Food for Thought

 by Nancy J. Cohen

The title of this blog is Killer Hobbies, and one of my hobbies is eating. I like to dine out and I like to cook. Many of our social interactions take place around food. We meet friends for lunch, hang out at coffee shops, go on a hot dinner date, or feast with family at holidays and special events. Since it plays such an important role in society, food should be considered an essential element for world building. The cuisine might even be considered a character in its own right. What, where, and how a character eats reveals something about her as a person and how she fits into society.

In Warrior Prince: Book One in the Drift Lords Series, for example, the hero fancies chocolate chip cookies. They’re a treat he’s never eaten before, showing his cultural difference from the Floridian heroine. He compares chicken to a food called pamadore in his region.

Look more closely at my heroes’ interactions with food and note how they show the men’s extraterrestrial origins. Zohar is leader of the Drift Lords and crown prince of the Star Empire. His team has come to Earth to quell an invasion by soldiers from another dimension.

“Bring me a glass of that orange juice, would you?” Dal asked without any regard for Zohar’s rank. “I am plagued by thirst. The food on this planet has too much salt.”

“I can get it.” Borius strode toward the kitchen. “I would like a smack myself.”

“A snack, Borius, not a smack,” Zohar corrected with a grin.

They meandered toward the dining room. Zohar grabbed another cookie from the nearly empty plate. He savored the treat’s gooey center while Borius returned with a glass of juice for Dal.

Unfortunately, drinking that juice has dire consequences for Dal, the team’s demolitions expert.

Being a Disney fan, I loved the idea of sinister theme parks, and so they play an important role in my series. In fact, the action starts in Orlando, where our heroine applies for a summer job at an attraction called Drift World. Zohar explores this mysterious role-playing theme park where western culture continues to befuddle him:

Guests nibbled on a confection called a funnel cake. The sugary aroma made his mouth water. He also smelled the snack called a hot dog, although the elongated meat had nothing to do with the domesticated animal.

You see how his attitude toward food reflects his foreign point of view?

Shear Murder, my latest Bad Hair Day mystery, involves weddings and funerals. Where else other than holidays are rituals more important? In this case, I describe Jewish practices. For example, we don’t send flowers to funeral homes. Usually, people bring food to the family afterward when mourners are sitting “shivah” at home, or friends give charitable donations in the deceased’s memory. Weddings are occasions for feasts, too, and there are two weddings in Shear Murder. It starts out with a wedding and then a funeral, and ends on a highlight of the entire series with a long-anticipated wedding.

Marla, my heroine, will often meet friends or suspects at restaurants or lounges. She also likes to cook, when she has time from her busy duties at the salon and solving crimes. So far, her actual recipes haven’t made their way into my mysteries. At least, not until my current work in progress. This time, I have made sure to include the recipes that my hairdresser sleuth cooks during the course of the story. For earlier titles, you’ll have to go to my website to see what she makes. I have an entire page of Recipes there that are my personal favorites.

What are some memorable food scenes that you’re read? If you’re a writer, how do you incorporate food or meals into your stories?

All commenters during Nancy’s blog tour will be entered into a drawing for a Warrior Prince tee shirt and magnet and a pdf copy of Warrior Prince. Go to http://nancyjcohen.com/Appearances for a complete schedule of her tour stops.

Warrior Prince: Book One in the Drift Lords Series by Nancy J. Cohen

When mythologist and Florida resident Nira Larsen accepts a job as tour guide for a mysterious stranger, she's drawn into a nightmare reality where ancient myths come alive and legendary evils seek to destroy her. To survive, she must awaken her dormant powers, but the only person who can help is the man whose touch inflames her passion.

After a dimensional rift in the Bermuda Triangle cracks open and an ancient enemy invades Earth, Zohar—leader of the galactic warriors known as the Drift Lords—summons his troops. He doesn't count on a redheaded spitfire getting in his way and capturing his heart. Nira has the power to defeat the enemy and to enslave Zohar's soul. Can he trust her enough to accomplish his mission, or will she lure him to his doom?

