platter. Tita was her apprentice and without knowing it, little by little, she completely embodied the power to cook, and what’s more, to reveal herself through her food. When she had no other way to express herself, food became her mode of communication. Mama Elena’s cruel appointing of Tita as head of all the preparations for the wedding of her sister Rosaura and the man that Tita loved, resulted very tragically. While baking the cake with Nacha, Tita’s tears sank into the batter of the cake, and acted as poisonous toxins that nauseated all those who ate it, ruining the wedding, and killing Nacha herself, who also tasted Tita’s melancholy teardrops: Weeping was just the first symptom of a strange intoxication -an acute attack of pain and frustration- that seized the guests and scattered them across the patio and the grounds and in the bathrooms, all of them wailing over their lost loves (39).Her feelings towards the other nuptial that occurs in the novel are completely different since it occurs much later in her life and Mama Elena and all the forces that were against her, had vanished. At her niece’s wedding, Tita felt so much happiness in preparing all the edibles that everyone complimented her food and those who dared to ask her for the secret recipe only received the reply: “The secret is to make it with love” (239). As in the book’s title, descriptions of how characters feel in various situations are presented in imagery from food and cooking. In addition, the unique ways in which food is prepared and the ingredients employed are shown as determining or redefining people’s fates. The novel equates understanding these secrets of the power of food with understanding life. By doing this, Esquivel marks a new phase in feminist thought where, instead of rejecting the kitchen as a space that impedes women’s freedom, she adapts the kitchen’s secrets to literar...
