#lemonade lists

This is the handbound copy that I turned in on Tuesday. I'm so glad that that's done with - handbinding is no joke - but am not finished with the book. I'm going to take a break from it, maybe a week or two, and go back to edit the type. Some of it was hastily written and, if I'm to put it up for print on demand on Amazon, I want it to be the best. 

High-res photos soon. 

This is not a cookbook. Not really.  

This is a book about people as much as it is about eating. About eating with friends — and cooking for friends — and why that matters so much. Allow me to paint you a picture: We are in Springfield, Virginia, and it is late spring. I am at Justin’s house, and we have just returned from walking the dogs, Oki, Erin, and Jasper. We went through the park today, on a path that cuts through the woods, and wraps around a playground. We got back to the house just as it began to storm, a real pre-summer thunderstorm, complete with whipping winds and, I kid you not, tumbleweeds that crossed our path.

The dogs have settled down and Justin and I begin to make dinner. We have broken the cardinal rule of never shopping when hungry and, as a result, we have enough groceries to feed ten people. Probably more. We have ciabatta rolls with Brie and Gouda, and there is a truffled liver mousse that I will eat all by myself since Justin is vegetarian. We have made a large pitcher of Sangria and I do not even want to think about how much sugar and alcohol it contains. Our backs are to one another but I can hear him slicing brussel sprouts that he will soon sauté in an exorbitant amount of butter. Every so often I hear the crunch of blue tortilla chips, the ones we bought as a pre-dinner snack because our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. I have just slid lemon pappardelle into a pot of boiling water, and a cloud of lemon steam immediately wafts through the kitchen.  

The last time we cooked together was at Thanksgiving, in our friend Eric’s tiny kitchen. Eric lives alone and rarely cooks so it was certainly a challenge cooking Thanksgiving dinner for six in a kitchen with but one spatula, two bowls, and no kitchen staples. That was the day I accidentally threw a handful of breadcrumbs into a saucepan of poached pears. I thought I had reached into the bag of raw sugar.  

 Justin and I do not cook together often, but I am comfortable working by his side. The kitchen is quiet, save for the sound of the television in the next room and the jingle of one of the dogs’ tags as they occasionally walk through the kitchen to check for fallen food.  

We watch some show about ghosts while we eat. Justin enjoys ghost stories as much as I do. Later, we will watch a movie and I will fall asleep in a blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream-induced coma with a dog nestled in my lap.  

Yes, I love food. I adore all aspects of food:  sharing it, reading about it, discussing it, cooking it, photographing it, hell, I even enjoy thinking about enjoying food. And, while this book is just as much about me as it is about food (I know, what a vain thing to say), it is more about what food means to me. It is about the people in my life and how my memories of them are stronger through the simplicity of sharing a meal.As Laurie Colwin, American food writer extraordinnaire, eloquently said, “One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.” 

Table of Contents, a little further developed

I wonder if I can get away with not capitalizing my own name in my book.