I like to write cookbooks

And so it's National Homemade Cookie Day!  Naturally, I WANT to participate, but then I looked in the mirror and saw the size of my butt and decided I would enjoy the day "virtually" instead of actually eating any cookies. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy it vicariously.

Like working on my Lotus Bay Cookbook. (No title for it yet.)

The real question is -- why work on a project that isn't likely to bring me any money and certainly not many people will buy or read it.

BECAUSE I WANT TO!

There, I said it.

I love cookbooks, and if it was feasible, I'd do a real one -- like Susan Branch's Heart of the Home, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. I can't draw/paint like she can, and adding color photos to an ebook is prohibitively expensive. (Did you know authors get charged per download of our books?)  Anyway, it's a fun project and so I putter at it.

I puttered at Recipes To Die For: A Victoria Square Cookbook several years ago and, quite frankly, the sales suck. I'm lucky to sell 5 or 6 a month. But I'm really proud of that little cookbook. The trade paperback edition has little black-and-white clip-art illustrations, some of which were drawn by Mr. L, like the cow to the right. (In the book, the dialog balloon over Bossy's head says "Moo!")

In Recipes To Die For, I included an anecdote to go along with each of the recipes. Surprisingly enough, it was hard. I know the characters pretty well, but I wasn't as familiar with the lesser characters, and having to come up with ideas about their personalities was more difficult than I thought it would be.

My friend Ellery Adams suggested that I start the book with Signature Drinks.  Now that was fun. I had to read the entire Mr. Boston Official Bartending Guide (Mr. L collects them and we have at least 4 different editions, some of them pretty old) to find the exact drinks that would go well with the characters' personalities.  Conrad Stratton's favorite drink is the Corpse Reviver. (Yes, there really is such a drink!) And Mr. Collier, from Collier's Funeral Home, drinks Zombies (maybe in hopes of keeping those not-quite-dead away from his funeral parlor). See, there's lots of fun stuff stuffed into that little book, which is why it was fun to write.

Check it out on my website.

Anyway, over the summer, I've been puttering on two cookbooks; one for Lotus Bay (and features food that you'd find in a B&B, because that's what Kathy intends to open), and the other for the Jeff Resnick series. That would be mostly Brenda's recipes. It wasn't something I planned, but I noticed that in my books, she make a LOT of soup, so it will feature more soup and dinner recipes.

Okay, so if you've read either of those series, what other recipes to do think Kathy and Brenda should include in their cookbooks?

P.S. I've made all the Booktown Recipes available to readers on my website.  Go to the site, look under the Angelica's Recipes drop-down menu, and you can find them from every book in the series.  Just click this link.

Fill a bag with fun!

This summer has been a bust when it comes to junking. Sometimes we only find one or two yard sales. : (

Things didn't look hopeful when Mr. L announced there was only one sale; a bag sale at the local fire hall.  They were weeding out the accumulated donations (and boy, where there a LOT of them) for their upcoming auction. The bag sale items were in boxes laid out on benches--maybe 100 or more boxes, and a couple of tables worth of stuff. Inside their rec hall was "the good stuff."  The local grocery store donated a huge stack of paper bags, and it was every woman for herself!

Unlike most bag sales (which are usually a buck or two to fill a bag), this one had a tier system. $5 for the first hour, $4 for the next, and so on and so on. Five seemed a bit steep, but it didn't take me long to find some pretty cool stuff. Okay, I got some things like junky earrings (who ever heard of smores earrings?) that came with a pierced earring holder, a beautiful handmade Christmas tree skirt (who in their right mind would part with that?), and some jigsaw puzzles, but they weren't the prizes.

First up, I found a couple of Haeger swan vases. Aren't they cute? I already have a couple of swan vases with the same kind of silky glaze, so when I saw these, I knew I had to have them. Like many of the items in the sale, these were donated by an antiques dealer and still had the price on them: $15.



I'm always on the lookout for bone china teacups to give as prizes on my Facebook group page (Lorraine's Perpetual Tea Party -- you can join if you'd like!) I was lucky and found three beauties.
This first one still had the dealers tag on it for $18. It's marked Hammersly, part of the Spode group. I love the shape of the cup. I don't think I have one like that--but I do have a lot of cups with roses on them, so this will be part of my catch-and-release program for one of my lucky readers.



This one is Royal Darwood and features the flowers associated with the Canadian Provinces. What you can see on the left side of the cup is the Prairie Crocus from Manitoba and in the center is the Prarie Lily from Saskatchewan.



This one is Royal Vale made by Ridgway Potteries Ltd.



Then I came to the animal section ... I am an absolute SUCKER for animal figurines. (Really, I have to fight it.) Here's a donkey who got separated from his manger. (He's about ten times bigger in this picture than in real life.)



I saw this little guy and grabbed it fast. It's not for me, but my neighbor, Ian, who is 7 years old. He's nutso-bananas for seals. He knows a lot more about seals than anybody else I know and he wants to be a marine biologist. I think he's going to make it, too. He's a wonderful little boy who is very generous with his hugs.



My mother-in-law had three ducks that looked like this (only nicer). When she went into the nursing home, my sister in law got them (as she should have), But now I have a duck that will remind me of my MIL. (Mr. L, too -- because those ducks were around since he was a kid.)



Look at this gorgeous glass compote. Honestly, do I EVER use anything like this? Not usually, but -- when I went to the public market, I bought bananas. Guess  where they will end up? Yes! in this compote with a mountain of Redi wip on the top. (I've got too much on my plate to make homemade whipped cream.)  I appreciate glassware a lot more since I read about Susan Branch's collection. (Someone gave her a banana holder as a wedding gift, and that got her started.)



