madame came to my sitting room each morning , to consult me on the menu for the day , and to present me with the list of expenditures deemed necessary for the provisioning of the kitchen-fruit , vegetables , butter , and milk from a farm just outside the city , delivered fresh each morning , fish caught from the seine and sold from a barrow in the street , along with fresh mussels that poked their sealed black curves from heaps of wilting waterweed .