Friday, September 18, 2009

Midweek Kitchen Confessions 21: I'm not baking...

...this week. I'm doing this instead. Some weeks...there's just waaayy too much going on for me to find the time to bake. Trust me, it hurts me more than it hurts you.

So, in honor of my theatre "career" and my baking "career" and the rare occasion when the two intersect, I give you a short exchange from a play by David Mamet called "Boston Marriage". Not the best play I've ever read, but worth the read (for me anyway) if only for this vignette.



ANNA: Yes, this shall be our party. And we must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

CLAIRE: A pie.

ANNA: It casts out stress as the heat of the hand repels quicksilver. Faugh I say. Faugh. Keep you your precious vapors, your fantods, your anxiety. Give me a pie. Give me a pie anyday.

CLAIRE: Give me a pie, too. But...

ANNA: For there is that of the bucolic in it. Is there not? The pie, the cottage, the...

CLAIRE: The hearth, finally.

ANNA: Little Nell. Nell or Molly.

CLAIRE: Young...

ANNA: That's right.

CLAIRE: Young Susan. Her brown arms shapely from the work of the fields. One wisp of her...

ANNA: Dark blond hair.

CLAIRE: If you will, come down on her eyes. Brushed back with the flour-covered forearm. As she kneads the dough we may see the tendons now assemble now disperse beneath the nut-brown skin. She looks up. "I'm making a pie." (Pause.)

ANNA: Do you mock me?

CLAIRE: I am concocting a seduction. I do not require a ttissière. (Pause.)


On that last note, I have to say, I differ. One does sometimes require a pâttissière when one is concocting a seduction.

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