Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Books & Such main office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
This week each of us at Books & Such will write about our favorite holiday recipes and the cookbooks we rely on to put yummy items on the table. As I thought about the cookbooks that I pull off my shelf each Christmas, it occurred to me that they all have something in common: I have a sense of the people who created the books. I think that concept of personalization holds true for most of the reading we enjoy, which is instructive for us as we consider our own writing.
For example, in Season’s Greetings: Cooking and Entertaining for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s by Marlene Sorosky, the author writes a couple of sentences for each recipe about some characteristic of the item that she especially likes. Her comments tell me something about her and also something about the recipe. I like that personal touch.
For the Chocolate-Wrapped Fudge Cake, which has white and dark chocolate strips formed like a bow on the cake’s top, Marlene writes: “I discovered this technique for making chocolate garnishes when I was writing The Dessert Lover’s Cookbook. This dough is pliable enough to roll, cut, or bend into any shape imaginable. It’s so much fun to play with, I call it adult play dough.” Now, don’t you just have to like someone who still wants to work with play dough?
I’ll also be turning to my Cook’s Illustrated cookbook. These folks approach cooking as the science it is and write fascinating articles in the cookbook on the experiments they made to find the very best way to prepare a recipe. And since I can watch the cooking team on television’s “America’s Test Kitchen,” I really feel a personal connection to them.
The one traditional item that must appear at our family’s Christmas table is a dessert that requires hard sauce. Last year one of my daughters and I spent six hours making a persimmon pudding to accompany the sauce. We decided the time spent baking would be a gift we would give ourselves–a cooking adventure.
I had acquired the recipe from a chef many years ago when I ordered the persimmon pudding for dessert at a restaurant in Napa, but I never had sufficient persimmons or motivation to use the recipe. When I pulled out the instructions for Robin and me to begin our grand baking day, I found the directions vague at best, with “Good luck” written at the bottom of the scribbled recipe. Indeed. So we poured over every persimmon recipe we could find and came up with our own version, a medley of about eight recipes plus our own innovations. The results were stupendous. We were exhilarated–and relieved.
To me, all of these elements add up a holiday meal that is personal on many levels: from the cookbook creators to the preparation of a special recipe.
As writers, it pays for us to observe that adding a personal element to what we write draws the reader into our world–and readers like nothing better.
What personal touches do you bring to your family’s Christmas feasting?
What personal touches can you add to the project you’re writing?
We’re just in the process of making the generational switch from gathering at my mom’s home to ours. I think the main way we’ve made it ours is just cutting down the sheer volume of food. Carrots or green beans, not both. Maybe one Jell-O salad, not two. No green salad because there’s so much other food, no one eats any. Lots of mashed potatoes so we never run out. Ditto gravy. Homemade rolls, not brown ‘n serves. Every couple of years Mom says she changed her mind and wants to host again. This year, she called me early Thanksgiving morning and said, “You were right, I’m too old for this.” I ended up putting on the meal in her kitchen. I made her sign a contract that she’ll come here from now on. She signed willingly!
In writing, my personal touch is my wry and cynical humor. It doesn’t always translate well to the page, so that’s my challenge. Taking out what doesn’t work (the green salad, if you will), and leaving what does (mashed potatoes and rolls).
Merry Christmas and Happy Feasting!
My cooking tends to be the culinary equivalent of a musician playing by ear. If I buy a cookbook it is because I’m ready to launch into entirely new territory. Today, my favorite cookbooks are from places I’ve been, to help me understand something that delighted me in my travels. Someone on this blog wrote recently that cookbooks have not been hurt much by the internet. That surprised me. If I have a cooking question, I go first to the web.
My favorite use of food in fiction is LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE. A continuing theme in my own writing is the clashing/blending of cultures when they meet. Foods are a very important part of that interchange and can fire up all five senses to bring a scene alive. A meal is also a social engagement. How people eat together can illustrate both personalities and the power-differences between members of a group.
Carrie, I love your analogy of your writing to the Christmas meal. And that you made your mom sign a contract!
