Excerpt from The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And so Lillian drew back, regrouped, and gave her mother food to fit the book of the day. Porridge and tea and scones, boiled carrots and white fish. But after three months, Charles Dickens finally gave way to what appeared to be a determination on her mother’s part to read the entire works of Henry James, and Lillian despaired. Her mother may have changed literary continents, but only in the most general of senses. “She’s stuck,” she told Elizabeth.

“Lily, it’s never going to work.” Elizabeth stood in front of her mirror. “Just boil her some potatoes and be done with it.”

“Potatoes,” said Lillian.



A fifty-pound sack of potatoes squatted at the bottom of the steps in Lillian’s basement, ordered by her mother during the Oliver Twist period, when staples had begun appearing at the door in such large quantities that neighbors asked Lillian if she and her mother had plans for guests, or perhaps a bomb shelter. If Lillian had been younger, she might have made a fort of food, but she was busy now. She took her knife and sliced through the burlap strings of the bag, pulling out four oblong potatoes.

“Okay, my pretties,” she said.

She carried them upstairs and washed the dirt from their waxy surfaces, using a brush to clean the dents and pockets. Elizabeth always complained when her mother made her wash the potatoes for dinner, wondering aloud to Lillian and whoever else was near why they couldn’t just make a smooth potato, anyway. But Lillian liked the dips and dents, even if it meant it took more time to wash them. They reminded her of fields before they were cultivated, when every hillock or hole was a home, a scene of a small animal battle or romance.

When the potatoes were clean, she took down her favorite knife from the rack, cut them into quarters, and dropped the chunks one by one into the big blue pot full of water that she had waiting on the stove. They hit the bottom with dull, satisfying thumps, shifting about for a moment until they found their positions, then stilled, rocking only slightly as the water started to bubble.

Her mother walked into the kitchen, the Collected Works of Henry James in front of her face.

“Dinner or an experiment?” she asked.

“We’ll see,” replied Lillian.

Outside the windows, the sky was darkening. Already cars were turning on their headlights, as the light fi ltered grayblue through the clouds. Inside the kitchen, the hanging lamps shone, their light refl ecting off the bits of chrome, sinking quietly into the wooden countertops and floor. Lillian’s mother sat down in a red- painted chair next to the kitchen table, her book open.

“I remember,” Lillian’s mother read aloud, “the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little see-saw of the right throbs and the wrong. . . .”

Lillian, listening with half an ear, bent down and took out a small pot from the cabinet. She put it on the stove and poured in milk, a third of the way up its straight sides. When she turned the dial on the stove, the flame leaped up to touch the sides of the pan.

“There had been a moment when I believe I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself starting as at the passage, before my door, of light footsteps. . . .” The water in the big blue pot boiled gently, the potatoes shifting about in gentle resignation like passengers on a crowded bus. The kitchen filled with the warmth of evaporated water and the smell of warming milk, while the last light came in pink through the windows. Lillian turned on the light over the stove and checked the potatoes once with the sharp end of her knife. Done. She pulled the pot from the stove and emptied the potatoes into a colander. “Stop cooking,” she said under her breath, as she ran cold water over their steaming surfaces. “Stop cooking now.”

From the prologue to The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. Copyright Erica Bauermeister 2009. All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe reproduced without written permission from the publisher.