Alice+Toklas

Alice Toklas was born on April 30,1877 in San Francisco, California. She was born into a middle class Jewish family. Alice attended school in San Francisco and Seattle before going on to study music at the University of Washington. Toklas went to Paris1907 where she met Gertrude Stein, a writer and a poet. Together they hosted a salon (a gathering of people under a roof of an inspiring host) and their parties attracted famous American writers like Paul Bowles (//The Sheltering Sky//) and Ernest Hemingway (//The Old Man and the Sea//). They also attracted famous painters such as Picasso and Matisse. Alice was more in the background while Stein was in the spotlight. She was Stein's lover, cook, editor and general organizer. Toklas remained in the background until 1933. This is when Stein published a book of Toklas' "memoirs" that was titled //The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas// which quickly became Stein's best seller.

W.G. Rogers wrote about Alice and Stein and described Toklas as a small woman who had to look up to talk and doesn't sit in chairs but hides in them. What he did not expect was "the enchantment of her speaking voice-like a viola at dusk." Stein died in 1946. Since there was no legal recognition of their relationship, Stein's family took all of her belongings and placed them into a vault. Alice had to rely on monetary donations from friends and income from her writing to make a living.

In 1954, Alice published //The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook//, which held her most famous recipe, Haschich Fudge. The fudge contains a mixture of fruit, nuts, spices, and marijuana! Her name was then lent to a large range of cannabis ingredients called Alice B. Toklas brownies. A second cookbook was published in 1958 called //Aromas and Flavors of Past and Present,// but Alice didn't approve of it since it was annotated by Poppy Cannon, an editor at for House Beautiful magazine. In 1963, Toklas published her autobiography called //What is Remembered// which ends suddenly with the death of Stein. Towards the end of her life, things became difficult because of her poor health and her financial problems. She became a Roman Catholic in her old age. She died in poverty at 89 and was buried next to Stein in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.

By: Caitlyn Dixon