c. Susan Sorrell Hill
The Illustration Friday word of the week is dessert.
Ah… dessert! The pleasures and temptations of this sweet treat are legendary. Lovers are wooed, diets foiled, holidays and birthdays are celebrated and memories made permanent all under the influence of dessert. How could we live without it?
Do you have a weakness for pumpkin pie, cheesecake, banana splits or Tiramisu? Holidays have their traditional treats, and whole countries insist on their favorites. In the single category of ‘chocolate,’ there are so many roads to pleasure!
I, myself, am a purist: chocolate chip/walnut cookies (no milk), french vanilla ice cream (no topping), cherry pie or devil’s food cake (no a la mode), dark chocolate–straight! My mother would live on chocolate if no one interfered… perhaps it is genetic?? Even people who swear that they are “not a dessert person,” will have their dessert-like behaviors: the after-dinner drink, smoke, television program, movie or book. It’s really all about the ‘treat’ quality of this thing called dessert… and the definition of dessert will be always be open to interpretation.
My own favorite ‘dessert behaviors’ (in any delicious order) are:
- Dessert for breakfast. (See my favorite quote at the bottom of this post.)
- Eating dessert alone. (So I can savor without interruption.)
- Dessert while reading, preferably as in #2. (Head and stomach both get happy.)
- Dessert after a huge, traditional meal like Thanksgiving… when I can savor the sweetness because hunger is not a factor–I’m already stuffed.
- Dessert to celebrate success.
- Dessert as the perfectly brewed cup of twig tea or decaf latte.
- Dessert as all the mangoes, papayas, blueberries, strawberries or cherries I can eat.
- Dessert as pizza!
Everyone knows that desserts are not exactly healthy. (Unless you are thinking of the Soul Food category.) But the memories and temptations of dessert persist… perhaps simply because dessert is linked to some of life’s sweetest moments?
In the fuzzy, but inevitable future, I suspect I will have to celebrate the publication of my first children’s book with a huge piece of chocolate cake—and I won’t even be sorry later…
Here is a collection of delightful dessert quotes. My favorite is by Ernestine Ulmer: “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.”
“Temptation” (etching) Inspired by Albrecht Durer‘s “Adam and Eve”
Yeah!! You neglected to mention dessert as consolation. We’re told to expect rejections before getting published, and that gives ample excuses for sweets before celebrating the publication of your first book
I think pie for breakfast is an old American farmland tradition. Or it should be.
Great post, great illustration. yes desserts!! all kinds, from fruit as you said, to the more decadent pastry, for all reasons.
)
Think my favorite would be apple pie,
Love the take & the textures!
My family’s favorite dessert behavior is our annual shortcake dinner. Once a year, when strawberries are in season, my husband & sons pick them from a nearby farm while I bake shortcakes, & when they come home, we all eat nothing but shortcake for dinner. That way we can really get our fill without feeling quite so miserably stuffed.
Well what a lovely work, for me I thought not Durer but Denis’ Muses
http://www.eveninghour.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Picture-7.png
The rhyhtmic arrythmia has always got me, the juxtaposition of curve and straight line work so well