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Author Biography

Nancy J. Cohen is a multi-published author who writes romance and mysteries. Her popular Bad Hair Day mystery series features hairdresser Marla Shore, who solves crimes with wit and style under the sultry Florida sun. Several of these titles have made the IMBA bestseller list, while Nancy’s imaginative sci-fi/paranormal romances have garnered rave reviews and a HOLT Medallion Award. Active in the writing community and a featured speaker at libraries and conferences, Nancy is listed in Contemporary Authors, Poets & Writers, and Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors, & Poets.

Florida!

Yesterday we went to Sanibel Island to swim and sunbathe. The weather was spectacular, temps in the lower 80s, stiff onshore breeze. We found a parking place, paid the fee and walked along the narrow beach until we found a nice place, not too crowded. Though it's Spring Break, there were no college-age kids (possibly because it costs six dollars to take the beautiful white bride to the Island). The water was almost warm, but there were lots of waves crashing at an angle onto the white sand, which had a band of white shells marking the high-water mark. But once into the water we noticed a powerful current pulling us parallel to the beach. It was difficult to stand upright, and almost impossible to walk against it. The waves were irregular, some high, some not, and they seemed at times to split in half as they came in. Soon we were laughing because, as my sister exclaimed at one point, "it's like being in a washing machine!" We had to come in to rest after about twenty minutes, and then I realized we were the only ones in the water; everyone else was either sunbathing or walking along. some picking up shells. Still, after a rest, we went back out. My sister tried the experiment of lying on her back, butt down and feet up, and the rip current grabbed her and moved her surprisingly swiftly down along the shore - fortunately not outwards. It was amazing.

Florida!

This morning, for the first time this year, a sparrow erupted in chirps outside our bedroom window. A sign of spring. I envy those of you who live farther south who are already seeing the pale yellow wash on the bushes of forsythia. We still have snow on the ground.

I’m going to Florida! My sister Dolores owns a home in Fort Myers and has been asking me to come down for a visit. I finally agreed, and will be gone from Minneapolis from March 13 to the 21st. I’m taking my laptop with me, and so should be able to continue blogging. We’ve been exchanging e-mails about where we’ll go: to various beaches, to the Ding Darling (isn’t that an interesting name? He was a famous boat designer) bird preserve, to play golf, to just sit in the sun, shopping, etc., etc. Any suggestions? I've been there before, it's a very pretty area. I remember the row of huge banyan trees on the Henry Ford and adjoining Thomas Edison estates. And the shells on the beaches of Sanibel Island.

Today I’m going to interview some people who work at the Courage Center. I want to pick their brains about therapy pools and how they are set up and run– and how their security systems work. I am, of course, going to mess with the security system in the book I’m about to write. I have a friend – more an acquaintance, actually – who is designing the facility, and she’s come up with a pretty good idea for the flaw.

We have two cats, Panzi and Snaps. Both of them occasionally throw up – Panzi especially will stop eating her favorite snack, turn away from the bowl, and throw it up. Five minutes later, she’s back, wanting more of the same snack. But lately Snaps has been throwing up a lot, especially at night. It’s not a fur ball, there is little fur in it, though some. And there’s not any partly-digested food in it, either. I’m thinking a call to our vet is in order. We’re lucky to have a home-visit veterinarian. He’s a very nice man, very gentle with the cats. Do any of you have suffered a similar problem with your cat? What turned out to be the problem?

Advance notice: Saturday, March 24, from one to five: Bloomington Book Fair, at the Bloomington Center for the Arts, 1800 Old Shakopee Road, Bloomington, MN. I’ll be sitting at a table with Carl Brookins, senior member of my writer’s group, and we’ll both have books for sale.

Valentine's Day

Advance notice: Saturday, Feb. 25, 2 pm, I will be at the Rum River Public Library in Anoka, MN, to give a talk and sell books.

