A month ago today, I hit “send” on the manuscript for my second “100 Perfect Pairings” cookbook. It took me a week or so to recover, then another couple of weeks to catch up with all I’d been putting off, and then, well, another week of procrastinating blogging and – here we are!
(To the left is a photo of the final recipe, Good Old-Fashioned Pot Roast. I’m not sorry to say I had to make it several times, because that meant I got to stash lots of leftovers in the freezer. I sent some to my Dad as a belated Hanukkah gift, which he loved. I shared some with my Mom and my in-laws. And I’m now down to one last serving, which I’m hoarding. It’s that good.)
Now that the second book is off my desk – the work is not complete, mind you, there’ll still be plenty to do between now and this time next year, what with editing, photography, design, etc, but the work is complete for now – I’m starting to turn to the release of the first one, “100 Perfect Pairings: Small Plates to Enjoy with Wines You Love,” which will be out in April (here it is on Amazon.com, available for preorder at a hefty discount).
When I turned in that manuscript in January ’09, April ’10 seemed like a million years away, but now it feels right around the corner. I’m already scheduled to do a food and wine pairing class at Ramekins on April 16 to coincide with the release, and am looking forward to (hopefully) signing books at the International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference. Just yesterday I learned that Napa Sonoma magazine, who I write for semi-regularly, is going to include a piece about the book in their spring/summer issue. All very, very cool.
Between now and then, it seems like there’s a lot to do, not the least of which is revamping my web site (to be more consumer-friendly), drumming up some (paying) work, and writing a proposal for whatever the next cookbook will hopefully be!
But before I move on to all that, no completion celebration would be, well, complete without a final, rousing round of applause for my recipe testers – Andrea, Becky, Deirdre, Jan, Janie, John, Kate, Kay, Keven, Lanniece, Lori, Melissa, Pam, Rachel, Rhodora, Susan, Susan, and Suzanne. For more about what I mean by recipe testers, read this post. Suffice to say that these are people – 18 people! – who help me with my job simply out of the goodness of their hearts, who cook, taste, and evaluate my recipes just for the fun of it, and who, in doing so, contribute to me more than I can sufficiently say. They make all my recipes and books better, and besides that, it just makes a difference knowing that those 18 people are on my team, cheering me on. I can’t thank them enough for their partnership and participation.
Please join me in taking a moment to send a little love to the people who contribute so much to us even though they don’t have to.
Now, on to what’s next…
