[Previous entry: "Weekend walkies"] [Next entry: "Recipes & rain" ]
Cooking for the recipe
6 August 2004
Both my agents (UK and US) were in touch this morning, in what I am sure is meant as a coordinated assault on my moral fibre. They each said that the new book is okay, and they'll talk to me seriously on Monday. This is clearly meant to prey on my nerves all through the silent weekend; they do these things because they can.
It won't work, though. I am morally fibrous, tougher than they deem; and I've already made arrangements to cook this weekend. The piece I'm writing for the Durham LitFest website is based around a dinner party, complete - of course! - with recipes; so we're having a trial run on Sunday. Which means that this morning I got to shop, hurrah: first at the farmer's market, then at my favourite Italian delicatessen, then at the organic wholefood supermarket. And then I got to carry it all home, across the moor in the sunshine. My back hurts, but it's worth every twinge. Tomorrow I will shop more, and prepare some; Sunday will be all cook cook, drink drink, note down quantities and consequences. I never measure ordinarily, but this time I think I need to. ‘A handful of this’ and ‘the right amount of that’ may be okay in my regular recipes, but it's hardly fair in a fiction. Or have I got that entirely the wrong way around...?
© Chaz Brenchley 2004
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.