#this restaurant was in a tiny little village where my grandmother grew up so we visited those places among other things

[mistress-light]

Went out to dinner with my parents. I love spending time with them x3

[batomarbo]

Why We Hunger for Novels About Food

While putting imaginary meals on the page, I have thought a great deal about the central role that food plays in our lives. Food is love. Food is conviviality. Food is politics. Food is religion. Food is history. Food is consolation. Food is fuel. Food identifies us and who we are. It can even help us make sense of our world. We live in a culture where food porn is one of the hottest hashtags and seeking out the best new ramen or avocado toast trend is a more popular hobby than collecting stamps. And the “culinary enthusiasts” among us can’t get our fill of books about food.

But what about authors of food fiction? What compels them to write about what—and how—we eat?

Louise Miller, author of The Late Bloomer’s Club “Food is the great equalizer—everyone eats—and what we eat and how we eat it can be so emotional and can carry deep meaning. Food can also be so revealing. I remember an old New Yorker cartoon that pictured a mother and her young daughter sitting in a restaurant looking at a menu. The mother responds to her daughter’s question: ‘Chocolate pudding? I think you would like it. It’s a lot like chocolate mousse.’ That one line tells us so much!”

Phillip Kazan, author of Appetite “Food for me is very tied up with memories of my Greek grandmother, whose tiny kitchen in London was a treasure-house of tastes and smells in the grey, flavorless world of ‘60s and ‘70s England, where olive oil was something you had to buy from a pharmacist as a cure for earache. Presumably the pharmacist in our village thought our family had appalling ear problems, because my mother bought hundreds of his tiny bottles of oil for her cooking. I remember cookbooks as this wonderful escape route to exotic, warm, generous places: Greece, from where relatives would visit with huge tins of olives and bags of sugared almonds; or India, where my father was born. Writing, in a way, is an extension of my cooking, and vice versa. Cooking taught me how to create, that I needed to create.”

Randy Susan Myer, author of Waisted “I grew up in a family where food was the comforting evil (or the evil comfort). My mother—for whom dress size was the holy grail—watched every bite I took. When in a restaurant, first she’d not order what she wanted and then she’d steal bites from my plate. If I protested, she’d say, ‘If you love me, you’ll share your food.’ Often, we barely had food in the house and meals were haphazard at best. My sister snacked on raw Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I ate uncooked matzo meal. We lived on cold cereal—which to this day is my top comfort food. My mother hid cookies and cake inside our giant pressure cooker and then put the pot on the very top of our already high cabinets. My sister and I were under ten, but a pressure cooker was no match for us. I’m surprised we didn’t become mountain climbers for how often we scampered up the peaks leading to buried sweets.”

Ramin Ganeshram, author of The General’s Cook “I’m from an immigrant family. My parents were from two countries that, at the time, had little representation here in the U.S.—even in New York City where I was born and raised. My dad was from Trinidad and Tobago and my mother was from Iran. I was also brought up in a time where people still really tried to assimilate so they downplayed their native culture with their kids. The one thing that remained a solid connection was the food we ate. I realized from a young age that I could get my parents to talk about their homes when we were eating the foods they had prepared from their respective cultures. My father, particularly, was a born storyteller and if you could talk with him while he was cooking you would get the best stories.”

Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light “The main character in my novel is based on Lee Miller, a woman who reinvented herself multiple times in her life—first as a model, then a photographer, and finally as a gourmet chef who wrote for Vogue and other women’s magazines of the day. In all my research about her, there was never any mention of her love of food prior to her becoming a chef. This makes no sense to me. Of course, she must have loved food—and she moved to Paris in 1929, where she would have enjoyed meals quite different—and presumably more delicious—than what she ate growing up in Poughkeepsie. I wanted her love of food to be palpable throughout the novel, both to foreshadow her shift to cooking later in life, but also because I think enjoying food—enjoying the pleasures of the body—is integral to who she is as a character. I see Lee Miller as a woman of voracious appetites: she was hugely ambitious and adventurous, and very sexual. Food seemed like another way to understand her overall hungers.”

