Food History

I nearly forgot today’s post. I had an unexpected request for a short story for an anthology.

Notice how very casually I threw that statement in – it’s actually my first unexpected request of that sort and it means that at least one publisher trusts me rather a lot. Anyhow, I wrote the story and I discussed it with the publisher and it has been accepted subject to not-very-big edits, all of which I agreed were essential. All this since Friday, but most of it since about lunchtime yesterday. I’ve even done the first round of edits already. You can see why I almost forgot to post.

I still have some questions to answer from a few weeks ago. I haven’t forgotten. I think my life is running on strange timelines right now – things don’t get forgotten (much) but they do appear unexpectedly and at odd moments.

The unexpected today is a totally gorgeous cookbook. I have so many recipes with scraps of papers reminding me that I need to cook them that it’s almost impossible to open the book safely. A frenzy of notes will hit me in the face and suffocate me if I don’t open it with extreme care.

As cookbooks go, it’s not that big. Less than 200 pages, in fact. And as cookbooks go, it has a fair number of recipes, but not a vast number. It’s the quality of the recipes that count and the particular interest of their cultural background.

The book is Rivka Goldman’s Mama Nazima’s Jewish-Iraqi Cuisine. I wish it was much longer with way more detail, because what it says about that particular Jewish culture and set of foodways has left me hungry for more. My mouth waters every page. I want to go out instantly and buy a chicken and stuff it with meat (except it’s midnight and zero degrees and I am going to be strong and restrain myself). I want to make her stuffed quince, too. In fact, I can do that for my Friday night dinner – all I need to buy are pine-nuts and raisins.

Do you know the lovely thing about working so hard on one thing that I forgot another? I get to dream of Mama Nazima’s recipes all night. This is a good thing, as my story was a horror story and last night I spooked myself so entirely that I couldn’t get to sleep till 3 am.

On my way to bed I shall detour via the kitchen, I think, and tell the quinces they are going to get stuffed.