I’ve been AWOL for the past couple of weeks, since my husband Don has been having some pretty incredible health problems lately, involving an ER trip, two hospital stays, kidney failure, dialysis, a defibrillator implant, and a bunch more stuff you really don’t want to hear about. Suffice it to say that things are not over by a long shot, but they are much improved, and if you are a glutton for punishment and want to know more, I did write about it on my own web site.
One thing this experience has taught me is that the value of friends cannot be overestimated. Once Don got home from his first hospital stay on the 16th, I have had innumerable friends bringing healthy and delicious food to my house so that I can concentrate on my spousal nursing duties. We have eaten better in the last couple of weeks than we have in I don’t know how long. Food, my friends, is love, as any wife/mother/daughter/grandma knows, and here is a rundown of some of the wonderful love we have received since this ordeal began.
Whole wheat angel hair pasta with red pepper alfredo sauce.
Rotini layered with spinach in marinara
Vegetable shepherd’s pie topped with couscous
Moroccan rice and lentils with yogurt and hard boiled eggs, with Greek salad
Vegetarian lasagna with salad and Italian bread
Southwest veggie bake with a cornbread lattice crust
Not to mention Texas peach cobbler, apple brown betty, lemon squares, lemon poppyseed muffins, ice cream and berries.
Don is, to quote the doctor, “skin and bones”, and her directions are for him to eat like a pig. He’s been doing very well following her instructions in that area, though of course he may gain enough to look normal, but I am going to look like a blimp when this is over.
Do I care? Not by a long shot, because we can both use all the love we can get.
What makes my cookbook different from many other cookbooks are the stories that accompany each recipe. I wrote this so others could see that it's okay to make mistakes while cooking. I still laugh at myself when I think about all of my disasters, like the 4-H project mentions above. I was making Banana Nut Bread and, of all things, I forgot to add the flour! That was definitely a do-over for my project.What does your family think about it?
My cookbook, "Masters & Disasters of Cooking" is a collections of humorous stories about some of my best and worst cooking experiences. It dates all the way back to when I was a pre-teen baking something for a 4-H project up to recent years.
Many of the stories are about family events and my family has been pretty receptive about it. Almost all of them have a copy that I either gave them or they purchased themselves. My mother especially enjoyed reading some of the stories. She said she had forgotten about some of my experiences.What's your favorite cooking story?
I think my favorite story in the book is the one where I thought I had poisoned my husband with a Chicken and Rice dish. We were newlyweds and I tried a new recipe out of a magazine and it didn't turn out so well. Bless his heart, he still ate it, but paid for it later. I still think the recipe was wrong in the magazine and I will stick to that forever.Are you going to write a sequel?
I probably won't be writing a sequel. This book spans about 40 years of my life while learning to cook. I've improved and while I still make some mistakes, there aren't as many. Currently, I am in the early stages of a pizza cookbook. You'd be amazed how many different types and ways you can make a pizza. I also write romantic suspense and am working on getting published in that genre, too.
Something new this week is that "Masters & Disasters of Cooking" is now available in e-book format and can be ordered at http://www.lulu.com/content/1733122
I'd also like to invite everyone to visit my blog, Carol's Food Bites at http://carolsfoodbites.blogspot.com
Thank you so much, Marian for interviewing me. I have enjoyed talking with you.We all have moments of mastery and ... er ... disastery... in the kitchen. Carol has been brave enough and generous enough to share hers with the world. It's good stuff, believe me!
SF: I'm Sunny Frazier and I live and write in Lemoore, California. This small town is located in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the richest agricultural regions in the world. I love this area, despite the outrageous heat in the summers and dense Tule fog in the winters.
I want to introduce you to this part of the country through my mysteries. Twelve of my award-winning stories are found in VALLEY FEVER: WHERE MURDER IS CONTAGIOUS. My novel, FOOLS RUSH IN, introduces astrologer Christy Bristol. She works in the Sheriff's Department, just as I did for 17 years.
SF: I'm just finishing the rewrites and getting it entered into the computer.
I wrote it 30 years ago. There was no Internet or PC's--I typed it on a typewriter. An editor at Simon & Schuster was excited about it, but then I was told children didn't want to read about pirates. Space was the big thing.
I researched by studying the translated Portuguese logs of Vasco de Gama and Bartholomu Diaz. I researched the origins of foods I thought children would be interested in. I pitch it as Pirates of the Caribbean meets the Food Channel.
SF: The age group is 8 to 10. Because I insert real characters (Vasco de Gama is a bad guy), I'd like children to read it as fiction and then recognize it as fact when they study the history of exploration in the 6th grade.
SF: The first book is the first voyage around Africa to India for spices. Captain John Connoisseur is captured by a king with an appetite. The captain talks his way out of the dungeon by promising to sail to India and bring back spices. He is joined by a lively crew, a stowaway princess, an orphan and his cat, and an obnoxious knight to keep him out of trouble.
SF: The three most surprising things for me were the fact that at the time, the voyage around Africa could be compared to going to the moon. Secondly, Vasco de Gama got off lightly in the history books. He was really pretty bad. And third, pajamas came from India. That's another thing John brings back.
SF: It's funny and there are lots of small "lessons" for children. They will also learn that ginger is a good remedy for seasickness and skillygolee was the mainstay of sailors (hard biscuits soaked in broth and perhaps some meat). Lots of history, information and food facts mixed with fiction and a fun pirate story.
Last week I was out to lunch with a girlfriend who told me that she and another friend of hers had spent several minutes on the phone making fun of fruitcake. “No one likes fruitcake,” she said, and wondered why some women absolutely insist on making fruitcakes the day after Thanksgiving and then sending them to all their relatives and acquaintances for Christmas when it was perfectly plain that there is no one living who will eat the things.
Poor fruitcake just gets no respect. In fact, Dave Barry relates that his mother made an annual ritual of putting her fruitcake gifts on the kitchen floor and smashing them to smithereens by slamming the door on them over and over.
Well, I’m here to tell you that I love fruitcake, and I adore receiving fruitcakes as gifts, since I’m far too lazy to make one myself. This year I got one from a friend who lives in California, and it was a masterpiece. It was just the kind of extra-dark cake that I love, the kind that has just enough batter in it to hold the fruit and nuts together. It must have had five hundred calories per slice, and enough candied fruit to put even non-diabetics into a sugar coma.
Fruitcake is the epitome of decadence, and I say it wouldn’t be Christmas without it. I just finished off my last piece for this year, and washed it down with eggnog. And now I must go take a nap before I start my annual cleansing diet.
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