Sublime

Product demo(s) grounded in product's key messages

Maud Martha loved it when her magazines said “New York,” described “good” objects there, wonderful people there, recalled fine talk, the bristling or the creamy or the tactfully shimmering ways of life. They showed pictures of rooms with wood paneling, softly glowing, touched up by the compliment of a spot of auburn here, the low burn of a rare bin

three fundamental principles: maximize flavor, manipulate texture, and season confidently.

Protective colouration, she called her outfits. She looked like a dependable mother from a respectable neighbourhood such as ours. As she worked at the kitchen counter, she might have been demonstrating a jiffy recipe in Good Housekeeping magazine—something with tomato aspic, this being the mid-1950s, when tomato aspic was a food group.

nisei

This lady did the honors of the teacup and cookie crock each afternoon, with or without company. She would spread a large stool with a square of lace, deck it with a low bowl of artificial flowers, a teacup or teacups, the pot of tea, sugar, cream and lemon, and the odd-shaped crock of sweet crackers.

“I’m Mrs. Burns-Cooper,” said the woman, “and after this, well, it’s all right this time, because it’s your first time, but after this time always use the back entrance.” There is a pear in my icebox, and one end of rye bread. Except for three Irish potatoes and a cup of flour and the empty Christmas boxes, there is absolutely nothing on my shelf.

(At antique stores, my father bought Victoriana. My mother liked things from her own childhood: the breadboard with a picture of Uncle Sam captioned It’s Patriotic to Slice Your Own; a statue of FDR as boat captain, hands on a ship’s wheel that was also a clock.)