Rhys on the Perfect Picnic

 RHYS BOWEN: One of my favorite things about summer is picnics. The idea of sitting in a beautiful surrounding and opening a picnic basket full of goodies has always appealed to me. When I was a child we often drove to the coast, about an hour away. My mother always packed a picnic and we chose a suitable spot in a field (making sure there was no bull in residence first) or in a grove of trees. We’d spread out a blanket and out would come the sandwiches: salmon and shrimp paste, cheese and pickle, ham and mustard, egg and cress. There would be fruit from our trees and of course some good biscuits/cookies. My parents always carried a vacuum flask of hot tea so we’d round off the meal with a good British cuppa.

My dream picnic is the one described in the Wind in the Willows. Do you remember it? When the Rat takes the Mole for a boat ride. Talk about mouth-watering. I’ve always wanted one of those picnic baskets that is equipped with everything. I do have one but it’s only okay. And these days one needs a cooler for the wine!

My favorite picnic memory? When I was at the BBC two friends and I had the same day off (we worked shifts in the drama department). So we popped into Selfridges and bought a cold chicken, fresh crusty bread, some cheeses, grapes and a bottle of chilled wine. Then we took the tube out to Kew, rented a boat on the river and rowed until we found a lawn area, shaded by a willow tree. We sat in the shade, tearing off bits of cold chicken, sipping chilled wine and then sleeping in the shade. I still smile at that memory.

And it’s triggered another memory: My mother’s 75th birthday in Australia. She didn’t want to go to a restaurant but wanted a picnic on the headland overlooking the ocean. My brother and his wife’s family provided the goodies: every kind of seafood you can imagine—oysters, lobster, shrimp, Balmain bugs—a type of crab. Dipping sauces. A cheese platter, a fruit bowl. Several salads. And of course champagne and birthday cake. We sat and ate and drank and swam all day. Heaven.

Alas, I am married to a non-picnicker. He doesn’t like getting sand in his food, or bugs, or sitting uncomfortably on a blanket. If I pack a meal he wants to eat his in the car as we drive. No romance in his soul at all. I do manage to fit in a picnic when one of the kids is visiting or when we are on vacation. IN England these days it’s so easy with ready-made food at pret-a manger or Marks and Spencers who have wonderful pork pies, sausage rolls etc etc.  Hopefully we’ll be able to do that this fall when we go to England and France.

So my ideal picnic would be:

Homemade sausage rolls

Baguette and brie

Assorted olives

Assorted salami etc

Maybe a quiche

Fruit in season

Dark chocolate

Okay, what have I left out?

So are you fans of picnics? What are your must-haves?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: That sounds glamorous and wonderful, Rhys. And i do envy you! ! I, um, well, I hesitate to say, but I am not a picnic fan. Oh, I know, I am not romantic, or experimental, or flexible. Bugs, hard ground, no chairs, heat. No bathrooms, no ice. Bugs. Melty food.  Salmonella. Garbage. Unpredictable weather. Dirt, sand. Bugs.  Dirt.  May I go with your husband to a restaurant? Outdoors is fine, really, we can pretend it’s a picnic. Oh, look, it’s training! Nope, that’s just me and my wet blanket. 

RHYS: Okay, you and John can have a boring, civilized meal while we have fun with the ants and bees.

JENN McKINLAY: What lovely memories, Rhys. My parents were big picnickers when I was a kid and we usually went to lovely nature spots on Sunday afternoons and Mom wowed us all with what she could stuff into a basket and cooler. After running around for hours, we would decimate her labors like a troop of ants. 

I love a good picnic. When Hub and I were dating it was cold chicken, potato salad, and frosty beers while we sat on a blanket on the green in Prescott. Later, we incorporated the boys but, alas, kids grow up, and parents get busy so it’s been a minute since we’ve had a proper picnic. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Rhys, your perfect picnic could be mine! In fact, all your picnics sound divine. Picnics in Texas, however, are not nearly so idyllic. (Think Hank's bugs, squared, with a dose of miserable heat.)  But my parents loved to picnic on car trips, so we stopped in many a roadside park with our Kraft Sharp Cheddar, Triscuits, and tins of sardines. Very messy but delish! But my favorite picnic memories are from traveling with them on rail passes in Europe and England. On the trains in France we had baguettes and French cheeses and wine; in England cold pork pies with bottles of cider and fresh-picked Cox apples. Yum.

