From page to plate (and back again): a writer's menu

by Merry Gordon

Some are born great cooks.  Some, with the help of Betty Crocker and Pinterest, achieve greatness, and others—though it’s sometimes in the form of chicken nuggets with questionable meat content and straight-from-the-box cake mixes—have culinary “greatness” thrust upon them. 

That last one’s me. 

I have something of a reputation for being the anti-cook, truth be told.  In college, I ironed a grilled cheese sandwich just to see if it would work (it did, but I wouldn't recommend using the steam setting).  My pumpkin cream pie required a straw to eat—er, drink—a few Thanksgivings ago.  Perhaps the most telling indication of my gustatory aptitude, though, is the fact that my son recognized ‘pizza’ as a shape at the age of two. 

Julia Child I am not.

Once I lamented this fact to my husband when he came home with yet another delightful dessert baked from scratch by the wife of a friend. 

“I’m never going to be the kind of wife who makes the goodies for everyone else,” I moped.

He just hugged me and passed me a cupcake.  “That’s okay.  You can be the kind of wife who eats the goodies the other wives make.”

So in honor of both NaNoWriMo and the caloric tidal wave that is the holidays (hey, a writer’s gotta eat!), I’ll link you to The Daily Beast’s “Menu for a Moveable Feast: 10 Famous Authors and Their Favorite Foods & Recipes” today.  Here you’ll find such gems as George Orwell’s plum pudding (so British!), Willa Cather’s kolaches and Sylvia Plath’s signature dish, tomato-soup cake.

Virginia Woolf once said, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well”—and I would add, write well—“if one has not dined well.”

Bon appétit!