Stir Read Online Free Page B

wedges, a can of beans, or a simple cup of tea. Your people will feel fed. I learned that a bowl full of mango, fully skinned, pit removed, and sliced into slippery cubes, is pure love. Same goes for a bowl of supremed oranges, all the pith stripped away, vesicles exposed like jewels.
    Best of all, I learned to pay attention. I learned to watch people, how they eat, what they do with their bodies, their faces, their voices and their words, when they sit down at my table. I know, for example, that my friend Eitan will always reach for the bread I’ve brushed with egg white and sprinkled with oats, while my sister Kasey prefers the one with the sunflower and pumpkin seeds. She’ll press her finger onto her plate at the end of the meal to get the stray ones. I know that my mother gets a kick out of a fried egg on her salad, that my father slaps the table when he takes a bite of sautéed kale, that Eli likes his apple cake with more apples, and that I do, too. When I piece together a menu for a tableful of family and friends, I think about all these things. From my hospital bed, far from that table, I did, too.

Marcella’s Butter Almond Cake
    This is the almond cake that met me that night in Ohio. It’s my secret weapon in the kitchen, one of those cakes that comes together in no time from practically nothing, but is so pretty and tastes so good that no one ever believes you. Amy got the recipe from her friend Patricia, who clipped it from
The Columbus Dispatch
, and I’ve adapted it here. For short, Amy and I call this cake “Marcella’s” after its creator, Marcella Sarne, who entered it in a baking contest sponsored by C&H Sugar and won, to the tune of a grand-prize custom kitchen.
    My friend Janet suggests sprinkling a pinch of salt over the batter together with the toasted almonds and sugar. My friend Janet, by the way, is a genius. Covered and stored at room temperature, this cake keeps well for several days.
    Butter and flour for the pan
    3 heaped tablespoons sliced almonds
    Â¾ cup (1½ sticks; 170 grams) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
    1½ cups (300 grams) granulated sugar, plus 1 tablespoon for finishing
    2 large eggs
    1½ teaspoons pure almond extract
    1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
    Â¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
    1½ cups (188 grams) all-purpose flour
    A pinch of sea salt flakes, like Maldon, if using (see
headnote)
    Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and butter and flour a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom.
    Spread the sliced almonds in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast them in the preheated oven for 5 to 7 minutes, until fragrant. They should color only lightly.
    Whisk together the melted butter and 1½ cups sugar in a large bowl. Add one egg, whisk until fully incorporated, then add the other and whisk some more. Add the almond extract, vanilla, and salt, and whisk well, until smooth. With a rubber spatula, fold in the flour until just combined.
    Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan and scatter the toasted almonds, sea salt flakes, if using, and 1 tablespoon sugar over top. Bake for 35 minutes, until the cake peeking through the almonds takes on a faintly rosy color (this cake blushes more than it browns), and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack until nearly room temperature, then ease the cake out of the pan and cool the rest of the way.
    Serves 8 to 10.

CHAPTER 3
Passing Through
    A t first, I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I was in the ICU. The Pit. Okay. But the scans had shown nothing broken in my brain, and this sounded like good news to me. A doctor stopped by my corner of the Pit and basically confirmed as much. He said that sometimes, for unknown reasons, there is a spontaneous bleed, and then the brain just heals itself up.
    I liked how he called it “a bleed.” As a noun the word was far less forbidding, like how smoking can kill you but going for “a