Giveaway! Salt of the earth…the sea…the mountains
12 days until the release of THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING (Tuesday, December 29), and to celebrate, here is another little giveaway.
The Secret of Everything is centered in a little town that has, quite by accident, become a center of food culture. One of the characters in the book is 8-year-old Natalie, who is very particular about food, but not in a traditionally child-like way. Natalie reveresfood–the flavors and smells, the combinations and the colors–and she hates it that hardly anyone takes her passion seriously. She is working her way, one menu item at a time, through the menu at The 100 Breakfasts Cafe (including the eggs Benedict and huevos rancheros, thankyouverymuch), and she has a passion for salt, and that passion weaves a thread throughout the story. Below is an excerpt to introduce you to one of my favorite characters ever, but first, the giveaway.
In the comments, post a story about a favorite food from your own childhood. Next Wednesday, I’ll choose a name and send you a Salt Sampler Collection that includes some of Natalie’s favorites, including Himalayan Pink Salt (pictured left), Fleur de Sel de Guérande, red Alaea Hawaiian, and two others. It was inspirational and delightful to explore the textures and flavors of these salts for the book, and I know some of you will enjoy it, too. (And I know we will enjoy your food stories, too!)
EXCERPT, from THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING, by Barbara O’Neal :
Before Natalie’s dad had to work on Saturday, rescuing somebody who wasn’t supposed to be climbing on the rocks anyway, they were all suppose to go on a picnic. Instead, they got stuck at Grandma’s, eating fish sticks and ketchup, and now they were going on a picnic today and it was hot, hot, hot.
Natalie sat in the shade beneath the tree in the plaza, holding her sister Hannah’s hand, waiting for her dad to come out of the drugstore with sunscreen. They had to walk to the lake, naturally, because nobody could ever just drive anywhere around here. Already her skin was prickly down her back. Her grandma said she should wear a hat, but Natalie just did not see how that would make a person cooler.
She would rather stay right here in the shade all day and read a book. Climb up into the tree, maybe, and then come down later and go into Le Fleur de Mer and look at salts from the Dead Sea, which she imagined was probably a desert, all glittery in the sunshine like diamonds even though it was big crystals of gray salt. The lady in there didn’t like Natalie to come in by herself, she said it was nothing that would interest a child, but she didn’t know Natalie. Or that she had her own salt cellar and was just waiting to find the right salt to put in it.
She swung her feet, banging her heels against the wall and slapped a fly away from her neck. He was drinking the sweat, she thought. Disgusting.
After she visited the salt store, she would go into the drugstore for a cherry phosphate, made with cherry syrup and lime juice and plain soda water right out of the fountain. The man took a maraschino cherry and a triangle of lime and stuck them on a tiny plastic sword, and propped it on the top of the ice. It came in a shapely glass in a silver holder, and a fat paper straw, not plastic. She would sit at the counter on turquoise chairs that swung back and forth, and look at magazines, maybe the one with Rachel Ray on it, because she always seemed really really nice, or one of the ones that had beautiful pictures of cakes on the front. It didn’t matter. When she opened those magazines, it seemed like a whole world whispered out at her, inviting her inside their glossy pages to share a secret.
If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the counter inside the drugstore, the fan swirling air over her head, the pages of her magazine riffling a little. She would take tiny, tiny sips of the phosphate to make it last an hour, and only then would she eat the cherry.
“Don’t nod off on me, sleepyhead,” her dad said, all cheery, like she wanted to walk to some stupid lake and eat stupid mushy bananas and stupid lunchmeat sandwiches.
“I’m not,” she said crossly. “Do we have to go on a picnic? Can’t we just have a picnic here?”
“No!” Jade roared. “I want to swim!” She had a red and white polka dot bathing suit under her shorts, and her hair was braided tightly in one long white horsetail down her back.
“Me, too! Swim!” said Hannah, who still talked like a baby, even though she was three. Grandma said it was because everybody talked for her.
Daddy sat down next to Natalie. “You don’t want to go swimming? It’ll feel pretty good up there. And I got you a surprise for lunch.”
“What surprise,” she asked without excitement. “A candy bar?”
“Nope. Something good. Something only you would think to ask for.”
A kindling of hope sparked in her chest. “Really?”
Sometimes, not often, he actually got it right. She wasn’t holding her breath or anything, but she stood up and put her backpack on. “Okay.” Pedro scrambled to his feet and she took his leash. “Let’s go.”
Wow, Barbara, did you steal my childhood journals?
