Finally writing!

I have been blocked for so long with the cookbook project.  I have been stuck at square one because I want so much to make this perfect and I know that it can never be.  So hard to get past this.

I have been reading again the childhood favorites that made me love reading from an early age.  As I have reread these classics I have been dreaming about my father's much loved cat, George.  So many stories exist within the family about George's adventures that a book about them would be easy to write.

I have begun to write his memoires with the young cat lover as the intended audience.  It is such a pleasure to write his story that I have even begun to use the Writer's Blocks software and find it so helpful.  I am hoping that by writing George's story I can unblock the cookbook project and complete both.

Bread Chapter

When I was a young cook, learning to bake from my Grandmother, I was very careful to follow her recipes and technique.  I was confident that the recipe would never let me down if I followed it exactly.  Now that I am less fearful of failure and with the benefit of my chef training a the New England Culinary Institute behind me, I can approach the recipes differently.  I find that the heart of her recipes is the technique and there can be freedom in the selection of ingredients.  The Bread Chapter will start with her tried and true recipe for White Bread handed down through generations of her family.  Once that list of ingredients and the techique have been mastered to produce the perfect loaf, we can be adventurous in the manipulation of ingredients to create a wide variety of yeast-based bread products.  The first example is the photo posted below of the Cinnamon Sticky Rolls.  I will post more photos as I work through all the manipulations of this classic bread recipe.

Evidence of Baking

 

Cinnamon Rolls:  Beautiful and Delicious!

Recipe Testing

Writing is hard work, this is fun!  I have started revisiting my Grandmother's recipes starting with the bread, which is where we began so many years ago.  This time I am approaching it with an eye to adapt the recipes to my uses and see additional uses.  This afternoon I made a two loaf batch of her white bread.  If I was being faithful to the recipe I would have used all bread flour and added a few tablespoons of yellow corn meal and shaped two loaves.  This time I used half bread and half AP flour and skipped the corn meal.  The softer dough made one gorgeous loaf and 9 cinnamon sticky buns!  Yum.  The original recipe and the adaptations will all be in the book.

Return to writing

Thank you for your patience!  It has taken quite some time for me to return to the discipline of writing.  The new page entitled "Family" is my latest effort to define the project and why I must pursue it.  I am deeply grateful to all those who have expressed their interest and support for this project and I hope to reward us all with more rapid progress.  Strangely enough, I find the process of transcribing and refining the recipes that I hope to include the most difficult part of the project.  I would have thought that would be easy!  But it demands my full attention on a regular basis to plow through it.  Not something that comes naturally.  I will persist.

Weird!

Had the TV on as usual while doing laundry, etc. hear that '80s TV star Linda Evans has just published a book of her memoires with recipes entitled "Recipes for Life."  If you haven't been following this blog, check my post below about book titles. 

I guess I will be looking for a better title.  I know my recipes are better!  Like I said, Weird!

Back in focus

I lost my focus last Spring.  The upheaval of a job that doesn't suit me at all, combined with the continuing need to earn a paycheck and the horrendous job market, conspired to drag my attention away from all that really interests me.  I have made a temporary peace with the job and I am getting back on track.  One of the things I really have struggled with on this project is my own inability to organize and provide structure to this piece.  I write little pieces but they are almost unrelated and out of order.  I have decided to seek help.  I purchased a software package for authors called Writer's Blocks 4.  It allows you to write the things that bubble to the surface, in whatever order they come, and then rearrange them to find the relationships and structure that will tie the pieces into a whole.  I should have it by the end of the week.  I hope to be a quick study in how to make the most of it.  I have another weekend away planned for November (before the holiday) and hope to feel that progress is actually being made.  I want to give myself a goal/deadline of next spring for a complete first draft.