cooking - Barbara Delinsky

April 30, 2012

Fiddleheads!

They’re back! DH and I were strolling through Whole Foods the other night when I spotted a precious sign. Fiddlehead Ferns, it read – and there they were, packed in a bin with tiny ice chips to keep them crisp.

For the uninitiated, fiddleheads are the immature, unopened fronds of a fern that, when harvested at infancy, make a yummy vegetable. The season is short, really just a matter of weeks in early spring, but that’s one of the things that makes them special. Another is their scrolled shape, another their nutty taste.

April 9, 2012

When characters are name-callers

Here’s another thought for those of you who are interested in the kinds of things a writer has to consider.

In a single stretch of dialogue, how often should the characters call each other by name? I’ve been hypersensitive about this lately, because I just read another book that, IMHO, did it very wrong.

Here’s an excerpt from Sweet Salt Air in which Charlotte and Nicole are discussing Cecily Cole. Cecily is the legendary island herbalist, alternately feared and adored. Her herbs, which are particularly strong, are what makes island food so special.

November 25, 2011

The right way to load a dishwasher or make a peanut butter sandwich

BEFORE

AFTER

Thanksgiving turkey is the best, except when it comes to cleaning up. It’s big and greasy, and between that and the casseroles, salads, veggies, and pies, we use more pots, pans, dishes, and utensils than on any other single day of the year. This being the morning after Thanksgiving, cleaning up is fresh in my mind. So here are some thoughts.

First, flashback to Tuesday night. As the official cleaner-upper after dinner, my husband had his work cut out for him. With the troops landing Wednesday morning, we’d been waiting til the last minute to run the dishwasher, meaning we hadn’t run it in four days, and it was a tight squeeze.

November 16, 2011

Shopping for the holidays

I’m not thinking about Christmas catalogues, free shipping offers or Black Friday hours. I’m still on Thanksgiving, and it has to do with food. I’ve been poring through cookbooks, clipping recipes from the paper, and making lists. The troops are descending next Wednesday morning, and they’re all staying here, so Thanksgiving dinner isn’t the only meal I’ll be making. I have to keep bellies filled for four days, and my shopping list keeps growing. There are the unusual suspects – fruit, salad makings, cold cuts, bread, eggs. There are also a bunch of staples we don’t usually buy:

September 16, 2011

Naming the baby

A book title either hits me, or it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, I defer to my publisher. After all, a title is a marketing tool, and they’re the marketing experts. Of my last five books, from FAMILY TREE to the present, the only one I came up with myself was ESCAPE, but that was a no-brainer. ESCAPE was about … escape! From the first, that was the only title I could see on the cover.

September 1, 2011

Barbara Delinsky blogs again … and the plot thickens

I’m back! My energy has finally returned, and no wonder. I took the whole summer off – I mean, did zero writing. This was possible, of course, because I’m at the plotting stage of my next book, which entails more thinking than writing. And I did think. My new characters have been gestating since June, when my editor and I settled on one story idea from the eleven (that’s right, eleven!) I dreamed up. How did we choose? There was lots of back and forth, dancing between my favorite and her favorite, with more than one thought about which plot would be freshest when this book comes out in 2013. The one we finally chose was not initially at the top of my list. But her arguments were good, a springboard for my imagination, and the end result is something we both love. Such is the value of keeping an open mind. Such is the power of compromise.