Tag: recipe

Read, Eat, Drink–Weekend Roundup

by Maria

Read:
As much as agents do our best to try to help writers and offer insight into the wild, whacky world that is publishing, sometimes nothing resonates quite like hearing directly from other writers. So here’s my favorite author blog post of the week–Colleen Hoover’s incredible story of how writing changed her life. Three years ago, she was living in a trailer, working 12 hours a day, and barely making ends meet. She picked up writing in her spare time and self-published her first book. She sold about 30 copies in the first week, but she kept at it. Today, she’s the New York Times bestselling author of 6 books and has a lucrative book deal with Atria/Simon & Schuster. And the best part of it all? In her words:

Three years ago, my husband and I dreamed about the day we would be able to build a new house. Tomorrow, that’s going to happen. On the same land where we happily lived in our single-wide trailer, we will be breaking ground on the house we will spend the rest of our lives in, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.

I know this started with the fact that I wrote and finished a book, but that was as simple as putting a pen to paper. Nothing would have followed had it not been for the support of my readers. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the motivation. And remember-

Dreams are free, so make sure you have a shit-load of them.

And THAT right there is exactly why we’re all in this crazy, unpredictable, shaky business.

You can read Colleen’s full story here.

Eat:
Raise your hand if you like bacon. Looks like…everyone on the planet. And the only thing better than bacon is bacon + pasta, especially when it’s Mario Batali’s Spaghetti Carbonara. This is (I think) the same recipe he uses at his restaurant Otto in New York, but you can make it yourself at home for, oh, a 95% discount.

Read More

Weekend Roundup–Read, Eat, Drink

by Maria

Read:
I happened to find myself completely book-free this week (due to a crappy packing job on my way to NYC). So I also found myself scanning a bookshelf for something to read on the train and at nights. And I found C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, his classic book that explores the underpinnings of all Christian faiths.

CS

I read all seven books of The Chronicles of Narnia series as a kid, and I’m pretty sure Aslan is still the coolest talking lion I’ve ever read about. And The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is still one of my favorite titles of all time.

But Mere Christianity is nothing like those books (although, if you read deeper into Narnia it actually is, but I won’t get into that). Yet it’s every bit as wonderful as expected.

It’s a short read (just over 200 pages), and I love both how quaint and 1950s-esque his voice is, and how timeless and straight-talking it still remains. It’s a book for nonbelievers and believers alike—even if you don’t have a scrap of interest in any form religion, it’s an incredibly compelling philosophical exercise. And it’s just fascinating to watch him unwrap each little box of his argument, holding it up for you to inspect that it is good.

If you missed the Narnia boat (sorry, Dawn Treader pun!), pick up Mere Christianity. It’s a  great starting point into Lewis’s adult oeuvre and, considering that he’s known as the most important writer of the 20th century, it’s a must-read.

Eat:
Confession: I’ve been neglecting my kitchen for the past two weeks! We’ve been moving and unpacking and traveling and shopping and working and adjusting to our new neighborhood, and I haven’t even been on a proper grocery run in weeks. I’m ashamed of myself. But even more, I’m just craving walking through the grocery aisles, meal planning for a normal, non-crazy week, and getting into my kitchen after a long day of work, with music and a glass of wine, to make something yummy.

And on top of it all, I’ve been having digestive issues, so  the past few days I’ve been cutting sugar, carbs, and dairy from my diet. So I don’t even know what to eat any more. But that hasn’t stopped me from fantasizing about food all day. As soon as I’m feeling better, this will be my dream, go-all-out, cook-like-a-maniac menu:

7192973d7d0236ce943297fe5e5e6e3c
Muffaletta Pasta Salad.
All my dreams in life involve muffaletta. Just call me Muffaletta Maria. (Actually don’t, it sounds weird.) Recipe here.

Grilled-Asian-Sweet-and-Spicy-Chicken-Skewers
Grilled Asian Sweet and Spicy Chicken Skewers.
Don’t tell me that picture doesn’t make you drool. Recipe here.

Pecan Pie Bars
Salted Caramel and Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars.
Everything amazing in the world, in one bar. Recipe here.

Drink:
I’m calling in my personal mixologist for a drink this week. Here’s Jarrett with a recipe for a different kind of gin and tonic:

Gin and Tonic. Gin & Tonic. G&T. The first mixed drink I truly learned to love.

But there’s a new variable to the G&T game: gourmet tonic. The Jack Rudy Co. makes small batch tonic that’s nothing like the clear stuff you buy at the store.  This tonic is what tonic was always meant to be: slightly sweet, fragrant, with subtle lemongrass and orange peel flavors. All of this makes the drink taste less like pure gin in a glass.

small-batch-tonic

G&T purists may be surprised by how different this tonic is, but I say they should find some room in their lineup for the Gin & Rudy Tonic. I have come to like this recipe way more than just a traditional G&T!

Gin & Rudy

  • Add ice to an on-the-rocks glass (a.k.a. an Old Fashioned glass)
  • 2 oz. of your preferred gin (I’ve recently been enjoying “Jack Pine Gin” from Northern Latitudes, a distillery in Northern Michigan)
  • .75 oz. of Jack Rudy Co. tonic
  • 4 oz. of soda water
  • A slice of lime

Combine ingredients and stir. If you want to get fancy, shave off a thin piece of the lime’s rind, heat it up with a lighter for a few seconds, and rub it on the rim of the glass before dropping it in the drink as a garnish.

