Cook Until Desired Tenderness

Sugar is quirky, very creative, a bit of a kleptomaniac, and an occasional voyeur. She is also the fictional chef and author of a detailed journal in which she records her food history in order to create her own traditions. As Sugar finds her way through life, she chronicles her attempts at various cooking styles and respective love affairs. Along with flirtation, passion, heartbreak, and comfort, her stories contain antic accounts of frenzied feasts, misunderstood menus, and kitchen chaos. The writing simmers on pages spiced with notes written on napkins, paintings of mouth-watering food, long-lost recipe cards, and the handwritten love letters that are found folded up next to them. Chapters range from a quick appetizer about an la minute relationship to a good, long stew over a love that never quite reaches the boiling point.