LUCY BURDETTE: Still howling from Hank’s reservations about picnics! I would say my favorite picnics are those described in THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. I would go anywhere with these characters! Here’s one description:” There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.” Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

RHYS: Okay, if we have a Reds picnic we’ll have to remember to have a table and chair, screened in with a bug screen, for Hank! Who else has an aversion to bugs? Sand? Sitting on the ground? And who loves picnics?

Eating Like a Literary Character

LUCY BURDETTE: If you know me, you know I'm always thinking about food--what to have for lunch as soon as I finish breakfast, what to make for dinner, what Key West restaurant we haven't tried, and so on. (Of course, my low sodium diet has forced some changes, but let's ignore that for a moment.)  

My food critic character Hayley Snow is a lot like me. She loves nothing better than a little snack to fuel her writing, and she's an even better and more adventurous eater--except for slimy things with tentacles. Food is laden with meaning too. She spends days figuring out what cake she should bake for Valentine's day. 

But would this cake transmit the message that I cared a lot, but without any pressure, and that it was for Valentine's Day, but no declaration intended, nor anything expected in return? Would it send the message of love and care, without appearing needy, too sweet, or cliched?This, I realized, was a lot to ask of any cake. from​ Fatal Reservations

When Ingrid was set to join us here at Jungle Red (hooray for Ingrid and Jenn!), I of course picked up the first book in her Fina Ludlow series. And I have to admit, I'm a little worried about Fina. Diet Coke? Diet iced tea? Mallomars? Nutter Butters? She never cooks and she never seems to have anything in her refrigerator. All this becomes fascinating background for Ingrid's character.

And has me wondering, how big a part does food play in your characters' lives? And do you eat the way they do?

HALLIE EPHRON: Considering how obsessed I am with food--planning what to eat, shopping, cooking, enjoying--it's amazing how little of that translates into my characters. I did a serious homage to the jelly donuts of my youth in NEVER TELL A LIE. And I have fun with low country cooking in the new book, YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR. There's a mouth-watering scene with biscuits and sausage gravy. Southern cooking is exquisite. I make a mean biscuit. But none of my main characters (so far) have been into cooking.

RHYS BOWEN: As one who is not too keen on cooking, I love to read about meals. It all started with the picnic hamper in The Wind in the Willows. Eating vicariously is sinless and calorie free. But I do describe long and formal dinners that Georgie has to attend, contrasting them with the miserable baked-beans on toast existence she had to endure during the early books of the series. Molly has also moved up from near starvation to feeding a family but she serves good old Irish cooking: stews, hot pots, meat puddings. But I've set three books at Christmas now and really enjoyed going to town with the food preparations and the elaborate meals.

Of course In Farleigh Field is set in WWII and the food described is utterly dire and miserable, apart from one man who deals in the black market!

INGRID THOFT:  Lucy, you're not the only one worried about Fina.  I admit I was surprised when the first book in the series, LOYALTY, was released, by the number of comments I heard from readers about Fina's diet.  The most common feedback:  How does she eat like that and stay thin? No one could really eat that way!  Do you eat like that?  In terms of maintaining a healthy weight, Fina doesn't actually eat a large quantity of food; she nibbles and pecks throughout the day, and her meals and snacks are interspersed with foot chases and fistfights, which help burn calories.  Also, I know people who eat this way and stay thin.  They may be the exception, but they do exist.  Do I eat like Fina?  No, which is exactly the point.  Part of the fun of writing this character is that she doesn't worry about her cholesterol or her intake of leafy green vegetables.  One trait we do share is an equal opportunity palette.  She can sink her teeth into a Reese's peanut butter cup and also appreciate the fare at Boston's finest restaurants, and I'm the same way.  I can appreciate the merits of a Cadbury Crème Egg and lightly seared scallops!  As long as someone else does the cooking, Fina and I are game.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm glad to know I'm not the only one worried about Fina! When Ingrid and I had lunch in Seattle and she had a salad, my fears were allayed, however, but we did share a really sinful dessert. And Lucy, oh my! Can I just mention the Cuban coffee and the maple-glazed bacon doughnut she brought me when I stayed with her in Key West??? I was in Hayley heaven.

I do love reading about food, and writing about food. If my characters eat or drink something, you can be pretty sure I've either eaten it in a London restaurant, or cooked it myself. (This my excuse--or one of my excuses--for all the outing to London pubs and restaurants...) And I think we can all look forward to more food in the next book (and I will be enjoying the research!)