Brian, Like Water for Chocolate is a wonderful “foodie” kind of book. I’m sure I’ve read several novels that featured food in an interesting way, but I can’t recall any of them at the moment. The movie, Babette’s Feast, does come to mind whenever I think about a film that reminds us of the beauty of food, friendship and sharing what you have.
I totally agree.
One of the things I forget to do in my writing is to pour emotion into it. There’s a tendency to hold a little bit back and it makes the story less than powerful.
On the rewrite, I remember to pour it in, stand in my characters shoes, think about a time when I felt ecstatically happy or sorrowful and down. I want my readers to relate to my characters. What makes Harry Potter, Narnia and Tolkein so successful is how easy it is for a reader to relate to the plot and characters. There’s alot a person can learn from the classics, too.
This post scared me.
I’ve heard of a persimmon, but wouldn’t recognise one in a fruit and veg market. I certainly didn’t know you could make puddings with them.
So far our Christmas dinner is roast turkey (baste, bake), potatoes (boil), salad (toss), and plum pudding (mix, boil, hang).
I’m off to make a nutritious morning tea for the kids (spread, join).
I don’t like cooking.
I appreciate those that do (especially when they do it for me!), but I get a bit scared when they write books about it.
Just grateful that being good at cooking isn’t a prerequisite for being a writer! : )
I love to bake a new dessert every Christmas and add that to all the “old reliables” that the rest of my family are such pros at baking.
Great connection with adding personal touches to our writings. In my current project (and, really, in all of my non-fiction writing), I am working on solidifying a personal touch to my tone. When a writer writes like he or she is having a conversation with the reader, I am particularly drawn to that writing.
Great post.
I think it’s interesting that you spent six hours making a pudding to accompany a sauce. Must have been very special sauce. I also love that your spell check changed persimmon pudding into permission pudding once. That was a fun typo.
I’m not a cook, so I’m sorry to say I bring self-basting turkey and stuffing from a box to our table.
I think the personal touch in writing is exactly what sells–a book, a blog, or any writing. Experts abound, but I want to read someone with a voice I enjoy. Which is why I like the Books and Such blog.
Cheers. 🙂
This particularly interested me as my WIP is a combination devotion/cookbook/gift book. Your analogy of cooking to writing is so apt. We,too, have learned to delete and add to our holiday dinners. And I am so fond of persimmon pudding when it is done well. You brought back memories of my mother’s pudding. thanks for such a good post. Blessings Clella
Sally, awk, regarding the spell checker not recognizing “persimmon.” I’m on it; “permission” is about to disappear. Thanks for pointing that out…although permission pudding is a pretty interesting name for a recipe.
Janet, my mother-in-law has a persimmon tree and she makes persimmon pudding every fall. I’m impressed you came up with your recipe. Persimmons are hard to “rub through” and you have to be careful to get them at just the right time. Sigh, but oh, the results, huh? It is a special treat because it’s not easy!
Imy (my MIL) threatens to cut that persimmon tree down every year because it’s so messy! But with a family as large as this one she’s outnumbered. (And I think it makes her secretly proud that she’s a master at persimmon pudding.)
Would love to hear your hard sauce recipe! 🙂
I am loving this week’s topic.
I thought permission pudding was wonderful. I was thinking we should add permission ice cream and permission pie to the table, too.
I loved the new picture of you and the new picture of the group.
Lori, thanks for noticing the new photos. The photographer gave us *one* picture from the group photo session, but when I looked at it, I knew it was a winner. How hard is it to make everyone in the photo happy?! But Scott succeeded.
My favorite recipes are those handed down. I love the sugar cookie recipe in my grandmother’s handwriting with a dark spot left by some long ago splash of vanilla. I can’t make the cookies without remembering details of her kitchen: checkerboard floor tiles, a Formica dinette set with aluminum trim, tile counter tops.
When I write, I like to hide details that will only mean something to those who know what to look for. One story, for example, centers on a Southern family in 1880. The children (Beau, Forrest, Jackson, Stuart, and Dixie Lee) are named for Confederate generals.