Charlie Holmberg, author of Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet “In writing, I think food is an excellent method of transportation. If I were to detail a table setting with food you’ve never heard of, but I describe a flaky crust, the way a gelatin gives underneath a knife, and the smell of burnt sugar, you are there. You smell and taste and see that meal. It gives a story, ancient magical tales included, a sense of realness.”

David Baker, author of Vintage “A dish is a story . . . it’s the story of the culture that created it, the person who made it, the story of the ingredients and where they’re from, the tale of the meal’s creation—successful or otherwise—and then of sharing it. The whole process is a form of narrative. The same goes for wine . . . it’s the story of millions of years of geology that created the region where the fines grow. It’s the story of the culture of the region and then a time capsule of what happened weather-wise the year in which the grapes ripened, and finally what the winemaker did during that year. There are so many layers of narrative in food and wine that it’s a rich field for exploration in writing.”

Amy Reichert, author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake “I didn’t realize I was a food writer until after people responded to my novels, and I’ve embraced it. One of my favorite parts of writing has become sharing my regional cuisine with them—writing about Wisconsin culinary delights like a Door County fish boil or our classic brandy old-fashioneds. It’s one of the ways I share my love of Wisconsin.”

Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop “It happened quite organically—pardon the pun. But it’s impossible for me to write about Iran and Iranians without including a lot of food because the preparation of huge meals is an integral part of the culture, and sharing those meals at feast-like parties is common across the classes. Food takes on added significance for my characters because they are displaced from their original home. They are Iranians living in America. There is a longing for the familiar foods they know and a constant search for ingredients they love. Cooking Persian meals links my characters to their past and heritage. Sharing Persian food with Americans is a way for them to create and deepen new relationships.”

Jenna Blum, author of The Lost Family “While I was writing The Lost Family, I cooked a lot—to meditate on the day’s writing as well as to kitchen-test all the recipes I then featured on the book’s menu. Some of my favorite lines for the book would bubble up that way, as if from a Magic 8-Ball, and one of them was ‘vegetables have no language.’ I revised this slightly for the novel, but it means that food is universal. The produce and spices will vary from country to country and cuisine to cuisine, but if you love food, you have a vast family out there. We can all communicate about how our beloved dishes are different—and how they are the same.”

*

I myself have been smitten with books about food since a friend of mine recommended that I read M.F.K. Fisher decades ago. I devoured The Art of Eating and everything else she had written. In her books I found both the exotic and the comfortable. I had never been to France or eaten escargot, but I reveled in her descriptions of food, in her use of simple phrases to evoke such specific sensations: “The air tastes like mead in our throats,” she writes in The Art of Eating. I hope to stir the same feelings and create the same sensory pleasures in others with my novels about famous culinary figures in Italian history.

Now this is a book I can really sink my teeth into, I thought as I once read the opening paragraph of The Flounder by Nobel prizewinner Gunter Grass.

Ilsebill put on more salt. Before the impregnation there was shoulder of mutton with string beans and pears, the season being early October. Still at table, still with her mouth full, she asked, “Should we go to bed right away, or do you first want to tell me how when where our story began?”

The rest of the novel, which tells the story of an immortal fish who meets an immortal man who falls in love with cooks over and over through the centuries, is just as delicious and delightful in its descriptions of food. To this day, it’s one of my favorite novels.

In reading The Flounder and other sumptuous works of culinary fiction, I’m reminded of something dramatist George Bernard Shaw once said: “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” It’s a statement to which I think we could all gladly raise a glass.

[bluebrightly]

1.

My axis tilted

by a trip. Nineteen days

swallowing

impressions

whole,

or did I pick at them? Bits

and pieces

maybe…

  2.

  Or not.

In any case,

I looked up.

  3.

  Down.

  4.

  Out.

