the SIMMER blog

Just beachy! The Kitchen Daughter on Oprah.com

I feel like I've been using more than my fair share of exclamation points in the past two months, but: sometimes you just have to exclaim, right?

The Kitchen Daughter is on Oprah.com's list of Tantalizing Beach Reads!!!

Click here for the full list. (Wow, am I in some pretty awesome company!)

cheesecake ice cream

I don't know what the weather's like where you are, but here in New York City, we have rapidly gone from a foggy, rainy, wintry spring to the WHOA THAT IS HOT heat of summer.

Which has its downsides, obviously. And its upsides too:

 
It means that every dinner party around here ends with ice cream. (Which happens sometimes in the winter, too, but is oh-so-much-better in the summer.)

I think I've mentioned before that one of the things I love about The Perfect Scoop is its wealth of non-custard ice creams. No fussy egg-cookery, just easier-than-pie purees.

This one is just cream cheese, sour cream, lemon zest, a little half-and-half, and sugar:

 

Which you hit with your whirrr stick:

 

Done. Chill for a bit, then churn.

 

As is so often the case, no pictures of the finished product, because we chowed it down. And I apologize for the lousy lighting throughout this post. But would you rather have poorly-lit cheesecake ice cream photos, or no cheesecake ice cream photos at all?

Make this one. You will not be sorry.

wordless wednesday xlvi

 

connections and community on writer unboxed

This isn't primarily a publishing blog, but I do talk from time to time about the process of publication, and this is a question I often hear: "is it all about who you know?" I've often heard aspiring writers complain that they can't "break in" because they don't know anyone in the business, but most of the people I know who've published fiction didn't know anyone when they started. I certainly didn't.

To read the rest of the story, click here for Is It Who You Know?

 

Moments from Eat Write Retreat

I feel like I've been to a zillion writers' conferences, but I'd never been to a food bloggers' conference until Eat Write Retreat a few weeks back. And if they're all this good -- I may have myself a new addiction. (Spoiler alert: I suspect they are not ALL this good.)

Since we were all food bloggers, there are a lot of great roundups on attendees' food blogs -- so I don't necessarily want to do a comprehensive roundup. I want to talk about moments.

There were so many moments.

Here are five.

5. On our first night, Peter Smith and Gina Cherservani presented drinks based on desserts and desserts based on drinks. Every single bite and sip was delicious, but I actually giggled at my first taste of this pink dessert, named "Don't Mess With My Tutu."

 
It looks supersweet and possibly heavy, but it was light and tart and perfect. Especially with the little crunch of the buttery crust underneath. Love at first bite. The liquor-soaked cherry on top was... well, the cherry on top.

4. Monica Bhide's writing workshop, where she urged us to use all our senses in writing, rang utterly true with me on many levels. In some ways fiction and non-fiction are different animals, but they have a great deal in common, and use of the senses is one of those. I think the best novels are the ones that transport you to another world. You want to hear and touch and taste and smell that world, not just see it. She also urged us to bring our own voices, our own selves, to our writing. So true and so right.

3. We had a lovely lunch at McCormick and Schmick's on Saturday. I used to go there all the time when I worked a few blocks away, but in those days I was mostly eating the heavy, rich, heart-attack-in-a-bowl crab dip. This was a world away. I sat near the window, with the gorgeous daylight streaming in, and can't find the words to tell you quite how it felt when this beautiful plate was set softly on the table in front of me:

 
I didn't take many pictures over the weekend -- I knew others would -- but there was no resisting that image. Nor, 20 minutes later, was there any resisting this one.

 

2. In a brief moment before his panel, I got to tell Joe Yonan how long I've been a huge fan of the Washington Post Food Section, especially their open weekly discussions on washingtonpost.com -- I even asked the group for advice on where to put the recipes in The Kitchen Daughter (back when it was called Simmer).

1. My reason for attending the conference in the first place was to sit on the Beyond Your Blog Panel, with a group of incredibly talented and successful women -- wise people whose writing includes blogposts, cookbooks, columns, articles, memoirs, how-tos, and in one case (mine), a food-focused novel. They've all got great credentials, so I was already impressed, but -- wow. In person, I was just blown away. So lucky to be there.

(And here's the link to attendees' roundup posts -- some moving, some funny, some packed with wall-to-wall with gorgeous photos, and every last one worth a read.)

So glad to be part of the conference. As with every conference, I learned so much from the panels and activities, but as cliche as it is to say this, in the end, it's all about the people.

 
(photo by Olga Berman of www.mangotomato.com)

reviewed in the Huntington News!

Oops! Could have sworn I posted this already! But alas, no. It's a wonderful review from the Huntington News, calling The Kitchen Daughter "enchanting and luminous", as well as "an outstanding debut by a writer whose novel will appeal to both men and women and will be especially attractive as a book group choice."

Click here to read the whole beautiful thing.

Book Notes on Largehearted Boy

I must admit I am not nearly as cool as I'd like to be. I'm not out at the cool clubs listening to the cool music -- but I do love music, and it's an important part of my writing process. (And my cooking process, too, come to think of it.) So I was super-excited to participate in the fantastic Book Notes series on Largehearted Boy's site. "Vampires in Blue Dresses" was playing in my head over and over when I was writing The Kitchen Daughter, and other songs spoke to me because of the ways they describe the writing -- or the writer. I got to write about them, and you can read those notes at the link below. 

Book Notes for The Kitchen Daughter.

(In addition to the songs themselves and my description of why I chose each, there's also a great list at the bottom of the post to many of The Kitchen Daughter's online reviews. Wonderful stuff!)