"Portrayed as a public venue for a cooking demonstration in which the protagonist prepares Lillian Hellman’s pot roast, this department-store setting is used to dramatize how culinary performance can prop up romantic fantasy. The demonstration becomes a narrative device: the recipe is recited to make a point about how food and love are presented as fact, and it precipitates the character’s realization that cooking had shifted from an expression of affection to the sole way she could feel certain and in control." - Rebecca Flint Marx