I’m late chiming in… but it’s not from lack of fond memories!
I brought my youngest with me and we took BART into Berkeley, adding to her adventure. We wandered up and down the farmer’s market and found a place with a microphone and a bunch of chairs set up but no one around. A sign advertising Digital Dish let me know we must be in the right place however. Soon enough, Owen and Guy showed up loaded with boxes. This was my first look at the book and, boy was I impressed. How a book feels is important and this one was superb! Definitely professional looking and I was happy to have my part in it. Owen did a fantastic job putting it all together, with a neat little intro to each post and with everything indexed in almost anyway imaginable: by blog, by ingredient, by recipe name. The book itself is organized chronologically. Really a fanastically done book.
Owen did the lion’s share of the talking, although we all tried to do our parts. I handed out his recipe cards he had printed up trying to lure people to sit down and listen for a bit. I also read aloud for the first time in public in I don’t know how long. The speaking part was worrisome to me. Stephanie and I agreed we were much more comfortable behind the keyboard rather than in front of a microphone. She did fantastic and the thought of veal soup will remain an unpleasant image in my mind for some time I fear. However, my daughter tells me I did good but that I read better when I’m putting her to sleep at night with bedtime stories. I let her pick which entry to read and she chose the one on bacon and tomato sandwiches. Having just spent the last weekend tying up my tomato plants after a growth spurt, it seemed fitting! Some friends of mine stopped by and one of them was, in fact, the shopper for the mystery ingredient of almonds for Owen’s first improvisation on strawberries. Gayle is a superb writer and quite a cook as well.
All that talk of meat and me having no secret supplier like Meathenge to meet me in alleys and hand off secret packages means I had to go to the regular grocery store though. Not nearly as exciting but they did have meat! Alas, I’d forgotten the gas grill was about out of gas (another to-do added to today’s list) so I just broiled them. Good but not great. I do better judging their done-ness on a grill and overcooked them a tad. But since I’d not gotten any lunch along the way, they tasted fine.
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