My favorite childhood food was homemade pierogies: onion, potato, or cabbage. They still take me back!
That salt looks positively GORGEOUS.
I just want to say that this must be the best giveaway ever. Really.
I have so many great childhood food memories, mostly revolving around my Italian grandparents. We always had amazing food at Nanny and Pop Pop’s, but my favorite food memory is a simple one. My Nanny made the most wonderful tossed salad…nothing fancy or unusual in it, just romaine, tomatoes, onion, black olives dressed with good red wine vinegar and olive oil. I liked the salad fine, but what I really liked was sitting at the dining room table with my grandfather after everyone else was done, dipping crusty pieces of Italian bread in the vinegar and oil left in the bottom of the bowl.
I am counting the days for the new book!
I am Greek and grew up in a large extended Greek family, much like the family in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. My favorite food growing up was meat pita (English version of the dish), which is a Greek meat pie dish. It consists of ground beef, onions, celery, and a bunch of spices in a phyllo dough crust. One of my aunts would make her own phyllo dough, which took all day. My sister and I would “help” her in making the dough and we always had a blast. We’d be covered from head to toe in flour by the end of the day. The meat pie always tasted much better when we helped my aunt.
My sister and I would take leftovers of the meat pie to school in our lunches and would always get “looks” from our friends because we didn’t have the standard PBJ or ham sandwich, but we always knew that our lunches were much better.
When growing up we always had tuna salad sandwiches for lunch. I was a very picky eater, so my version of the salad did not have onions, but it did have dill pickles (sometimes sweet pickles) and mashed eggs. It was made with Miracle Whip! I loved it, and in fact thought that “lunch” and “tuna” were synonymous. Once at my aunt’s house, when I was about 4 years old, she offered to fix me lunch. I enthusiastically said yes, pulled a chair over and started to climb onto the counter to reach the cabinets. When she asked what I was doing I told her I was getting the can of tuna so we could make lunch.
Am counting the days for the new book!
Kay, I was JUST thinking about Miracle Whip today. I really love it, and I know you’re not suppose to admit that, but I like the tang. We always had Miracle Whip instead of mayo.
When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to make brownies that were just out of this world. To this day, I still make her recipe for zuchini bread, which is scrumptous. I could never get her brownie recipe to come out the same as hers, though. They were the best!
Sunday lunch, after mass, always a delicious, melt in your mouth leg of lamb stuffed with slivers of garlic and parsley, roasted carrots, onions and potatoes on the bottom of the pan. When we would return from church, my mother would toss a cup of red wine on the lamb and that smell wafted about the house, ever increasing our hunger for the lamb. At night, the simplest of lamb sandwiches: leftover rare lamb on bread, with mayo, lettuce and topped with bread and butter pickles. To this day, this is my favorite sandwich.
My very favorite food memory from my childhood is my mothers fried potatoes. She fried them in an ugly, black cast iron skillet with lots of bacon grease and onions. The corners of the potatoes got crisp and blackened and they were well salted and peppered. She cooked them every Friday night. My mouth is watering even as I type this. My mother is gone but I bet she is frying potatoes for the angles. Barbara, you are my second favorite author. My daughter, Veronica, is my #1 author. She turned me on to your books and I’ve loved everyone of them. I’m really looking forward to The Secret of Everything. Thanks for you great stories…I love your women! Connie
oops….just read what I wrote…please make that angels! I need to read before I send. CO
When I was a child, my birthday (in December) was perogie making day. My grandmom and aunt and my family would all get together to turn out dozens of these Polish ravioli to be used for Christmas dinner. It was always a special day and I think of us gathered together like that everytime I cook them in my own house.
Your delightful post was so perfect for a day like today. It made my memories come alive with a beautiful meal that I treasure. Many years ago my grandmother lived with us and would cook and bake all the great treats and meals. One that I remember vividly was a tasty eggplant parmesan, delicious brisket and veggies and then her most wonderful dessert, apple cake.
My dad was – and is – a great cook, so many of my memories are his foods. My favorite weekend breakfast was matzo brie – fried matzo – the jewish version of french toast. I used to always wonder why mine was never as good as his, until asking him, he revealed his secret – he didn’t fry it in butter or margarine – he fried it in schmaltz – chicken fat!
Also we ate it savory, with salt and pepper, as his family did. So I think I can put the salt to good use!
These are so wonderful to read! More, more! (Don’t be shy–none of us care about typos or perfect English, only your story.)
