Black Pansy

At the birth of the Civil War, Scots-Irish Mabel McCrutchon is ready for love, but because her skin color reveals the family's secret black ancestry, Mabel is ridiculed in public and her own mother excludes her from social gatherings. When wealthy Abolitionist, Charles Churchill invites her to travel to New Orleans to pose as the mother of black children and lead them to safety in the north, he worries about the risk. If his scheme is discovered, Mabel will be swept into Louisiana's slave trade. After arriving at the decaying, antebellum St Francis Plantation to retrieve the children, they're greeted by a sultry blonde who knows Charles much too well.

In this series of linked stories the child narrator, Veve, cannot fathom all the mysteries of her family?s life together, but by watching and listening she pieces together a painful past. Played out against the backdrop of rural hardship and deprivation on the family?s Kansas farm, the secret in her father?s previous life eventually explains his harsh treatment of the three older children and her mother?s bitterness over his countless misunderstandings and slights. ø When originally published in 1931, a reviewer of Black Cherries commented that there is ?a sharpness about all impressions in the book, a keenness of sensuous and spiritual apprehension that leaves brilliant after-images with the reader.? Another described the series of sketches as ?exquisite in texture and so faithful to the childish mind that one derives a warm impression of the imagined young narrator.? ø Grace Stone Coates (1881?1976) spent most of her life in the tiny ranching community of Martinsdale in southwestern Montana. During a seven-year period, twenty of Coates?s short stories were cited in the annual Best American Short Stories as Distinctive or Honor Roll stories, and John Updike chose Coates?s ?Wild Plums? for inclusion in Best American Short Stories of the Century. Coates also published two collections of poetry.

An exploration of the roles flowers play in the production of our foods, spices, medicines, and perfumes reveals their origins, myriad shapes, colors, textures and scents, bizarre sex lives, and how humans-- and the natural world-- relate and depend upon them.

Not so long ago, parsley was the only fresh herb available to most American cooks. Today, bunches of fresh oregano and rosemary can be found in nearly every supermarket, basil and mint grow abundantly in backyards from coast to coast, and garden centers offer pots of edible geraniums and lemon thyme. But once these herbs reach the kitchen, the inevitable question arises: Now what do I do with them? Here, at last, is the first truly comprehensive cookbook to cover all aspects of growing, handling, and cooking with fresh herbs. Jerry Traunfeld grew up cooking and gardening in Maryland, but it wasn't until the 1980s, after he had graduated from the California Culinary Academy and was working at Jeremiah Tower's Stars restaurant in San Francisco, that he began testing the amazing potential of herb cuisine. For the past decade, Jerry Traunfeld has been chef at The Herbfarm, an enchanted restaurant surrounded by kitchen gardens and tucked into the rainy foothills of the Cascade Mountains, east of Seattle. His brilliant nine-course herb-inspired menus have made reservations at the Herbfarm among the most coveted in the country. Eager to reveal his magic to home cooks, Jerry Traunfeld shares 200 of his best recipes in The Herbfarm Cookbook. Written with passion, humor, and a caring for detail that makes this book quite special, The Herbfarm Cookbook explains everything from how to recognize the herbs in your supermarket to how to infuse a jar of honey with the flavor of fresh lavender. Recipes include a full range of dishes from soups, salads, eggs, pasta and risotto, vegetables, poultry, fish, meats, breads, and desserts to sauces, ice creams, sorbets, chutneys, vinegars, and candied flowers. On the familiar side are recipes for Bay Laurel Roasted Chicken and Roasted Asparagus Salad with Fried Sage explained with the type of detail that insures the chicken will be moist and suffused with the flavor of bay and the asparagus complemented with the delicate crunch of sage. On the novel side you will find such unusual dishes as Oysters on the Half Shell with Lemon Varbana Ice and Rhubarb and Angelica Pie. A treasure trove of information, The Herbfarm Cookbook contains a glossary of 27 of the most common culinary herbs and edible flowers; a definitive guide to growing herbs in a garden, a city lot, or on a windowsill; a listing of the USDA has hardiness zones; how to harvest, clean, and store fresh herbs; a Growing Requirements Chart, including each herb's life cycle, height, pruning and growing needs, and number of plants to grow for an average kitchen; and a Cooking with Fresh Herbs Chart, with parts of the herb used, flavor characteristics, amount of chopped herb for six servings, and best herbal partners. The Herbfarm Cookbook is the most complete, inspired, and useful book about cooking with herbs ever written. -8 pages of finished dishes in full color -16 full-page botanical watercolors in full color