Food Glorious Food

"Food, glorious food,
We're anxious to try it.
Three banquets a day,
Our favorite diet." from Oliver, the musical

ROBERTA: Don't you just love the food of summer? I'm in heaven because Jake the Corn Man should be setting up shop down the road a bit by the weekend. He has the best corn and it's worth going to his truck just to hear his sales pitch. He'll run through every item in his truck if you let him.

"Have you tried my plums (or cherries or peaches?) They're so delicious they'll make the juice run right down your chin." And so on...

The crops are starting to come in down in our garden patch too. We've been eating chard, lettuce, and spinach for a while, but I picked the first handful of green beans today--summer is definitely here! I wanted to take a photo of our first blueberries of the season, but John and I ate them before I got around to it.

Today I made this lime sponge cake. It's light and tart--perfect for a hot night. How about you guys, what are your favorite foods of summer?

HALLIE: I was just thinking how much I hate the heat and humidity and how much I LOVE the food. Our community supported farm (Brookwood Farm) just had its first week of produce -- tender carrots, onions, scapes (the green curly tops of garlic), basil (a huge bunch), cilantro, parsley, little turnips, salad greens, peas, sugar snap peas... I am officially in heaven. The southern peaches from the supermarket have been fabulous. Just got our first cherries. Local corn not yet but soon, and of course it's awhile before we'll have the first vine ripened tomatoes. Anyone have anything great (and unusual) to do with collard greens? Roberta, any chance you'll share that recipe?

ROBERTA: Absolutely! I cut the recipe out of the New Haven Register years ago, but this looks like exactly the same thing. Though I've never garnished with slices of lime:). http://www.mom-mom.com/lime_spongecake.htm

RO: Smoothies! I miss them in the winter. Nectarines! Watermelon! Martha's strawberry cream cake recipe which makes the baker look like a domestic goddess even if she isn't. Salads for dinner. But if I had to live off the harvest from my vegetable garden I'd starve. Hallie, do you grow collards?

HANK: You all can have my collards, okay? Peaches and blueberries, charcoal-grilled peaches with blue cheese, corn on the cob (also grilled) with lime butter. Lobster! Strawberries with brown sugar. We make a drink called a Palmyra--its vodka, and simple syrup, and fresh lime juice, all shaken madly with a bunch of fresh mint leaves, then poured into a martini glass. Oh, it's fantastic.

RHYS: See, I knew Hank was my kind of gal. The other Jungle Red babes discuss collard greens and garlic tops and Hank makes cocktails! We have a local farmers market and a pick-your-own strawberry patch nearby. The peaches, plums and strawberries taste completely different from those shipped from miles away. Every year I want to grow things, but then I find I'm away for half the summer. so I have to settle for those heirloom tomatoes at the farmers market.
And in a couple of weeks I'll be in the South of France, wandering the market with a basket over my arm, playing a French housewife and buying everything fresh. Can't wait!

JAN: fresh tuna, swordfish and scallops bought from the fishmarket in Edgartown or New Bedford and cooked with fresh herbs from my garden. I can't eat supermarket fish or tomatoes anymore. Actually I only eat tomatoes in august when they are local.

I have to admit though. By mid august I'm sick of anything grilled and start longing for cold weather and stews.

ROBERTA: Now I'm really drooling...time for our annual Jungle Red summer banquet! What will you bring?

On Fantasy

"But I never let a fantasy get away, because I always stop to analyze it." Shelley Duvall

Charlie Bakst reading Yesterday's Fatal on a beach in Italy.

Jan: I'm not talking about sexual fantasy (sorry guys), but writer fantasy. It goes like this: You are walking through a crowded airport, or through a crowded beach, and all of a sudden you come across someone reading YOUR book.

The perfect fantasy, of course, is when you have no idea who the reader is. He/she is just one of the many fans you never knew existed. In this photo, the reader, who sent me the pic, is a friend of mine, Charlie Bakst, but he was reading my book on a beach in Italy -- so I figure that makes up for him not being a complete stranger.

Once, my daughter, who has experienced the highs and lows of my writing career, called me up from college screaming excitedly. It turned out that as she was leaving the cafeteria, she saw the clerk at the register reading my book, A Confidential Source. So although I didn't actually come across the reader myself, I get fantasy points, right?

A couple of years ago, I was speaking at a mystery brunch in on Martha's Vineyard (hosted by Edgartown Books) and Robin Cook -- yes, the best selling medical thriller writer -- made a joke of hoping to stumble across someone on South Beach reading his book. You'd figure for Robin Cook this would be an everyday reality.

So I'm curious about how widespread this fantasy thing is. Is it just Robin Cook and me (I doubt it) or do we all have a verson of this, not just writers, but artists, musicians, teachers and even lawyers??

RO: It's a rush, no doubt about it. I haven't had the book version yet, but some years ago I produced a video called Say it By Signing, for friends and family of hearing-impaired people who sign; also acquired a book on the same subject. Not a huge market, but if my book does as well, it will be champagne all around. I saw the book in the window of a small bookstore in Bar Harbor, and the video was picked up by a nationwide chain (anyone remember the dear departed Nature Company?) I was ecstatic. it didn't even matter that I didn't make a lot of dough on it...I was thrilled. I think it's the Sally Field, "you like me..you really like me" thing.

HALLIE: My fantasy was to find my books for sale at an airport or train station newsstand. One day, my daughter phoned me from the Los Angeles airport to say that she was looking at a copy of OBSESSED right there at the newsstand! Then I found out they change the book displays every 24 hours.

In a related be-careful-which-fantasy-you-wish-for scenario--I was chatting with a woman author I'd met at a conference a few years ago. I told her my book-at-the-aiport fantasy, she she told me this story. Her husband worked for Hudson News (they're the franchise that owns all the newsstands in airports, Grand Central...) and he was able to use his muscle to get HN to order up 300,000 copies of her first paperback novel. She was ECSTATIC. The publisher was ecstatic, too. 100,000 copies were sold. Pretty great, right? BUT (and this is a very big "but") 200,000 copies were returned. This was very bad news for the publisher because they lost a huge chunk of change, and it was the last novel she did with them.

HANK: Here's a fantasy come true: look at this photo of my Prime Time as one of the staff favorites at the wonderful Willow Books in Acton MA. (Whoo hoo. See it? Right in the middle, top shelf?) Now, as for my next big fantasy: please all of you take a moment to send good karma that I make the deadline for Air Time. I'm not even going to tell you when it is...it's all too scary. Back to to reality.

JAN: So aside from the obvious ones -- book gets made into Oscar-winning movie -or making the NYT bestsellers list - I'm curious to hear about other writer fantasies. Also, the comparable career fantasy in other fields! There must be a chef fantasy, salesman-of-the-year-fantasy, and dermatologist fantasy, right?