Debi Simons 
I’ve referenced Ann Hodgman many times in this blog and the hospitality one also, and I’ve even listed the three cookbooks above. But I’ve never actually done a post on her and her books, and I said I would do that at some point when I mentioned her in my post on Sue Klebold’s book. Her Amazon page says that she’s the author of more than 40 children’s books, the above three cookbooks, and several humorous books. I think she should be much, much better known than she is.
To the left is a shot of the thank-you cards that I received on Tuesday evening at the annual dinner/meeting of the Cherry Creek Chorale. I’d been putting away the leftovers and so sat in the back as the meeting started. There seemed to be a lot of cards being passed around, but I didn’t think much of it since we have one member in the hospital and a couple others who are leaving. To be honest I didn’t think about it all that much.
Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton, originally published in 2011 in hardback by Random House, now available in several formats. 2012 paper edition includes a “Reader’s Guide” that gives updates on what has happened in Hamilton’s life since the original publication. Available through Amazon and other outlets. She has also written a cookbook, Prune, with the recipes she serves in her restaurant of the same name. (“Prune” was her nickname as a child. She chose that name for her restaurant as a nod to her deep love for the food she grew up eating. Ho-kay, Gabrielle!
I wrote yesterday about Perri Klass’s books, one of which was written with her mother, and how I totally understood her struggles to get her mother to accept any kind of gift or help. There’s a long section in Every Mother Is a Daughter about Perri’s project of knitting her mother a beautiful vest with hand-dyed wool and handmade buttons. She has to plot and contrive to get Sheila to pick out the yarn, valiantly trying to keep her mother from seeing how expensive it is. Her mother keeps saying, “Oh, don’t go to any trouble. Don’t spend too much.”
It’s a ritual for me as the weather warms up to wander around the yard peering hopefully at my perennials, looking for the first buds. Did they make it through the winter? I still have one plant I’m monitoring, telling myself that I can see some buds forming, but it’s probably self-delusion.
Do you see life as good and worthwhile in itself, or only when you’re fully occupied and happy? I was reminded recently of a conversation embodying that question between two of my favorite fictional characters.
I was making all the food for a women’s tea on Saturday, and we were having the company for Sunday dinner that we should have had the week before, only we were snowed in, so I needed something simple. Fortunately, that was what I had already planned anyway. No multi-step recipes, no fancy dessert. I wanted to make something we’d had before, a salmon dish with some kind of sauce made with cider and cream. But when I went online to look for it I couldn’t find anything that sounded right. At some point I re-stumbled upon the recipe which turned out to be in Molly Wizenberg’s