  5.

  Across.

  6.

  And through, yes, I looked through a lot: through trees, screens, fences, windows, doors, glass cases, and my camera. That one. A lot.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  There were willow trees, and poems.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  There were many coins,

there was not enough water.

  16.

  17.

  Plenty of good espresso though…

  18.

  Planes, trains

trams, buses, cars,

boats and feet –

I used them all,

inscribing a ragged northern European circle:

Amsterdam,

Leiden, Rotterdam,

Ghent, Antwerp,

Lille,

Cologne, Frankfurt, Klein Reken, Hannover, Rahden, Lavelsloh,

Badhoevdorp, and Amsterdam again.

  OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

  My brain

was chaos: too little

sleep, too many

sights, sounds, smells,

thoughts

and feelings swirling around in

a joyful stew.

  20.

  How did I manage?

People. Friends,

relatives, and above all,

that one guy in

the center of it all, kept me

from blowing away.

  21.

  22.

  23a.

  23b

  23c.

    My axis tilted to the Old World,

nine hours ahead. A different time

and place,

layered with history,

awash in art, architecture,

fresh food, abundant conversation,

and in the lovely month of April,

flowers, buds, and birds.

(More of those later)

Then it was time to return to the New World.

  24.

  So here I am, slowly digesting

three weeks of impressions. More photos

will follow. Thank you

for being here.

***

  A few notes on the photos:

A White stork flies near its nest, in the German countryside. These huge, mythic creatures migrate between Africa and Europe, and forage in fields for all manner of meat: insects, mice, lizards, worms – whatever! They’re making a comeback now, after declining over the past several hundred years.

Roof tiles on the street in the old town, Leiden, Netherlands.

Cologne (Koln), Germany.  Pollarded trees are much more common in Europe than in the US. Wikipedia says pollarding, a method of pruning that keeps trees to a manageable size and promotes dense, leafy growth, was mentioned in an ancient Roman text.

A floor mosaic at the MSK Museum (Museum Voor Schone Kunsten) in Ghent, Belgium.

Somewhere over Greenland, strange landforms rise from the clouds.

A neat row of trees in the German countryside. Long or short, rows of trees appear again and again in the countryside of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

A textured glass door in a private home in Germany yields amorphous blobs of pure color.

An old church in Hannover, Germany, is viewed through a fine fuzz of new leaves.

At the Wallraf-Richartz/Ludwig Museum in Cologne, excavation work being done next door is seen through a black, textured screen. A museum complex with a collection spanning two millennia, and ruins of the Roman governor’s palace and a Jewish ritual bath, is underway.

In Lille, France, an old brick building retains only its’ face; mute, empty windows frame the inner walls and the buildings beyond.

Handsome doors in a century-old home in Leiden lead to a balcony overlooking over a canal.

Also in Leiden, a large willow hangs gracefully over one of many canals that meander through the city.

The Wall Poems of Leiden project began in 1992. Written in a variety of languages, the poems number more than a hundred. It’s quite wonderful to come upon one unexpectedly…maybe this one especially. The photo shows a fragment of it – “The Hours Rise Up Putting Off Stars and It Is” by e.e.cummings.

Another willow tree on a canal in Leiden.

Strange story – this carved stone in Antwerp records a line from the old song, “There is a Tavern in the Town.” Why? Author Willem Elsschot (a pseudonym for Alphonsus Josephus de Ridder; 1882-1960) was a respected Belgian author whose last work incorporates the lyrics of the song. You can follow the story via quotes in various places around the city. Called Het Dwaallicht, or Will-o’-the-wisp, the novella has been called, “A jewel in the treasure chest of Dutch language” (Kader Abdolah).

A teacup and the previous day’s collection of Euro coins. That was nothing! By the end of the trip, they were weighing down our pockets.

