resembled moscheto bites."

Pg. 13

The symptoms he was seeing reminded him of a sickness that had swept through Philadelphia back in 1762, when he was sixteen years old and studying under Dr. Redmond. ... He boldly announced that the disease they now confronted was the dreaded yellow fever.

Pg. 15

Yellow fever was one of the most vicious diseases in the world and would create Panic anywhere. It appeared suddenly, savaged its victims' bodies, and - because there was absolutely no cure - killed at an alarming pace.

Pg.15

The next day, Governor Mifflin claimed he wasn't feeling well and headed for his country home far from the fouled air of the state house. In effect, the government of Pennsylvania had closed its doors as tightly as any of Philadelphia's shopkeepers had.

Pg. 37

Every one of them had suffered in one way or another at the hands of whites some of them in appalling ways.

Pg. 49

As recently as that very summer they had been shown their position in the Philadelphia society that was now pleading for their help.

Pg. 50

If any group of individuals had reason to ignore the suffering of their neighbors, the Elders of the Free African Society certainly did. Yep they did not hesitate. They were, as Jones and Allen would write later, "sensible that it was our duty to do all the good we could to our fellow mortals."

Pg. 50

To say that Clarkson was grateful for their aid is an understatement; everyone else the mayor had counted on to help battle the spreading fever - leaders in the business community, church groups, elected representatives, and civil servants - had fled in terror. The Free African Society was the one and only group to step forward and offer its services.

Pg. 51

That is why the mayor and a small group of citizens had taken the drastic and illegal step of calling for the formation of a special committee to run Philadelphia. Clarkson and his committee had, in effect, seized control of the government. If he needed proof that this was a necessary action, it greeted him that morning at the steps of city hall. There Clarkson had to push his way through a crowd of vendors selling coffins and patent medicine cures.

Pg. 68

"Others... looked only for mere cold, whether attendance by rain or not, because histories of this fever assured them that cold had always been faithful to the infection."

Pg. 82

Almost all epidemics follow the same pattern, striking during warm weather, disappearing with the first hard frost.

Pg. 97

It was in 1900 that a young doctor, Jesse Lazear, entered the picture as a member of the US Army Yellow Fever Commission.

Pg. 130

Despite the evidence provided by Reed's commission, many people were still not convinced that the bite of a tiny mosquito could cause a fatal illness.

Pg. 132

The actual source of the yellow fever virus -  tree-dwelling monkeys in African and American rain forests - was not identified until 1929.  And a safe and effective vaccine was not developed until 1937.

Pg. 132