06/02/2023
She was destined to travel, love, cook, write, and edit- brushing shoulders with other, truly iconic, personalities that helped shape our q***r art and culinary scenes into the utterly rich, vibrant, and deliciously decadent landscapes they are today.
Alice B. Toklas was born in 1877 in San Francisco and raised by a Polish Jewish family who owed half of Seattle's leading dry-goods store, Toklas, Singerman & Company. They led a typical middle-class lifestyle for the times and would eventually find their way back to the Bay in 1897.
Perhaps it was just a freak natural disaster, a destructive yet benevolent fate, or the celestial bodies conspiring to make cool s**t happen that led Alice into the romantic embrace of Gertrude Stein, but the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake shook up more than just the Bay area.
As fires raged throughout the city's streets Alice said "au revoir" to San Francisco and "bonjour" to Paris. She would meet Stein just one day after arriving in the City of Lights, and they would go on to become the "it" q***r power-couple, hosting a salon in their home that would be graced by the likes of Picasso, Thornton Wilder, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Earnest Hemingway, among others.
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book was born out of drool-worthy foodie encounters and wild memories from her time spent with famed eccentrics and neurotypicals alike. Published in 1954, the cookbook would become an all-time best seller (only the brave would be tempted to make any of the free-spirited and brow raising recipes held within it, save for the famed "Hashish Fudge".) What her cookbook lacks in the typical over analytical prose of its counterparts, it makes up for in a recipe on how to live a scrumptious and adventuresome life- it's a love letter woven into sporadic measurements and some best-guess directions on the preparation of the meals that encapsulated her memories of the friends and acquaintances who cooked them for her.
Alice stayed true to herself in body and spirit, in food and love, and will forever be a trailblazer for q***r art and cuisine. She was a foodie, a committed partner, a wannabe behind-the-scenester whose talents, character, and eccentricities would outshine the misplaced role given to her as an introverted muse to her lover.
Thank you, Alice, for your contribution to our vast and diverse culinary arts world. You were a chef supreme.
โThe only way to learn to cook is to cook.โ
-Alice B. Toklas.
Happy Pride, friends ๐ณ๏ธโ๐