Detail from a still life at the Wallraf-Richartz/Ludwig Museum in Cologne. I like to have a bottle of water handy, but when it runs out, where can I fill it? Water fountains are rare, and no one wants to give away water. If I want a glass of water in a restaurant, chances are I’ll pay for it, even if it comes from the tap. We became adept at filling our water bottles in restaurant the bathrooms (not so much the bathrooms of train stations, which cost a Euro to enter). It was sad when the sink was so tiny the bottle wouldn’t fit under the tap. Water may have been hard to come by, but good food and drink were plentiful, even in train stations.

Espresso Perfetto in Cologne is a lively, popular cafe in the Italian tradition: your espresso is pulled, poured and served with great care; the little glass of sparkling water is there, the little chocolate too, and the people watching is very, very good. We observed one happy, rotund man come up for tray after tray of delicious pastries to bring to his friends. There is a shiny array of high end espresso machines to peruse, and there are blankets for the outdoor seats, because Europeans aren’t going to let cold weather stop them from enjoying the freedom of a smoke. Or is it life parading by that’s the real draw?

A collage of photos of transport arrangements, from feet to airplanes. In the Netherlands, our OV cards got us on trains, trams and buses, but they weren’t good in Belgium or Germany. No worry – we always were able to navigate the systems and pay our way. In one train station, student volunteers kept the line moving for the ticket and information desks, and our volunteer was a Syrian native who spoke Arabic, Dutch, English, a bit of French and German.

A tangle of foliage at Hortus Botanicus, the oldest section of which dates to 1590. The great Linnaeus spent time here!

That special guy, flanked by dear friends in Germany.

Third cousins once removed? We aren’t sure, but Elke and Anette were great companions for a long afternoon spent delving into family history, by way of the beautifully kept old farmhouse and barn (where my paternal grandmother grew up), a pretty village church dating back to the 1600’s, family photos, stories, and yum! – homemade plum kuchen and coffee.

a. b. & c.  Three remarkable people.

A drawing by Walter Dahn at the Kestnergesellschaft, an art gallery in Hannover.

Tilting the Axis My axis tilted by a trip. Nineteen days swallowing impressions whole, or did I pick at them?

[sarahbooz]

There are times when things line up a little too perfectly for there not to be something bigger at play. I’m not advocating the existence of God or a higher power or anything like that, but there are times on this adventure where it seems like fate might be a very real thing.

Back in 2015, during our first trip west, we met another couple from New York in the mountains of Wyoming. It was just after labor day weekend and most campsites were full or, according to my sources, closed for the season. We’d been driving all day and thought we’d found a campsite at the peak of this mountain, but when we got out of Sandwich it was like time stood still. All activity around us stopped and we felt like someone was going to shoot us. Rather than spending the night convinced we were going to die, we loaded back into our RV and started heading down the other side of the mountain. We drove past a campsite that I had seen listed as closed for the season, but very obviously had people in it, so we pulled over to discuss our options. As Kyle was telling me how hard it would be to turn around on this steep mountain road and I was worrying about how soon it would be getting dark a park ranger came over to check on us.

“Are you guys okay?”

“Yeah, we’re just trying to figure out where we’re staying tonight.”

“Well, I think there are still some sites left at the campground you just passed, why don’t you turn around?”

We did our first loop of the campground and were flagged down by a guy who told us that the site next to his was already paid for but that his friends bailed, so it was ours if we wanted it. We got to talking to him and his wife and learned that before moving to Big Sky Country they’d been living in Washington Heights. We learned he used to be a bartender too and I asked him where he’d worked.

“A little place in the West Village. You’ve never heard of it.” “I grew up in the West Village! Where was it?” “Hudson and 11th.” “Did you work at Hudson Corner Cafe, The White Horse, or Philip Marie?”

As it turned out he worked at Philip Marie, a place I frequented because my childhood best friend worked there. He knew her. He knew the only bartender I knew there by name. It was incredibly likely that he had been my bartender on more than one occasion. Because the world is tiny and strange.

