Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category
Fresh, local food…from my backyard
Today, I harvested two handfuls of red potatoes from a black potato sack. I’ve never grown potatoes before, afraid of them for no reason I can really pinpoint, maybe just because they grow deep in the mysterious earth and you have to dig them up. How would I ever know when I should harvest them? What if I spent all that time growing them and they were rotten when I dug them?
But when we visited CR’s mother in the UK, she had potatoes growing in a soft-sided bag. The local garden club was having a contest and she was serenely certain to win over her neighbor Barbara (who tries not so show her aggravation with this …
THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS WINS GOLD!
Very happy to report that last weekend in Orlando, Florida, the Romance Writers of America awarded THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS their highest honor, the RITA. Every year, nearly 1200 books are entered and judged, and only a handful win the RITA. Thrilled!!
THE JOURNEY BEGINS WHERE THE ROAD ENDS
I have spent the past month walking around England and Spain. If you would like to read more, go to www.awriterafoot.com. For now, I’ve cross-posted this blog to both sites.
The molecules of my body and brain are drifting home a handful at a time, plugging in the holes left by the challenges of actually moving one’s body thousands and thousands of miles
across time and space and cultures and landscapes. For once, I’m trying to be patient with the process. I did not get a cold this time, which is often what my body seems to do in protest; instead I’m resting a lot. Walking the dog is my only exertion, catching up on blogs and …
Book club picture
Almost finished with the new book. In the meantime, I thought you might like this picture. The Book Babes book club read The Lost Recipe for Happiness and sent me some pictures of their feast. Thanks, Diane! (I love the attention to detail, don’t you?)
I’d love to post more. Send me yours!
The Lost Art of Family Dinners
Dinner in Suburbia by Make Less Noise
When I was a child, we ate dinner together nearly every night. I did not necessarily love the whole ritual, especially when my mother made hamburger pie, covered with mashed potatoes, or when I was in trouble for one thing or another (which was a lot), but I can see from the angle that it was a good thing. Our kitchen was large and we ate there, gathered around the white melamine table with its painted edging of lacy gold leaves. We had assigned seats, mainly because my sister Merry is left-handed, but also because there was sometimes a scuffle over …
Pain Grenoblois, or how I spent the afternoon
Raisin Nut Bread, made from a pate Viennoise starter, a little rye flour, and the liquide levain I’ve been working and working with. I also soaked the raisins in orange juice and a little bit of vanilla. Isn’t it beautiful? I know what I’ll be eating for breakfast tomorrow!
Pancake kisses, bacon hugs
THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING is out today! To celebrate, a love song to breakfast.
PANCAKE KISSES, BACON HUGS
Why breakfast is the secret of everything
I suppose I should confess upfront that I am a morning person. I wake up cheery, chatty and at the very first fingers of sunlight creeping over the horizon. I know you find this annoying. I know you wish I’d stop humming under my breath as I crack eggs and start the coffee, but I can’t help it. I was born a singing lark. This does, however, offer benefits to all you blinking owls and sleepy headed in-betweens.
Once upon a time, I had …
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.
