Michelle Gillett, our poet in the house of ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’, won the first copy of Alana Chernila’s new cookbook The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making. Here is the first report from her kitchen. More on this week’s drawing below.
We all win sometimes. I hit the jackpot twice when I got to read an essay about mothering at the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers’ event, “Out of the Mouths of Babes.” Not only did I get to read about running a marathon (okay, a half marathon) with my daughter, but I got the added bonus of reading with five wonderful writers. The energy and pleasure of the evening—reading to a receptive and attentive audience, listening to my colleagues’ stories, engaging in a lively discussion about creativity and mothering– made it memorable.
And THEN I won one of the event’s raffle prizes: a copy of Alana Chernila’s about-to-be published cookbook, “The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying & Start Making.” (Clarkson Potter)
I didn’t leaf through its pages noting what I would or would not be likely to cook as I usually do with cookbooks; instead, I read the stories about food and family that precede each recipe section and found them to be as nourishing as the recipes and advice offered in the book’s pages. Then I looked at the photographs and reminisced about my two daughters when they were same ages as Alana’s girls.
I looked at the photographs some more, read some more. I was as hooked as I am when I read a really good novel. But I thought I should honor the book’s intention and try out a recipe. Since I always make a snack for the writing workshop I teach, I studied the possibilities for baked goods and found a recipe that sounded uncomplicated yet likely to satisfy my students’ hunger after a lengthy discussion of “the unreliable narrator.” (It’s one thing to be an unreliable narrator, but quite another to be an unreliable baker.) I decided to make “Car Snack 2: The Sweet Bar, because I happened to have all the necessary ingredients in my cupboards including Lyle’s Golden Syrup. They were easy to make and delicious.
In the essay my students read in the workshop this week, “The Truthless Narrator,” the author Judy Doegnes writes, “…in the end our unstable world doesn’t topple the unreliable narrator but shores him up.” After our break for tea and coffee and snacks, I encouraged them to try creating their own unreliable narrators which they did with great success no doubt because they were shored up by Alana’s Sweet Bars.
Thank you Suzi and Alana for rewarding me with so much enriching and enduring sweetness!
Thank you Michelle!
Snack bars! Potato Chips? Butter? Alana offers a story for them all along with the warmest of invitations to her table, where, if you are lucky, Joey and the girls will share a jar of homemade pickles they just cracked open.
Would you love to win this book or one of the recipes of our bedtime snacks? Or, a piece of my art work, a letterpress print with a quote from my ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ program?
To register you must be a subscriber to this site already or become one by simply filling out the box in the upper right hand corner of this page. You will be joining my mailing list, which will deliver to you a discreet note every time I put up a new post and a very occasional announcement of Laundry Line Divine events.
One upcoming event is my appearance in Pittsfield at the Alchemy Initiative on April 28 for a day-long FeMail workshop with my collaborator Karen Arp-Sandel. Details here.
Another is my appearance in the WAM (Women’s Action Movement) theatre 24 Hour Theatre Project on April 14th. Details here.
And lastly, Michelle Gillett is leading a Memoir workshop with another of my She-ros, Marion Roach Smith, on April 20 &21, 2012 at the Stockbridge Library. Details here.
But first! Wait! There is more fun with the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers first. Saturday the Gala closing of the Festival at The Mount. I will be there, grinning from ear to ear, celebrating this wonderful Festival and all it has created here in the Berkshires and the ripples that flow out from this beautiful place.
I cannot leave without telling you about another mother author who shared her journey with her adult son, this time in Manhattan. Linda Wisniewski came to ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ blog series through Face Book and I could not be happier. Please read her post here.
The growing list of women offering their insights in to their mothering through the lens of creativity fills me with glee. Thank you authors and readers for joining this discussion.
Be the Ripple, right?
xoxox Love,
S
