COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN Archive

COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Nine – Marna’s Time

By Larry Levine - A light rain was falling the night Marna came into my life. For the next eight months she made the sun shine. Then she left and I was changed in ways I never could have imagined. Marna was the first woman I ever thought of as a permanent part of my [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Epilogue – Mothers and Daughters

By Larry Levine - I’ve traveled a lot of miles from that kitchen in Brooklyn. There have been a lot of smiles along the way, more wonderful women than a man has a right to wish for, a million fond memories and always the music, always the songs. This life that stands on the foundation [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Fourteen – Fantasies

By Larry Levine - A man’s fantasies change as he gets older. Early in life, probably starting as a pre-teen, a boy might fantasize about a photo in Playboy, or the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. They are crude, uninformed fantasies. After a couple of years, in his early teens, he will start to fantasize about girls [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Thirteen – Judy

By Larry Levine - Quick. Name the three greatest popular singers of your lifetime, or your parents’ lifetime if you are under 35 years old. How about Judy, Ella, Frank, or Barbra? Full names aren’t necessary; they’re all legends. It’s a safe bet that at least one of them is on your list. For me [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Twelve – La Divina

By Larry Levine - I became a fan of soprano opera diva Maria Callas long before I learned she attended the same elementary school as I did in Brooklyn, N.Y. It had more to do with her extraordinary voice, her fiery personality and the controversy that followed in her wake. What’s strange about all this [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Eleven – An Indomitable Spirit / An Incredible Survival

By Larry Levine – For 83 years Tillie Tooter lived her life in quiet anonymity – a World War II widow, who raised her daughter alone in the years before society coined the term “single mom”. Then in the pre-dawn darkness on a South Florida highway in the summer of 2000 her anonymity was ripped [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Ten – Came Jennifer / Came Love

Jennifer with our newest grandchild, Alise Lilyanna Levine. By Larry Levine - Of all the chapters you have read or will read in this book, none has been more difficult to construct than this one. It has taken more writing and re-writing than all the others combined because it is story that is still being [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Eight – Convertible Cars and Celebrity Bars

By Larry Levine - When you are young, everything happens for the first time. With little experience to provide perspective, everything is larger than large and more dramatic. It’s easy to believe whatever is happening never happened before – to anyone. Love is more real and more forever. Until it ends. Then no one ever [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Seven – Forever Seventeen

By Larry Levine - The air was so clear, the sky so blue, the sun so bright, the temperature so warm and the view so spectacular that we might have been living in a Technicolor movie filmed with sound stage perfection. It was one of those days – the kind of day when you can [...]
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COOKING FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN – Chapter Six – The Christian Missionary and the Kid from Brooklyn

By Larry Levine - Elizabeth Blackstone became a beautiful woman in my life twice. The first time she was my teacher in a high school class called Senior Problems. The second time was 50 years later. On the 50th anniversary of my graduation from high school I sat with Elizabeth Blackstone, her sister and [...]
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