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By eight, we were blowtorching the tops of crèmes brûlées in ramekins. It was the seventies, when women were supposed to eschew cooking for liberation. But to me cooking was liberation. And I cooked, in my bell bottoms, singing along with Gloria Gaynor on the radio, which Aunt Odile called “the wireless.” Those were my fondest memories of childhood. Great Aunt Odile died when I was fifteen. But I can still picture her beautiful kitchen with its enormous farmhouse table and rustic apron sink.
    Lately, I did my cooking in a far less charming room. The next night found me surrounded by the linoleum and stainless surfaces of our production facility, La Cucina. I unwrapped blocks of cheese, while Marta washed organic apples in the giant steel sink.
    Marta shut off the water and looked around. “ She’s not here, is she?”
    I shrugged. “I haven’t seen her.” Things were decidedly more peaceful when the Cucina’s ironfisted matriarch was not on the premises.
    The scuttlebutt around the kitchen was that the government paid “Auntie” Maria to teach employable skills to welfare mothers who were losing their benefits. With one hand, Uncle Sam had slashed aid to poor mothers. With the other, he paid Zia Maria to educate them.
    Zia, ever enterprising, had then hit on the idea of renting out the kitchens at night and on weekends to earn even more money. To fill these off-hours slots, she turned to another vulnerable population—hopeful entrepreneurs. There were now ten struggling businesses like mine renting time during the graveyard shift at the Cucina.
    Zia’s frugality was legendary. To force one enterprise to support the other, she required her welfare mothers to work several shifts a month for the entrepreneurs, at less than minimum wage.
    And that’s how I’d met Marta. By the time I arrived on the scene, she was nearly a graduate of Zia’s program. She could peel ten cloves of garlic in ten seconds flat and mince onions without shedding a tear. More important, Marta knew how Zia’s kitchen worked—which burners on the overused stove lit evenly and how to run the clanking flash freezer.
    Marta’s many talents announced themselves to me immediately. I could see that she was her own gum-cracking variety of superwoman, able to leap tall egos in a single bound. As soon as I was able, I hired her—full time. We were a tiny company, so Marta’s job was to be my gal Friday. I paid her a salary of forty thousand dollars, which was a hell of a lot less than she was worth but more than I could afford.
    Marta was not without her quirks. She was full of old wives’ tales. She thought cold water from the tap would come to a boil faster than warm water, in spite of the obvious physical impossibility. She also thought that too much stirring drove the vitamins out of food. But I hadn’t hired her for her scientific insight. I was after her skills with both kitchenware and diplomacy.
    Into Zia’s industrial food processor I fed great hunks of organic cheddar. The machine was deafening but quickly produced five pounds of cheesy smithereens.
    â€œDid you get a nap?” I asked Marta.
    â€œNo. I got coffee instead. You?”
    I smiled. “Same. Who’s sitting with Carlos?” On our production Thursdays, Marta bribed a rotating collection of little old-lady neighbors to spend half the night on her living room sofa, keeping an eye on her son.
    â€œSeñora Díaz tonight. Carlos likes her well enough. She lets him pick all the TV shows.”
    â€œGroovy.”
    I dropped the cheese into a mixing bowl the size of a Roman tub and looked around for a paddle. I didn’t mind our late nights in the kitchen. Making the actual food was for me the part that made all the bureaucratic nonsense bearable. Still, there was no time to waste when your workday ended in the wee hours.
    â€œI made the flyers,” Marta announced. She