Discovering Ruth Reichl

Every now and again you come across a writer that you just love. Everything about them: their stories, their writing, their depth and honesty. And then you have to purchase every book they've ever written and disappear for a while; marvelling over their words, immersing yourself in their tales.

A few months ago just before my fortieth birthday I discovered Ruth Reichl. On the one hand I'm slightly embarrassed that it took me so long to find her. And, on the other, I'm pleased that I have only just discovered her because it meant I could greedily devour her back catalogue.

(Below are my Instagram photographs of her novels. Taken with great excitement.)

Ruth Reichl is a cook, restaurant critic, writer and former editor in chief of Gourmet magazine. She has written the memoirs: Tender At The Bone , Comfort Me With Apples and Garlic And Sapphires. Last year her first novel, Delicious!, was published. This year Ruth has published a cookbook/memoir (the best kind of cookbook). It is called My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life and it follows the year after the sudden decision, by the publishers, to close the American institution that was Gourmet magazine. It was a shock to Ruth and the rest of the staff at the magazine. So Ruth did what she'd done many years before when she was "confused, lonely or frightened". She disappeared into the kitchen.

Not only do I love Ruth's writing; the way she describes food and taste and how she takes the reader along with her on her foodie rollercoaster life, but I can also relate to using the kitchen as a kind of therapy. I did this too, after I'd had my first child. And, even now, if I feel overwhelmed, sad, or lonely, I find myself in the kitchen, more often than not, baking.

I've got one memoir of Ruth's left to read. Tender At The Bone: Growing Up at the Table is her first memoir, so yes, I should have begun my Ruth Reichl journey with it. However, after greedily reading the rest of her books, including her brilliant novel, which, incidentally, I think is my most favourite novel of the year (it will get a post all to itself), I've decided to savour this one.

But I have started to read her cookbook. After all, how could I resist?

Why I Love Recipes in Novels

Previously published for The Huffington Post.

You're sitting still, engrossed in a novel.

Subconsciously, you lick your lips. Or maybe your stomach starts to rumble. Through reading the words on the page, not only can we hear what the character is saying, see what they're seeing and feel what they're touching. We can also taste what they're eating.

The author has mentioned food. Suddenly you're reading about a Victoria sponge. Or an apple pie. Ooh - chocolate cake! The food leaps out of the pages and straight into your taste buds. You desperately want some of that chocolate cake or apple pie too. You're inspired to bake.

And, handily, as you turn to the back of the book, the author has included a recipe straight from the story.

Food in fiction is nothing new. Many of us grew up, after all, fantasising about midnight feasts at a fictional boarding school or picnics on island adventures thanks to Enid Blyton. And in the early eighties Nora Ephron wrote Heartburn an autobiographical novel where her main character throws a key lime pie at her cheating husband. Handily she gives us the recipe for the pie just before she goes on to describe this, now famous, pie-throwing incident.

Recently, however, we have seen food appear more in novels; whether it is in the title, is heavily featured in the story or recipes from the story are being included.

Cathy Bramley, Lucy Diamond and Alexandra Brown are just a few authors where food features in the story and a corresponding recipe appears in the back. Jenny Colgan in Meet Me At The Cupcake Café, includes a recipe at the beginning of each chapter. Rosie Blake has a novel out in November entitled How to Stuff Up Christmas, which, she promises, is packed with Christmas recipes. Talking of Christmas, Scarlett Bailey in The Night Before Christmas provides us with recipes including Whole Salmon Baked in a Course Salt and Herb Crust. A friend of mine recommended the novel Netherwood by Jane Sanderson saying she adored her writing. I turned to the back before reading a page and saw the recipes mentioned: Raised Pork Pie, Yorkshire Pudding and Drop Scones. Yes, I thought, this is definitely a novel for me. It is now at the top of my "to-be-read" pile.

Sometimes, most deliciously, the food plays a main character in the novel, such as in That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay. I was delighted to find, in the back of the novel, the recipe for "Granny Cooper's Peanut Cookies".

