While researching The Winemaker’s Wife, I spent time in the Champagne region of France, where the novel takes place. I was especially lucky to be the guest of a lovely young woman named Virginie Bergeronneau, who works at her family-owned champagne house, Champagne F. Bergeronneau-Marion, based in the town of Ville-Dommange, where the fictional Champagne […]
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Garth Stein’s Recipe for Enzo’s Pancakes
My childhood dog was an Airedale terrier named Muggs, to whom I dedicated my book. She loved pancakes more than any other food, and, in fact, her last meal was “hotcakes,” as my mother calls them. My current dog, Comet, was cut from the same cloth apparently, because she loves pancakes as well; in our […]
#TheLostFamilySupperClub Recap and Menu
As fans of food and book bloggers, we knew they would have some creative approaches to recipes inspired by The Lost Family, author Jenna Blum‘s new novel. On June 3, we hosted #TheLostFamilySupperClub: a gathering of eighteen bloggers at a virtual dinner party to celebrate the book’s release, sharing novel-inspired recipes and creating mouth-watering menus. It was […]
Soft Scrambled Eggs & Chanterelles from Stephanie Danler
One of the great joys of moving to the East Coast was discovering wild mushrooms. My first autumn in New York, a chef friend of mine took us foraging up in the Hudson River Valley where we hunted for chanterelles. Each golden cap was like finding treasure, though the real rewards came later when my […]
Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Pistachio Baklava
Towers Falling, my novel for middle grade readers focuses on three friends: Sabeen, a Turkish American Muslim girl, Ben, a booklover and soldier’s son, and Dèja, a homeless girl who doesn’t know her father’s damaged lungs and her family’s subsequent poverty are because of his 9/11 heroism. When Dèja and Ben cut school to […]
Historical Dutch Apple Pie recipe from author Dominic Smith
Life is weather. Life is meals. I always recall this James Salter quote from Light Years whenever I think about food in fiction. Meals are also a signifier in novels and stories. What a character eats—and how they eat it, and with whom—tells us a lot about their background and worldview. In The Last Painting of […]
Fresh Honeydew Melon Salad
Fresh Honeydew Melon Salad Flavored with lime juice, mint, and cilantro, this honeydew melon salad is perfect for summer parties. THE CHAPERONE Also see Laura Moriarty’s recipe: Cora’s Prohibition-Friendly Lemonade, or Louise’s Hard Lemonade In the summer of 1922, only a few years before she became a famous actress of the silent screen and an […]
Hurricane Cocktail
Jewell Parker Rhodes: Hurricane Cocktail YELLOW MOON As a junior in college, I took my first creative writing course. The professor said, “Write about what you know.” I wanted to write about what I could imagine! So, naturally, loving food, I went home and read my Time-Life Cookbook on Creole and Acadian Cooking. (It was […]
Vegetable Pie
Lisa Tucker’s Vegetable Pie THE PROMISED WORLD No one cooks in The Promised World, but two people cooked for me while The Promised World was being written: my dear friend Kristin and my sister Laurie. Both women are great cooks – unlike me – but both of them knew that what I needed most was old-fashioned comfort food, […]
Pecan-Raisin Christmas Stuffing
Kat Martin: Pecan-Raisin Christmas Stuffing A delicious old-fashioned stuffing to accompany turkey or chicken for any occasion, with mushrooms, water chestnuts, olives, apple and celery. THE CHRISTMAS CLOCK The Christmas Clock is the story of a Christmas miracle, a tender tale of love, courage, and forgiveness in the small Midwestern town of Dreyerville, Michigan. For me, […]