Honestly, it would make sense to not sterilize them. If one of them turns up pregnant, put her in a handmaids costume and send her to a recent commander customer, right? And, if healthy babies are so valuable, it might be shocking to have babies with unknown fathers, but not shocking enough to prevent them.

I felt that the Martha conversation had a lot of interesting world building. Who are marthas? Well they may be women who had children, but are too old to be fertile. That wasn't obvious to me before, because they don't look any older than June/Serena Joy.

Yeah, I have no problem with the award statement. I think it's just a "figure of speech" / way of saying something. She's not really saying it was the pesto, and only the pesto, and no other element of her cooking that contributed to her James Beard nomination. But perhaps that was the dish that her restaurant was…

I think I read an interview where she said she didn't try to control much because she knew the mediums were different? Rather than money, maybe she let them go with the idea of artistic freedom to people with good intentions?

I think it is meant to imply she was an award nominated professional chef 5-10 years ago, before the revolution.

Right? For some of it I can make sense. The wives mostly wear normalish clothes that would have previously been available in those colors. If say 50% of women are gone/ dead/ handmaids/ jezebels/ aunts then you can just plunder their wardrobes for all available bluish or greenish clothing.

Yeah, this is a thing I've been wondering about too. Here's what I *THINK* the answer is.