5 Quotes by Lily Prior

The gardens at Acquasanta was the nearest place to paradise that I had ever seen. Well-trimmed palm trees and sweet-smelling pines were interspersed with fruit trees bearing oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and kumquats. The branches bowed down under the weight of the golden fruit.Low box hedges bordered the flower gardens. There were cornflowers and sweet peas and arum lilies. Terra cotta pots the size of men trailed trains of ivy and overflowed with pink geraniums.

La cucina bears the scents of its past, and every event in its history is recorded with an olfactory memorandum. Here vanilla, coffee, nutmeg, and confidences; there the milky-sweet smell of babies, old leather, sheep's cheese, and violets. In the corner by the larder hangs the stale tobacco smell of old age and death, while the salty scent of lust and satiation clings to the air by the cellar steps along with the aroma of soap, garlic, beeswax, lavender, jealousy, and disappointment.

At three I was in my little kitchen preparing a dish of formaggio all' Argentiera.I fried slices of caciocavallo cheese with garlic until it had just melted and then sprinkled this with wine vinegar and fresh oregano before piling it onto a thick slice of rustic bread.

Here you have your spaghetti, which, with a delicious sauce of ripe tomatoes, basil, sleek eggplant, and ricotta you will eat for lunch, when office workers, acrobats, and slaughtermen return home for the siesta and for a few brief hours the restless city sleeps.

For two months I bottled oranges and apricots, peaches and pears, raspberries and nectarines, plums and figs in a rich sugar syrup laced with lemon zest.I pickled olives and cucumbers in brine, and packed mushrooms, pepperoni, artichokes, and asparagus in jars with olive oil.I made jams and preserves of berries and fruits, which then lined the shelves on the walls in the cellar, each one labeled in my own hand and bearing the date of my agony.