For us readers we not only get a recipe for something that made our tastebuds tingle whilst reading the story, but we also get to know the author a little more. But what does the author get out of it? Cathy Bramley, author of Appleby Farm, loves including recipes as “it’s the next best thing to actually baking for her readers.”

At the heart of many of these novels is love. At the heart of baking, of creating meals, is also love. Baking is a way of showing you care. Could it be that, for an author, including recipes in the back of the book is just an extension of that?

It certainly shows a passion to connect with readers. And, as I happily bake my way through fiction, I’m all for that.

My recipe for Pistachio Meringue is in the back of Appleby Farm by Cathy Bramley.

How to Display Your Instagram Photographs

I adore Instagram. I love creating photographs and thinking how I'm going to frame my subject; be it eggs, lemon curd, cake, chickens or the dog. It's a pictorial diary of what we get up to with the animals, the trees, our walks and what I make in the kitchen.

It seems a shame, therefore, that these photographs only exist inside my phone. So I decided to display them on my office wall.

It's really easy to do. I used a cheap canvas from amazon but you could also use an old picture frame (without the bit in the middle).

There are many companies around now who will print your Instagram pictures. I used Photobox and their retro style prints. It is really easy to print your photos from Instagram. You just add your IG account to the photo company and hey presto all your photographs are there. You could, of course, also print them yourself.

Here is how to display your Instagram photographs:

Equipment

Photographs, canvas, paint, string, ruler, mini pegs, stapler.

Method

1. Paint the canvas (I used Artbox 24x18 inch Value Framed Canvas) the colour you'd like. I used some leftover Annie Sloan chalk paint (Paris Grey). Give it two coats.
2. Once the canvas is dry, take the string (I used Bakers Twine Pink And White 75m), and lay it out at the top of the canvas for your first row. Use your ruler to make sure it is at the same height each side.
3. Check the photograph with the mini peg in place on this first line (I used Natural Mini Craft Pegs Wooden 100/pk) won't peak over the top of the canvas.
4. Staple the string on the back of the canvas securely into place. You might need to pull the string to tighten it, then add a few more staples.
5. Take one photograph and peg it on, then work out where to put your second piece of string. Make a mark with a pencil, remove the photograph and repeat the string attaching process.
6. Make as many lines of string as you can fit on your canvas.
7. Take your photographs and arrange where they're going to go.
8. Peg into place.
9. Hang on wall.

Easy. But it makes me smile every time I look at it.

Meeting Marian Keyes

The road towards Marian Keyes was beautiful. The sun was out, the temperature was rising and the Northamptonshire lanes were scattered with daisies, dashes of bright pink wildflowers and pops of, well, poppies.

I was on my way to Althorp House where the twelfth Althorp Literary Festival was taking place. Marian Keyes's session was on at 10.30am. Arriving early I went for a coffee with my friend, Sarah, and wondered at my legs. Why were they starting to shake? Why was my tummy starting to do flip-flops?

Some people's heroines are sportsmen or women. Some are actors. For me, my heroine is Marian Keyes. An author who has sold 30 million books internationally and writes books that are like an open packet of biscuits. Once the book is open, once that first page has been read, I cannot leave it alone until I've demolished it. If I'm driving her book will be there on the seat next to me, waiting for me, taunting me, until I can stop and pick up, fervently reading as much as I could. Until real life, annoyingly, interrupts. Marian writes about serious stuff with such wonderful humour. A gallows type of humour she says comes natural to her, it isn't something she purposely adds in to lighten the serious stuff.

But they say you shouldn't meet your heroines. Would Marian disappoint?

Well. No. If anything I adore and admire her more than ever.

Marian first started writing around her thirtieth birthday. Her stories were short and, in her eyes, rather charming. But to others they were just plain peculiar. Soon after she went to rehab, thinking there was nothing wrong with her. Turns out she was an alcoholic. When she came out of rehab her attitude changed. She stopped self-sabotaging. She wrote the first four chapters of her first novel, Watermelon, in the space of a week. And from that she got a three book deal and never looked back.