If you do decide to try the Jack Rudy tonic, check out the Jack Rudy Co. website–they have a great list of drink recipes to make with their small batch tonic and grenadine.

Happy reading, eating, and drinking this weekend!

Read, Eat, Drink — Weekend Roundup

by Maria

A weekly round-up of books, news, thoughts, recipes, and miscellany for the weekend. 

Colbert Salutes Amazon: Well, interesting times call for interesting commentary, and my favorite bit of punditry to result from the Amazon/Hachette dispute is Stephen Colbert’s lovely little skit, which you can find here. (And here’s the simple, step-by-step breakdown of the dispute by the LA Times.) The Colbert clip is all over everywhere right now (because who doesn’t need some levity in the middle of a potentially industry-changing standoff?), but the exciting part about it, to me, is that it’s boosted sales of Edan Lepucki’s debut, California, through the roof. It’s nice to see two already famous and successful authors like Stephen Colbert and Sherman Alexie use their influence to help new authors, especially when either of them could have easily used the opportunity to plug one of their own books.

And I think it’s a little ray of sunshine in the storm cloud that’s hanging over the industry these days. It’s a reminder that books are still sold most effectively by people–by one person recommending a great read to another–not by impenetrable algorithms and data mining.

Oh, and it also made me laugh that Salon has already dubbed Colbert the next Oprah.

Daring Greatly:

Daring Greatly

I’m a little late to the game on this one, but I finally finished reading Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly. And I think it’s a life changing book. Books like this are the reason why I work in publishing and why I believe that books will always matter.

It’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for 42 weeks, and I think that’s because it hits a nerve in our changing culture. Brené Brown spent decades researching what holds people back from living what she calls “wholehearted” lives–that is, lives driven by authenticity, worthiness, and meaning–and she found, again and again, from thousands of research participants across all demographics, that daring to be vulnerable was the gateway to wholehearted living. It’s a beautiful book, and I couldn’t possibly do it justice in a few paragraphs, but it’s a book that at times made me cry, at times made me smile, and often made me pause to re-read and linger over sentences. Brown included a quote by Martin Buber in the book that, to me, encapsulated many of the themes of the book, as well as the evolving zeitgeist in our culture:

“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.” –Martin Buber 

It’s a book that really captures the essence of what makes us all tick as humans and what holds us back from living our best lives. I think that, in some ways, Daring Greatly explores the personal side of many of the business ideas in Daniel Pink’s To Sell is Human (another great read). Pink analyzes how accessibility and authenticity are beginning to have more value in our culture, while exclusivity and obfuscation are losing power in a world where everyone often has equal access to information.

But that is a whole other rabbit hole of theory that I could rant about for days. I also want to read Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection, which is supposed to be just as incredible.

Next up on the reading list is The Upside of Down by Megan McArdle, a columnist for Bloomberg View. Jarrett and I started our own book club (membership: 2) for the summer, and we’re reading one chapter a week and (ideally) discussing over Friday dinner. He got to pick this first one since I’ve spent the last few years bullying him into reading a whole slew of my recommendations (including Lean In!). It should be interesting (and hopefully inspiring) to follow along as McArdle tries to prove her thesis that failure is the most important part of success.

Morel Risotto:

Morel Risotto
Photo by Holly A. Heyser via Hank Shaw.

Oh my. This recipe is fantastic. Jarrett went morel hunting on his farm in Michigan and found us a huge bounty of these little delights. I’d go so far as to say that we’re morellionaires this year (ba-bum-ching).

Morels

The one and only place I turn to when we get something special and wild is Hank Shaw’s blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. His blog won a James Beard award in 2013, and I think it’s just the best online resource out there today for wild, foraged, straight-from-the-earth cooking. His new-ish book Duck, Duck, Goose is a must if you can regularly get your hands on wild waterfowl.

Jarrett dehydrated the morels to get them from Michigan out to the East Coast, but I think it’s always worth dehydrating morels. That way you can enjoy them over several months, rather than a few days, and the morel stock that results when they’re rehydrated is just yum! We used the morel stock for the risotto, and I think it adds such a wonderful, deep flavor that you couldn’t get from just chicken or veggie stock.

Next morel recipe to try? These almost-too-beautiful-to-eat tortellini:

Morel TortelliniPhoto by Holly A. Heyser via Hank Shaw.

Tequila Mockingbird: Tequila MockingbirdI’m also late to this one, but I came home from a business trip to find that some of our friends had sent us a package with Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist by Tim Federle. I mean, this just HAS to be the perfect gift for the literary nerd, the downtrodden aspiring writer, the overworked editor, and the harried literary agent. I want to make every single bookish cocktail, but I’ve narrowed the options down to three for a dinner we’re hosting on Saturday for an editor friend:

1. The Last of the Mojitos
2. Love in the Time of Kahlua
3. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margarita.

So I should probably make all of them, right?

Happy reading, eating, and drinking this weekend!