Last summer, during our exploration of New England we ended up in Portland, Maine. We’d been told about a little seafood shack outside of town and planned on having an early lunch there. Instead of our original plan we got distracted by how adorable the city of Portland was, wandered around, got into a bit of a fight and realized it was well after lunch time. Kyle drove us the ten miles to this shack and found that they absolutely did not have adequate parking for Sandwich. I resigned my desire for fried seafood and said we should just head back to Portland. Kyle looked at me like I had sixteen heads and found some parking on a residential street about a half a mile away.

We walked ten minutes back to the restaurant and Kyle marched up the stairs and directly into the exit. There were clearly marked doors and he walked straight into the wrong one. He turned around, obviously embarrassed, when a woman tapped him on the arm. It was his old coworker, a friend for years who now lives in New Mexico and just happened to be leaving the restaurant as Kyle was walking in. Had we not fought, had we been able to find parking at the actual restaurant, had he walked into the right door – had any number of other little details been different they never would have seen each other.

Last week we ticked our 44th state off by entering the barrenness of North Dakota. Did you know that the entire state has less than 1/3 of the population of Brooklyn? It’s insane. There are less than a million people. In the entire state! As a native New Yorker facts like these make my head spin.

We arrived in Fargo and had been parked at the Walmart for a little while when I started hearing explosions. Kyle said we must be near a military base, but I thought they sounded like fireworks. While walking to dinner later that evening, as the booms continued, we saw this sign outside of the local Denny’s: 

I felt proud of myself for knowing the difference between a military explosion and a firework, but something completely different dawned on Kyle.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if Tommy was here?”

Tommy is my father’s first cousin, my first cousin once removed, and he spends a lot of time with fireworks. He set off his first professional display way back in 1966 and hasn’t really stopped since. I texted him first, but when he didn’t answer I texted his eldest daughter, my cousin Sarah.

She mentions we might be stalking him because this is the fourth state we’ve seen him in. He watched Sandwich for us while we scooted to Designer Con last year, we saw him at my Grandmother’s 90th birthday party in Maryland, watched some crazy fireworks he  helped put on in Lake Havasu, and now North Dakota.

The reason for his being in Fargo was the annual Pyrotechnics Guild International convention – an event you should plan on being near if you have any love for fireworks at all. We saw the biggest, loudest, craziest displays we’ve ever seen. Some of them are experimental! A lot of them are homemade! Some are made by children! But they’re all wonderful and fill the sky for about a week.

After nights of spectacular fireworks we were able to catch up with Tommy and have lunch thanks to an impending storm that cancelled his afternoon pyrotechnic appointments. We had a quick lunch and then it was time for us to leave Fargo and continue on West and directly into that storm.

The wind was severe, the rain was heavy. We had to get off the highway because Kyle was convinced we were going to tip over. He started driving on a back road, adding 50 miles to our journey, when we realized we couldn’t keep driving. We turned around and pulled into the parking lot of a long closed down bar with a truck and a number of RVs also taking shelter. The wind continued to push us around, even while stationary. Most of the traffic on the road had simply pulled to the side of the road to wait it out. It was intense. We opened accuweather to how long the storm would last and got horrible news. Hail was coming.

Hail is an RVer’s worst nightmare. Our homes are made out of plywood and hope – they will not stand up to ice chunks hurtling from the sky. A friend of ours had her roof completely destroyed in a hailstorm in April and we were in no rush to experience what she had. We discussed going under an underpass, we discussed trying to outrun the storm that we were incapable of navigating in and we ultimately did nothing.

We are very very lucky that the hail never materialized in the little town of North Dakota we pulled off in. Maybe that’s happenstance too. The world is a funny, magical place.

  If you haven’t seen it yet Kyle released a surprise custom Dunny and it’s spectacular!

Grab it here!

If you haven’t checked out the Patreon you can do it now!  http://www.patreon.com/SarahBooz

Happenstance There are times when things line up a little too perfectly for there not to be something bigger at play.