In her words she was incredibly lucky in her route to publication. But if she'd been knocked back, who knows if she'd have had the strength to continue.

Her success has amazed her. She didn't think her work would translate to Britain, never mind the rest of the world. She was also worried about writing another two books. She thought she only had one in her. She thought she'd used herself up, told all her stories in Watermelon. And indeed, the second, and the third book became increasingly hard to write. But she persevered becoming more disciplined as a writer. She believes it is "important to show up, even when you've nothing to say". There is always stuff she can work on, tidy up, or jump ahead to another scene. It doesn't have to be written in a linear way.

On the subject of literary recognition and the fact her books are dismissed as 'just chick-lit' she is incredibly down to earth. She feels "very lucky". She loves what she does and feels very proud of her work. There are, she says, bigger injustices in the world. Worse things in life to get upset about.

So, what's next? Any chance of a return to The Walsh Family? asked a member of the audience. Well, says Marian. Its funny you should ask. For she is writing about Claire Walsh at the moment. Twenty years after Watermelon Marian returns to Claire and Adam's life to see how they are now. She even has a title. Time Off For Bad Behaviour. To write it she is re-reading all of her Walsh Family books. Cringing at the mistakes she spots. [Edit: Marian has since said on her You Tube video that she will no longer be revisiting Claire Walsh. It was making her too sad. See her video for more.]

For now though, Marian's current release is The Woman Who Stole My Life. A story about a very ordinary woman called Stella. And how something extra-ordinary happens to her, changing her life. It is, quite frankly, brilliant.

The talk ends and we go through to the saloon in order for her to sign our books. Here my wobbly legs go into overdrive. What should I say? Panic! I plan out in my head what I could say. And in the event say nothing like that. Just some embarrassing drivel about what as inspiration she is to me.

Marian, on the other hand, was lovely, and showed no signs she was mortified by this dribbling, stuttering loon in front of her. She signed my book and made time for a quick conversation. Made me feel special. And I came away with Sarah saying what a humble, funny and amazing woman she is.

*Obviously with several hundred other people. But I still met her.

Author Interview with Liz Fenwick

Liz Fenwick has been on my radar for some time. I first got to know her, online, when we both joined the same writing group. Liz is one of the hardest working writers I know, fitting in writing whenever and wherever she can. Her hard work has paid off and she has been rewarded with an agent, then a book deal. Her fourth book, Under a Cornish Sky, has just been published as a trade paperback.

Her novels are based in Cornwall, specifically around the Helford area. Liz paints an evocative sense of the county, so much so that, eighteen months ago in the October half-term, I packed my family up and we had a holiday down there, just outside Helford. We visited some of the places Liz mentions in her books: The Shipwrights Arms and Down by the Riverside Cafe. We even met Liz in the cafe. Meeting Liz, in that cafe, by the view of the Helford River, near the sailing club, where many of the characters had been was a surreal experience. I did think I'd just stepped inside one of her books. (Ignore the clouds in the sky. It was the end of October, after all.)

Needless to say, I am delighted and honoured that Liz has agreed to answer some of my questions about her writing and Cornwall.

Hi, Liz, and welcome. Firstly, congratulations! The paperback of A Cornish Stranger has just been published and the trade paperback of Under a Cornish Sky is just about to be published. Your third and fourth published novels respectively. Where has that time gone?! Can you tell us a little about each of these books?

A Cornish Stranger grew from an old Cornish saying – save a stranger from the sea, he’ll turn your enemy. I knew almost instantly that I wanted to write a book playing with that saying set in a remote cabin at the mouth of Frenchman’s Creek following the lives of two very different women – a grandmother and granddaughter. The saying goes against expectations and it was an intriguing starting point.

In Under a Cornish Sky Victoria, in her sixties, finally has the one thing she has always wanted, her ancestral family home. Her husband Charles has bought it for her. Life is good. She has her home and its garden but Under A Cornish Sky asks the question what happens when you think you have everything you want but then you have to share it -  not just with anyone – but with your husband’s love child.