Ah, your post brings up so many memories of good, home-cooked food, made for a horde (me, my six sisters, our father, and usually a few friends, or in summer two “Fresh-Air Fund” sisters from NYC…)
Ok – one favorite is a simple “Hamburger” Soup my mother always made (from a 1960′s recipe) with warm corn muffins made from scratch on the side, oozing with melted butter pats. The soup used browned ground beef and featured a delicious water-based broth derived from gently sauteed onion, celery with their tops, and peeled, sliced carrot, and enriched with stewed tomatoes and their juices. She also often threw in a beef bouillon cube after she’d added the water. No starch of any kind was needed in the soup at all – but the corn muffins served that purpose (and were great for sopping up the last drops of broth!).
I still make that soup today, but it never tastes as good as when my mother made it.
Thanks for the stroll down memory lane! I think I’ll call my mother now and see if we can squeeze in a pot of that soup while I’m home for Christmas!
Oh, man! I didn’t think I had any childhood food memories…and then I read the comments, and a few came bursting through.
The first one is from when I was 4-1/2 or 5 years old, coming home from nursery school — I rode the bus, I felt like such a big girl — and my mother making me cream cheese and grape jelly sandwiches. The stickiness and tang of the cream cheese made the grape jelly cooler and smoother and sweeter.
The second one is from when I was 6 and 7 years old. We lived in Turkey — my dad was a U.S. Air Force officer — and in the afternoons, the maids and gardeners in the neighborhood would gather behind our house to have lunch. My brother and sister and I would go out back after our own lunches and beg bread from our maid, Sherifa. I can’t believe she would let us do that, but the bread was amazing: dense and a little sour, the kind of bread that makes you understand “the staff of life” even when you’re a little kid.
My last memory is of the fried potatoes my dad would make. He’d fry some bacon in a cast iron skillet. He’d take the bacon out and saute potatoes and onions in the bacon grease in the bacon fat, then add the bacon, crumbled, before serving. Deadly, but oh-so-good. He was a wing-it cook, making things up as he went along…and I just realized that that’s probably where I get my habit of thinking, “I’ll bet it would be really good if I substituted this for that…” (Like turning a recipe for pumkin bread into a recipe for triple-berry bread…)
The winner is…..Connie O’Donovan, and Connie, it’s funny that you won with the second post, so fate was on your side with that typo.
Seriously, everyone, I loved these tales. Matzo brie! Hamburger soup (that sounds so homey!)! And oh, heaven….potatos fried in bacon grease.
Check back early next week for the BEST giveaway! Seriously, I’m so excited.
Thank you all for playing, and have a happy holiday week!
Although the salt has already been awarded, I couldn’t resist the chance to post one of my favorite childhood memories in the comments. (Also, had the MOST amazing cocktail at an upscale local locavore restaurant, a kumquat margarita rimmed with Black Lava Salt! the waitress brought me the bottle to examine and apparently filtered black charcoal, it’s not just for aquariums anymore!)
my mom was a stay at home mom, my dad worked for the government during the day and at his small business fixing cars in his garage in the evenings. So most of my time was spent with my mom, my dad was not so much the caregiver. But when I would get sick, sick enough to stay home from school, he would go in the kitchen and cook up hamburger meat, drain the grease, and scramble eggs in with the meat as a special dish for me that his mom used to cook for him when he was sick as a child. My mom would fuss the whole time about how such food was too rich and too difficult to digest (she was a Here, snack on this sodium free roasted soy nut kind of mom) but he would wave aside her protests and serve it to me anyway.
Scrambled eggs with hamburger meat. Seasoned with love.
Elena, that cocktail does sound amazing! I bet it was beautiful, too.
That’s a pretty love-rich dish, too, isn’t it? Thanks for posting it.
Just grabbed the new book – yay! And OMG Black Lava Salt kumquat margars… I have to figure out the ingredients for that. Wonder if it would handle a bit of white cardamom?
Love new recipes, as well as treasured old ones…..
My mom used to make the best ribs, we called them “Captain Geiger’s Ribs” (Dad was Navy, but no one knew a Capt. Geiger??)…. the house would smell wonderful and warm, and later when I married and had a son, he too loved them. To cut the mess, we put an old shower curtain under his antique (circa 1906) high chair, and let him at it! Talk about a mess, but he loved it!! To this day, it’s a ‘comfort food’, and has made me a really good online email pal, who has become much more than an email buddy!! they even came from Mo. to Fla. to see us!! The power of the ribs!!!