M.F.K. Fisher

I liked M.F.K. Fisher from the moment, in an early chapter of her first book, Serve It Forth, she describes her secret winter’s habit of peeling tangerines and leaving them on a hot radiator for the day, so that the thin skin dries and the flesh swells with warm juicy pulp. Once cooled on a snow-packed windowsill, they quickly disappear:

“…I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume, I cannot tell.
          There must be some one, though, who knows what I mean. Probably everyone does, because of his own secret eatings.”