Your love for Cornwall, and the Helford area in particular, shines out from every page. What is your relationship to Cornwall and when did it begin?

People find it hard to believe that I first visited Cornwall in June 1989 and although I’d heard of it I knew little or nothing about it. My then boyfriend, now husband, took me down to meet his parents but in truth it was the ‘Cornwall test’ (I have since seen my eldest do this with his girlfriend…but don’t tell him I know!). If I hadn’t fallen in love with Cornwall and the Helford that weekend I wouldn’t be looking forward to my 24th wedding anniversary this summer. And fall in love I did…if I’m honest - a bit like Jude in A Cornish Affair does. Of course - it wasn’t hard to on a glorious June weekend with not a cloud in the sky and the blue so bright it hurt. I even went for my first swim off a Cornish beach and I'm not sure if I’ve got my breath back yet!

Did you always plan, when you first started writing, to base your books in Cornwall?

No, I didn’t. I began writing very young and followed that through with a degree in English Literature. For my senior thesis I wrote three quarters of a novel – The Irish Woman, which spoke of an Irish immigrant to Boston in the 1920s. I never finished it. After that I tried writing several short romances but I put writing aside to try and earn a living and find love of my own. It was only back in 2004 when I decided to write fiction again that Cornwall began to become my muse. Once I set stories there…everything began to fall into place. Now the Duchy inspires all the story ideas that come into my head.

Your descriptions of Cornwall are so vivid and breathtaking. (Your books are, after all, the reason why we holidayed in Cornwall a few years ago.) I’m interested in how you do this. Do you, for example, take a pen and paper and go and sit looking at the land and sea scape? Or, can you just close your eyes and see it?

When I’m in Cornwall I drink it all in…I occasionally jot something down but I’m always looking, smelling and feeling. Sometimes I take pictures but I rarely refer to them when I’m writing. It’s as if the process of taking the picture sets it in my mind…weird I know. When I write I don’t see the computer, I have the scene in front of me like a movie. It is fully formed down to the weather and I am viewing it from the character’s eyes – so for Maddie in The Cornish House everything is viewed through colour, for Gabe in A Cornish Stranger through music/sound… Having said that I almost always had a notebook to hand and if not that then I email myself notes and visual clues that I see. I have noted that doing the research on the next book The Returning Tide…I’m actually dreaming the book, which is quite cool but slightly scary too!

Did you always intend to use real places? Or did you ever consider making up a place name? Personally, especially now I’ve visited, I love the fact that I have walked where Jude, Mark, Maddie and Hannah have walked, across the bridge at Helford and up the road to the Shipwright Arms - even the name of the pub you use is real. Did you always intend to use real places? Or did you ever consider making up a place name?

To be honest it never crossed my mind. I know in some ways I walk a minefield every time I write…writing about where you live, but I think writing about a ‘real’ place grounds the stories. I write fiction but my characters have problems many women have faced. I hope that by setting my stories in ‘reality’ gives them an extra layer. It’s still a fictional world because these people only exist in my readers’ heads and mine. Not that I wouldn’t love to bump into any of my heroes or have a chat with my heroines.

Liz, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule and answering my questions. Fantastic answers.   

More information in and around Helford.

Author Interview with Iona Grey

Letters to the Lost is the debut novel by author Iona Grey. And oh! what a novel it is. It's romantic, heartbreaking and just so beautifully evocative of the Second World War. It leaves you speechless, clutching the book. And thinking. So many thoughts.

You are immediately transported into the little terraced house with Jess's desperation palpable. And as Jess hunts around this empty house, you get an idea of what the previous occupant was like by her clothes, the contents of her cabinets and the food that has been left behind. But is this where his Darling Girl lived? And, if not, where is she?

Letters to the Lost is Published in April 2015 by Simon & Schuster.

Feasting on Fiction Author Interview with Iona Grey

Congratulations, Iona, on what is a wonderfully heartbreaking and romantic debut. I’ve seen nothing but brilliant things said about it on twitter and goodreads. You must be pleased?

