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Once you have created a Vegetable instance, you will want to assign and refer to that instance's fCalories, cCalories, and pCalories instance variables.

To assign an instance variable in a Vegetable instance, you must use a method that is known to instances of the Vegetable class, because only such methods have access to a Vegetable instance's instance variables. You can, for example, define a keyword method, fCalories:, for instances of Vegetable:

Vegetable method definition • instance 
fCalories: aNumber 
  fCalories := aNumber 

Because fCalories: is defined for instances of Vegetable, fCalories: is free to assign an instance variable, fCalories, in a Vegetable instance.