menu	books|books|books	artists|poets|writers|people	point|of|contact
à la carte	about	jumping|out|of|the|tin	purchase|point

When the man who was to become my father announced to his mother that he had met the woman who was not yet my mother, his mother, who was to become my grandmother, was not all too pleased. Many letters had been sent to him indicating which daughters of which acquaintances she had lined up for him. He followed his heart or his nose and my grandmother refused to speak to my mother for a great number of months, until their leaning together over my brother’s crib made silence difficult. After that first visit my mother was sent a paperback two-volume edition of The Encyclopedia of The Housewife in order to perhaps express that skills may have been lacking. It did not prove very useful to her, because she did not intend to master the skill of hoovering with one hand while stirring the pot with the other but it did provide me with great insight into what the society I was growing up in expected from those of my gender.
Here is one extracted recipe :

how to make toast
which appears in WHAT MACHINES

recipe : toast

Toast is delicious, digestible and, as it contains practically no water, allows you to satisfy your appetite without the risk of putting on weight.

Toasters are elegant machines, they are meant to be used directly on the table. Some models are completely automatic, toasting both sides at once : the thermostat cuts the power automatically when the toast is ready and an ingenious device ensures its ejection.

In semi-automatic models where each side is toasted separately, the flipping of the piece of toast is effected either manually or through the opening of the door, about two minutes after the slices have been put into the machine.
Other semi-automatic toasters toast both sides at once, but the user is expected to operate the ejection of the toast by pressing the button provided.

There are models that will take 2, 4 and up to 6 slices (400 to 1650 Watts).
It takes 3 to 4 minutes to obtain perfectly toasted slices.

The toaster requires almost no maintenance ; a little shake will rid it of its crumbs. One should take particular care when not using special machine-sliced bread to cut thin and regular slices.

It may be that the first pieces of toast do not come out exactly as desired. As for all machines, there will be a trial period ; in the case of the toaster, however, this is usually rather short. When you will have made thorough acquaintance with your toaster, you will be guaranteed to produce excellent toast that will ensure a good start to the day.

each morning for breakfast. From The Encyclopédie de La maîtresse de maison
(Paris : Marabout 1965), translated from the French.