Thanks Helen! I’m so thrilled about the lovely comments people have made about the book, I can’t tell you. It all seems a bit surreal, actually. I started the book in March 2013, and for almost 2 years it was only me and a handful of other people who had read it, so it still seems incredible and exciting to think of it being in the hands of real readers. Nerve wracking too, if I’m honest.

Tell us what your novel is about?

It’s essentially a love story – or two love stories, to be specific. It’s a dual time frame novel (my very favourite kind, ever since I was a little girl and fell in love with A Traveller in Time and Tom’s Midnight Garden) set in the 1940s and the present(ish) day. In wartime London Stella and Dan meet by chance and fall in love by accident. It’s a bad idea for two reasons; one – she’s married, and two – he’s an American B-17 bomber pilot whose chance of surviving his 25 missions is just one in five.

But survive he does, and seventy years later Dan writes a letter to Stella in a last desperate attempt to find her. The letter inadvertently falls into the hands of Jess, a troubled runaway who, in spite of having plenty of problems of her own to sort out, feels compelled to help Dan with his search.

What inspired you to write Letters to the Lost?

I’m not sure whether inspiration struck very suddenly, or had been building for years – probably a bit of both. In 2013 I was writing a novel set in the early years of the 20^th century, but I knew it wasn’t really working. One day I was trailing reluctantly back up to my study in the attic after lunch when I passed my daughter’s room and noticed a handwritten letter lying open on her desk. (In itself this was pretty amazing as usually I only notice the piles of laundry and wet towels on the floor, and the abundance of mould-culturing mugs). It was just a fleeting glimpse, but as I sat back down at my computer I was still thinking about it and wondering who it could be from, and out of nowhere the phrase ‘letters from the lost’ drifted into my head. I wrote it down and thought what a great title it would make for a book. And of course, I couldn’t leave it at that, and began trying to work out what the story behind the title would be – who could have written the letters, and to whom? It took a bit more work (and a tiny title tweak!) but within 24 hours I had the outline of the novel.

The ideas that formed the story had been gathering in my mind for much longer. I grew up with stories from WW2, in books like When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (Judith Kerr), When The Siren Wailed (Noel Streatfeild) and Carrie’s War (Nina Bawden), and also from my grandmothers and godmothers. I used to ask my Inverness Nana again and again to tell me the story of how her fingers had come to be badly scarred (she was making up a bottle for the baby – my dad – before going to the air raid shelter, but she wasn’t quick enough and the window was blown in. Glass everywhere!) and I loved hearing about the glamorous trench coat my godmother had bought, rashly, from a door-to-door (black market) salesman, which turned out to be made of some awful rubberised fabric that stank of fish. I think I was just waiting for the right time to go back and properly explore the world into which they’d given me such tantalising glimpses.

Letters to the Lost is so evocative of wartime in London. You use all of our senses, for example, the smell of cigarettes, the sounds of Glenn Miller, and the taste of food; Spam, Bloater paste sandwiches, port and lemon, Woolton pie and cheese bake, tinned peaches, eggless sponge... How did you research the food aspect? And have you ever tried bloater paste?!

I haven’t, thank goodness! (I remember my mum buying jars of meat paste for our packed lunch sandwiches during the 70s. That was quite bad enough!) I’ve been a bit of a WW2 geek for many years and have watched every TV documentary and drama imaginable, so I had plenty of accumulated information to draw on, and I was also lucky enough to be given a stack of Woman’s Weekly magazines from the late 30s and early 40s which gave some great insight into popular dishes of the time. Of course, the internet is an incredible resource too, but nothing beats the first hand anecdotes passed on by family. (I’d love to try authentic WW2 powdered egg... I wonder if you can still get hold of it?)

And finally, the Battenberg cake. You used this cake when Jess was homesick for her Grandma. What made you use Battenberg?

