A light in the kitchen

I loved the narrator's sensuality about food. She wrote, before the kiss, "I know all about the facts of life. And I don't think much of them." Hehe. But, even after the kiss, she retained a passion for food.

I love that Stephen bought her, on credit, a "two-penny bar of nut milk chocolate," saying "I know how you like to eat in the bath, Miss Cassandra." (He won me right there)

And then the hot chocolate with the Americans: "Cocoa, cocoa! — it might have been the most magnificent drink in the world; which, personally, I think it is."

The London lunch with Rose: "But I did like the restaurant; most of the people eating there were unusually ugly, but the food was splendid. We had roast chicken (wing portion, two shillings), double portions of bread sauce (each), two vegetables, treacle pudding and wonderful milky coffee [emphasis added out of sheer euphoria - kc]. We were gloriously bloat."

At the Cotton's: "but I wish I could have had that food when I wasn't at a party, because you can't notice food fully when you are being polite."

"It suddenly seemed astonishing that people should meet especially to eat together."

"Ham with mustard is a meal of glory."

"Cherry brandy is wonderful. [emphasis in original]

The picnic by the sea: "It wasn't like an ordinary English picnic, because Neil cooked steak over the fire — this is called a 'barbecue.' I have been wondering what that was ever since I read about Br'er Rabbit. The steak was burnt outside and raw inside, but wonderfully romantic."

"The idea of herbs is so much more exciting than the look of them."

"...food helps quite a lot, unromantic as that sounds. I have grown more and more ravenous as I have grown more and more miserable ... Surely it isn't normal for anyone so miserably in love to eat and sleep so well? Am I a freak? [this, among many other lines, made me think of Erin's kid diary, hehe]. I only know that I am miserable, I am in love, but I raven food ..."

The visit to the vicar: "I never had madeira before and it was lovely — the idea almost more than the taste, because it made me feel I was paying a morning call in an old novel."

The chocolate ice-cream soda at the restaurant while she's miserably waiting for Stephen to come pay her bill. "Then I sat back and just wallowed in relief — it was so great that I forgot how unhappy I was."

And at the end, as she's filling the margins of her notebook with "I love you," it happens to be tea time — how lovely — and "there is a light down in the castle kitchen."