This hand-painted sugar and creamer has a German company on the bottom. Will have to get our my magnifying glass so I can read the name and research them. They're not bone china, but they are pretty.



I got three of these ... ornamental thingys. I have no idea where they're going (yet), probably over a door, but I'll figure it out eventually.  They're not old, as they're made of resin, but they look old.



And that was it. (Who could have thought you could GET this much stuff in a paper shopping bag?) As I paid the fireman, he said, "Now wasn't that worth $5?" I had to admit, he was right. Then he said, "Why not come back later?"  I figured no way -- I mean, I'd already been through all the boxes, right?

Wrong.  Mr. L took me to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants just down the road and on the way home, we stopped at the fire hall once again. By then (about 4 hours later) the boxes really had been emptied, and because the stuff had all been just shoved in, a lot of pretty things (some of them quite old) had been broken. But ... I still managed to find some more treasures.

I saw this Made In Japan couple the first time through and figured somebody would scoop them up. Nope. I looked carefully to make sure they hadn't been broken, and miraculously, they were still in pristine condition--not even a chip on them. They're going to live in my office at our cottage. Just think of how much joy they will have perpetually dancing away the hours while I work on my books and look out at the water when my muse deserts me.



This little etched glass is the sole survivor from a liqueur set. I don't think you could get more than a couple of tiny sips out of it. It stands about 2 inches high. I've tried to imagine my characters drinking out of it -- Angelica could pull it off, as could Katie or Kathy. (Anissa would NOT have the patience.)




 I found another cup and saucer, but it's not bone china: it's ironstone. But as one of my FB friends said, she isn't a cup snob and I can't think of anybody who wouldn't want to drink tea out of this pretty cup.



There's no hallmark on the back of this sandwich plate, but I could see myself eating a piece of the zucchini bread I made (and froze) last week on it. What would you serve from it?



And because Mr. L and I are eating a lot of fresh salad (growing my own lettuce and herbs this summer), and it seems like we use less dishes so the dishwasher isn't running as often. So having another salad bowl would be handy. It's not old, but it is pretty. We already used it and made a BIG salad. Yum!



To fill up the bag, I tossed in all the lonely doilies, linen napkins, and hand-embroidered dresser scarfs that nobody wanted.  I can't bear to think of the work that went into them being tossed away. It's a very sad thing that very few people today value the work that goes into hand-crafted items. That's why I still have a garage filled with things my Mum and Dad made because I can't sell them for pennies on the dollar.

Look at the sweet daffodil someone embroidered. And even more impressive is the lace/crochet/tatting (?) surround.


So that was my junking for the week (and probably the best of the year). I hope you liked the pictures. What do you look for when you junk?

I long to bake ...

I love to bake, but I seldom do it. Why? Calories.

I've been reading Susan Branch's Martha's Vineyard: Isle of Dreams. It's a memoir of how she became the unique and famous cookbook author that she is. (I won't admit to you how many times I've read it since it came out in April, either--but it's more than five.)

This book speaks to me on so many levels; as an author, as someone who struggled to become an author (although Suan's book was accepted on her second try--and she never had to go through the whole struggle of finding an agent and 11 years of rejection. And she didn't start at a small press, she went straight to the top). Am I jealous?  A little green with envy, but it doesn't pay to be jealous. Everybody has their journey and that's what makes their talent singular.

We have other things in common. We both drink a LOT of tea. We both bought tiny houses as single women, when not many women were doing that. (Although I bought my first house at age 24; she was 34.) She was writing from an early age (her diaries--which is why she is such a good memoirist), and I always had my secret stories, but didn't start writing them down until I was 17. She made people happy through her cooking. I made me happy through baking.

She's sprinkled recipes throughout the book,  (Hey, she's primarily a cookbook author, and her recipes are good.) I'm a cookbook author, too (though not nearly as successful). I used to hate to cook, but always enjoyed baking. These days, I'm cooking more (and finally enjoying the process), but not baking as much.

I live in fear of the scale. As you get older, it's so much harder to lose weight. I recently went on a diet and lost six pounds. For our anniversary, Mr. L bought us a cake (and it wasn't THAT big a cake). She shared it, 50/50.  I gained 6 pounds and he didn't gain an ounce.

I'm back on the diet.

But today I'm going to bake zucchini bread. My container garden plant gave me two tiny zucchinis and I bought two more at the Public Market.  I'm going to allow myself one slice, and then freeze the rest. Mr. L will enjoy it for breakfast in the coming weeks. But you know, I'm getting tired of only having one slice. I feel so demoralized by having to deny myself things I like because of the power of that damned scale.

The fact is, most of my family are diabetics and I'm not. And I want to keep it that way. So I'll just have my one slice. And I'll keep writing about food and eating vicariously. That's the only way I'm going to keep from packing on the pounds.

Have you struggled in this way?

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P.S.  Here's my zucchini bread recipe (made with unsweetened applesauce for less calories--of course, adding the nuts kind of cancels that out--except walnuts are very healthy. (Yes, they are!)

Ingredients
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 cup granulated sugar
(or 1 brown sugar + 1 granulated sugar)
2 cups grated zucchini squash
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC, Gas Mark 4). Combine the eggs, applesauce, and sugar until well blended. Stir in the zucchini and vanilla. Sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda; stir into zucchini mixture. Stir in chopped nuts. Bake in 2 well-greased loaf pans for 1 hour.

 Yield: 28 slices