JENN MCKINLAY: Cake. Pie. Tarts. Cupcakes. Donuts. Ice cream. Gelato. Candy. Chocolate. Basically, all the sweet things. The only part of the food pyramid that I enjoy is the tippy top fats, oils, and sweets part. I love to bake but find cooking to be utter drudgery, except breakfast cooking because...chocolate chip pancakes, strawberry filled crepes, Belgian waffles! Need I go on? Minus the diet beverage thing (I loathe anything with the word diet in it), I am pretty sure Fina is my people! My love of baked goods is likely how I ended up writing a mystery series about a cupcake bakery because my characters eat their product and live on sweets just like I would if I didn't have to be a good mom and cook real food for growing hooligans. Also, it's allowed me to create recipes for everything from cherry cola cupcakes to mojito cupcakes. The research and development part of the recipes is one of my favorite aspects of writing this series.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The main character of my new book (still no title, ahhhh) eats canned tuna and a lot of toast. And wine. And pizza. And coffee. No, she is not sick, she is just busy.  But I have to say, if you added almonds and diet coke to that menu, I would be okay. Typing that out right now, it's very sad, when you all are talking about mojito cupcakes and honey glazed bacon and seared scallops. All of which sound delicious.  But my main characters so far have all been journalists, and often they have to hurry hurry hurry and grab food on the run. So far, in the new book, there's no fun in the food. And my main character is unhappy. So that works, right?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It works, Hank! Food ought to reveal something about the character. I don't do recipes in my books, but I do describe the food Clare is cooking (or the coffee she's brewing) in some detail when I need to. She loves to cook and has every little gadget you could think of, which is the result of a decision I made when I was figuring out who she was before I ever started to write the first book. At the start of the series, Clare is in her early thirties and has been moving constantly since her college days, courtesy of the US Army. What sort of hobby or diversion would someone like that have? Well, she runs, and..she cooks. Because cooking is a highly transportable past time - in fact, traveling to different areas of the country or abroad is an advantage. 


Russ, on the other hand, can make himself burgers and macaroni and cheese. It's not that he doesn't like food, it's just that he went from a mom who coked for him, to a wife who cooked for him, to...another wife who cooks for him. 

Reds, which literary character do you eat like? And who would you enjoy meeting for dinner?

Hundred Books Everyone Should Have Read

RHYS: A couple of weeks ago, the BBC published a list of books that everyone should have read in their lifetime. There were 100 books on the list and they included the very weighty tomes like War and Peace, but also the more popular Harry Potter. I felt rather proud of myself because I had read at least 70 of the hundred books. When someone on another list published a different set of 100 books, this second list was more a compilation of world Classics, and I have to confess that I had only read around 50 of those.

So this list got me thinking about my own work and why I wasn't included on either list. Okay, that is meant to be a joke. But I suppose any writer at one stage in their career wonders if they will write a book that will have enduring value. I know that I write books that are meant to entertain. They do interlude social concerns and an accurate look at history, but they are not To Kill a Mockingbird.

Obviously, before I stop writing I would love to write that one definitive book. I would like to future readers to say "Oh, Rhys Bowen, didn't she write X?", But I have no idea what that book would be. I enjoy what I write, I think I have a flair for humour and when I try to be too serious and too deep I depress myself. So looking at that list what is the one book that I wish I had written? I am very impressed with Byatt's Possession , and the way that she created a complete body of work of two fictitious poets. But that book doesn't really touch the heart. I'd like to have written something like Of Mice and Men, or a Tale of Two Cities and had my readers weeping by the end. But I think if I could write only one of those books it would have to be the Lord of the Rings. For me this was the definitive creation of a fantasy world and I have never attempted fantasy since I read it, because I know I couldn't do as well.

So fellow Jungle Red Writers-- which book do you wish that you had written?

HALLIE: The one I just read. ROOM by Emma Donaghue. It's a stunning work, written in the voice of a 5-year-old. Unputdownable.

JAN: If I get only one, I wish I wrote Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Which captures England as the world changes and end of the era. I love books that capture history just as its changing. (Gone with the Wind does this too)

If I get more, I'll add: Pride and Prejudice, which is the ultimate, enduring CInderella Story. And the short story THe Lottery by Shirley Jackson which reminded humans about their mob mentalities.

ROBERTA: Right now I think I will say Anne Lamott's book on writing, BIRD BY BIRD. Have you ever talked to a writer who hasn't loved that book? Somehow she managed to lay out the agony of writing while coming through as supportive and encouraging. It's not a great classic, but it's a book that has affected a lot of writers' lives. Okay, and here's one more: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. That book is a masterpiece!

RHYS: I'm changing my mind and thinking maybe Harry Potter. Not only did she create a complete world, true to its own rules (although I do wonder why the world's most powerful wizard has to wear glasses), but she single-handedly got kids passionate about reading again.

Any other suggestions?