Yes, it’s Valentine’s Day, and it also happens to be my good friend Chris Hufstader’s 50th birthday. But disregarding these two events (almost) entirely, I woke up on Monday, February 14, 2011, completely focused on something else: Getting my cookbook manuscript into Express Mail.
Mission accomplished. At noon, Roy drove me to the West Tisbury post office, I got out my credit card, and handed over a pretty heavy box containing the manuscript, the disc, some test photos and a cover letter. If all goes as it should, the box will travel from my Island home in New England to my editor’s desk in downtown San Francisco by noon (Pacific Time) tomorrow, satisfying the contract I signed, which required me to deliver these things on February 15, 2011.
It feels both disorienting (now what do I do?) and a bit anticlimactic (in reality, I have been wrapping this up for the last several weeks). But also exciting. Writing Fast, Fresh & Green and then seeing what a beautiful book Chronicle produced was totally a cool experience as far as I was concerned. And even though there is still a lot of work ahead (including some work from me on metric measurements) to make Fresh & Green for Dinner a reality, I am looking forward to it. I will keep you posted on the production process, but bear in mind that the book won’t be released until early spring of next year. (And again, that all depends on lots of things going the way they should.)
In the meantime, I’m going to do what all good cookbook authors do—dream up another book! And do some magazine writing, plan a vegetable garden and a chicken coop—and, oh, clean my kitchen, clean my office, organize the garden tools, cook a lot of vegetables…that sort of thing!
P.S. We didn’t entirely forget Valentine’s Day around here. Over the weekend, Libby and I improvised Valentine’s cookies from Christmas cookie dough (Roy’s favorite) and Christmas decorations. We didn’t even have a proper heart cookie cutter, but we managed. Here’s the recipe in case you ever need a decorate-able –and tasty—sugar cookie for a special occasion.)
Go Susie! Come visit the publisher to check on things.
Hey, Just got your adorable new year’s card — Alexa is just so snuggly!! thank you…will keep you posted if an SF trip ever comes up!
Congrats, Susie! And what fun to see Chris’ B-Day referenced and a link to his Oxfam blog. I’ll have to ask him to look up a recipe at sixburnersue so he’ll stumble upon your Valentines’ post.
Hi Susie — congratulations and hope you had a good Valentine’s Day…thanks for citing my birthday and for contributing to the really great scrapbook Kate organized that covers my first 50 years…hope to see you soon on the island — CH
Hey Chris (and Katie) — just sorry I couldn’t be with you, but glad it was a fun day and that you’ll have the scrap book. Looking forward to seeing you guys soon! susie