The Quilt Inn Country Cookbook

Aliske Webb

patience from her own awkwardness.

“

I don’t remember ever seeing my Grandma quilting but I know she did,”

another woman looks inward for memories. “I remember her baking though and

smelling brownies coming from the oven. I’d be in a rocking chair on the porch, reading

Nancy Drew novels, wrapped in a quilt. She would bring out cookies and milk just when

there was not enough daylight left to read and say, ‘Don’t strain your eyes, dear.’ That

was our signal. I’d close the book and we’d sit and talk, eat brownies and rock. I don’t

know what we talked about. Anything and everything, I guess.”

Every story is told the same way, with far off distant looks as the teller relives the

tale. Every story is of women, irrepressible creativity, and love.

Two of the most comforting things in life: a quilt and chocolate. I suppose if

you’re on a diet you have to forgo this chapter. Go wrap yourself in a quilt and you’ll

feel better....

We have to thank the Aztecs for discovering the coco bean and all its

intoxicating glory. It was considered to be food fit only for the gods and consumed

only by the pivileged, and was tantamount to religious ecstasy. It is also puported to

be an aphrodisiac. Montezuma apparently drank up to 50 cups of it a day.

(Unfortunately the Aztecs also sacrificed virgins by throwing them into deep wells.

What a waste.) The Belgians took chcolate to its decadent heights by moulding it into

decorative shapes. The Swiss, in an effort to keep warm on long snowy nights,

melted it into milk and drank it, or melted in a fondue and dipped everything in the

kitchen into it. The English invented the chocolate candybar itself, and finally the

Americans packaged and marketed it to the masses. Chocolate is now a ten billion

dollar industry annually. Every year, the average per capita consumption of

chocolate is ten pounds! Well, I know I don’t eat ten pounds of chocolate every year.

In fact, no one I know does. At least none of us will admit it. So, somewhere there are

a lot of people eating more than their share....

Today we are inundated with cheap and easily available chocolate—in

everything from enticing television ads, to grab-handy candycounters at the grocery

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Country Cooking