This is so interesting for me, because I really don’t remember thinking about it at all. I quite clearly recall writing that section; I was really concerned about Jess having such little money and needing a toothbrush and toothpaste (I felt physically uncomfortable, thinking of the days passing without her brushing her teeth!) and I followed her round the shop in my head, watching her put the things she needed in the basket. The Battenberg cake was added on impulse (by Jess and by me!) but of course, now you’ve mentioned it I can see that it’s something I associate with childhood treats and indulgence. My mum embraced the wholefood movement in the 70s (and good on her) so at home we had date flapjacks and brown bread ice cream (yes, really!). To me, a cheap and luridly-coloured shop-bought cake was the height of luxury; I had it at my friends’ houses and thought it was incredibly sophisticated (PINK AND YELLOW!) I think I truly believed that when I was old enough and had my own money I would buy Battenberg cake and Cherry Bakewell Tarts all the time. I don’t, but perhaps subconsciously I still want to...

Thank you, Iona, for a fascinating interview.  Wishing you lots of love and luck with this beautiful novel.

See Iona's Pinterest Board which shows pictures of some of the places, characters and more from Letters to the Lost.

How to Make a Battenberg Cake.

Recipe Book Inspiration

A recipe can make you travel through time. Seeing it, handwritten, on an old piece of paper can take you back to your grandmother's kitchen. Or it could be the smell of that recipe as it bakes in the oven or simmers away on the stove that makes the years peel away. Then there's the taste. As soon as you put it in your mouth pictures from the past pop into your head. One of the key strands of my novel is my main character's relationship with her Grandmother. Her grandmother was a home baker and cook which has a big impact on my main character. It inspires her in a variety of ways.

This got me thinking about who inspired me to bake all those years ago.

There was my mother, who, with her trusty Be-Ro recipe book, would teach me to weigh the ingredients, mix and crack eggs. She still has this recipe book, I have it next to me as I type. She bought it years ago, before decimalisation, for one and six. It is battered and a little torn but it is a well-used, well-loved baking recipe book.

Even looking at it now, the girl wearing the red jumper, with hair a similar colour to mine...the memories this recipe book conjures up. I would sit and read it as a child for hours. When I thumb through I can see the animal shape biscuits we would make from a rich biscuit dough, a rather retro Christmas cake (well, retro now, it wasn't then) decorated with royal icing - mum always used to make royal icing and peak it into snow drifts, with marks where Santa's sleigh had been. You can't do that with the supermarket ready-rolled stuff we have now. Then there are apple fritters. Yum, apple fritters.

We never had supermarket bought cake as children. Ever. (Cakes from the bakers, yes, especially an Elephant's Foot). And to my shame I was occasionally jealous of some of my friends who had bought cake. It always looked so exciting, so vivid. Then I would bite into it and *puff* my jealousy would evaporate.

My mum also has a handwritten notebook, falling apart at the seam, of various recipes that were given to her. Shortbread - which I think was my nana's recipe. I love my mum/nana's shortbread. Mum would make it and store it in her tupperware box. Then there is ginger cake, pineapple cheese cake (made with cottage cheese and quite frankly, sorry mum, it sounds revolting - I don't remember this from my childhood) as well as Aunt May's Cake - consisting mainly of all-bran and chopped dates.There is also a little doodle in the middle, I like to think it's by me but it could have been my sister, and a shopping list for corks, yeast and bottles - and shoe polish. (And now I'm remembering my mum and dad's home brewing phase...)

Then there is my grandmother's notebook. I asked to borrow it as part of my novel research. There is a piccalilli recipe, marmalade, damson jam, tea loaf, coleslaw, weetabix loaf and mincemeat plus lots and lots of others. Her legendary pickled onion recipe isn't in there though, I'll have to ask her for that.

My other grandmother died a few years ago. I don't have any of her recipe books, although she quite possibly kept many of them in her head. But I do have her lemon cake recipe. I think of her every time I make it.

In fact, I think of all these three women as I bake. Hopefully my children will think of me many years in the future when they bake and have my handwritten recipes.