Over her lifetime she wrote 27 books, among them Consider the Oyster (1941), How to Cook a Wolf (1942), The Gastronomical Me (1943) and a translation of Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste.

Fisher, who has just been elected to the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters, a food writer is a lot like calling Mozart a tunesmith.

She told Albion City Historian Frank Passic: I… was delivered at home by "Doc" George Hafford, a man my parents Rex and Edith Kennedy were devoted to.

Rex was then one of the volunteer firemen, and since I was born in a heatwave, he persuaded his pals to come several times and spray the walls of the house.

My mother Edith was firmly against this completely un-Irish notion, and induced Doc Hafford to hurry things up a bit, in common pity.

[4] In 1911, Rex sold his interest in the paper to his brother, and moved the family to the West Coast, where he hoped to buy a fruit or citrus orchard.

[5] The family spent some time in Washington with relatives, and then traveled down the coast to Ventura, California, where Rex nearly purchased an orange grove, but backed out after discovering soil problems.

[8] Fisher would later write that during her grandmother's absences at religious conventions: [W]e indulged in a voluptuous riot of things like marshmallows in hot chocolate, thin pastry under the Tuesday hash, rare roast beef on Sunday instead of boiled hen.

[33] Mary Frances attended night classes at the École des Beaux-Arts where she spent three years studying painting and sculpture.

"[35] Mary Frances remembered big salads made at the table, deep-fried Jerusalem artichokes, and "reject cheese" that was always good.

[38] The Fishers visited all the restaurants in town, where in Mary Frances's words:We ate terrines of pate ten years old under their tight crusts of mildewed fat.

We addled our palates with snipes hung so long they fell from their hooks, to be roasted then on cushions of toast softened with the paste of their rotted innards and fine brandy.

[43] Despite the kitchen's limitations, or perhaps because of it, Mary Frances began developing her own personal cuisine, with the goal of "cooking meals that would 'shake [her guests] from their routines, not only of meat-potatoes-gravy, but of thought, of behavior.

Then I drained them and put them in a wide shallow casserole, and covered them with heavy cream, and a thick sprinkling of freshly grated Gruyere, the nice rubbery kind that didn't come from Switzerland at all, but from the Jura.

He had stopped work on his poem, was trying to write novels and did not want to return to the States where he knew job prospects were poor.

[51] Mary Frances began writing and she published her first piece — "Pacific Village" — in the February 1935 issue of Westways magazine (previously known as Touring Topics).

[54] When Al began teaching at Occidental, the Fishers initially moved to Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, where the Parrishes helped them paint and fix up an older house they had rented.

[56] Mary Frances worked part-time in a card shop and researched old cookery books at the Los Angeles Public Library.

[62] Mary Frances also revisited Dijon and ate with Parrish at Aux Trois Faisans where she was recognized and served by her old friend, the waiter Charles.

[61] In 1936, Dillwyn invited the Fishers to join him in creating an artists' colony at Le Paquis — a two-story stone house that Parrish had bought with his sister north of Vevey, Switzerland.

[70] During this same period, Fisher and Parrish also co-wrote (alternating chapters) a light romance entitled Touch and Go under the pseudonym Victoria Berne.

Fisher was always trying to find ways to obtain Analgeticum; she even wrote President Roosevelt at one point to urge him to lift the import restriction on the drug.

It was a fictional account of expatriates enjoying a summer romp when the protagonist, suffering great pain, ends up losing a leg.

"Pages offered housewives advice on how to achieve a balanced diet, stretch ingredients, eat during blackouts, deal with sleeplessness and sorrow, and care for pets during wartime.

"[81] The book received good reviews and attained literary success, leading to a feature article on Fisher in Look magazine in July 1942.

[86] Her relationship with Friede gave her entree to additional publishing markets, and she wrote articles for Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Town and Country, Today's Woman and Gourmet.

"Craig Claiborne of the New York Times said Fisher's prose perfectly captured the wit and gaiety of the book and lauded the hundreds of marginal glosses that [she] added to elucidate the text.

Each day she would walk across town to pick up the girls from school at noon, and in late afternoon they ate snacks or ices at the Deux Garçons or Glacière.

"[112] Fisher was disappointed in the book's final form; it contained restaurant recipes, without regard to regional cuisine, and much of her signature prose had been cut.

[114] After Dillwyn Parrish's death, Fisher considered herself a "ghost" of a person, but she continued to have a long and productive life, dying at the age of 83 in Glen Ellen, California, in 1992.