I was planning on boasting in this entry about the marvelous, perhaps exotic, chocolates I had purchased at Truffle Hill in Excelsior to give away at the Valentine’s Day Party at Joanna Campbell Slan’s site this evening from 9 p.m. EST to Midnight EST. But, wanting the freshest candy, I was going to go out on Monday – and discovered the shop is closed on Mondays. So as soon as it opens at ten this morning I will be at their door. On their web site they offered as their Truffle of the Month one flavored with hot chili peppers. I may buy one of those for the little collection. What do you think?

My husband and I went out to dinner last Friday in an early Valentine’s Day celebration. The older I get, the less I feel I must celebrate a particular holiday exactly on the day. Still, I have a bar of Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Almonds, my favorite, on hand to mark the Fourteenth.

I’m beginning to think of And Then You Dye as the novel that will not die. There’s a letter that a character needs to write to Betsy I have discovered, and I will create it today. My editor hasn’t read the manuscript yet, and so says I should go ahead and do it.

Meanwhile, I am already thinking about the next book. I wanted to take some time off – my sister in Florida has invited me down for a visit – but Watered Silk is nudging at me, and I’m getting intrigued at its possibilities. Maybe it’s the vitamin B-12 I’ve been taking.

On the other hand: Florida. Sunshine. Fresh local fruit and vegetables. Gathering seashells on the Gulf. Heaven! What’s your idea of an ideal winter getaway?

Making Merry

My blog sisters made me jealous when they wrote about their preparations for the holidays. Since I've moved to Florida, I'm having adjustment issues. I think of Christmas and Hanukkah, and I think COLD. I think snow, winter, freezing, evergreens, and bundled up people. And yes, the past few mornings in Florida, it's been nippy in the morning. That translates to 60 degrees, in case you're wondering. But it doesn't have that bare look that signals the full onset of winter.

So I talked to my sister Janie about it, and she said, "What would it take to get you in the mood?"

I said, "A tree."

We went shopping. Jane is a wonderful shopping companion. Very decisive. Very knowledgeable. Very up on trends. She knows I'm thrifty, so we went to Walmart. I found a tree I wanted, but it was the floor model. They agreed to sell it, but there wasn't a box, so they discounted it 10%, which made me feel virtuous. We had a bit of a challenge fitting it into the car, and a kind clerk decided to help us by shoving the parts of the tree into random boxes he'd rescued from the recycling. Then we discovered there was no assembly manual.

Well, shoot. All you have to do is plug the fat part of the tree into smaller parts, right? And then plug the sockets into each other and into the light socket, huh?

Uh, no. After hours of trying, I gave up. The tree listed to one side, dangerously. Only a third of the lights were lit. I was sadder than ever.

Jane said, "Let's get in the car." We did, and she drove me to ANOTHER Walmart. There I found a gorgeous all-white tree. Something about the all white color made me happy. I guess with the green tree, it felt like I was trying to copy Christmas up north, and with the all-white version, it was really, truly something different. Not better. Not worse. But different. When we lived in England, we always told our son that people around the world do things differently. "Not better. Not worse. Just different. And that's very, very cool." When you drop the judgment, you can enjoy things as they are.

That tree came home with us and all my blue and green ornaments look totally awesome on it. I'll try to post a photo next week. After we decorated the tree, we went to a sand castle contest that was held for charity. While we were there, my phone rang. My husband called to tell me he was flying me back to DC to see the Kennedy Center Honors dress rehearsal. I barely had time to shake the sand out of my shoes so I could make my flight!

I'm flying back to Florida tomorrow, but I had a wonderful time here, and I'm really feeling the holiday spirit. And the cold! At the dress rehearsals for the Kennedy Center Honors, I met Angela Lansbury and we discussed "Murder, She Wrote." We sipped tea together. She said, "I produced quite a few of those shows. We knew that if we had a body, we had a mystery." She explained that they would set up three suspects, and they didn't always decide in advance who the killer would be. She enjoyed her time as Jessica Fletcher. "Do you know that people actually think I wrote those books?" she said, as she shook her head. "Someone stopped me at the publishing house the other day and congratulated me on the latest one!"

I'm not getting much writing done, it's true. But I am getting a lot of living done. The best part of being a writer is that you get to use EVERYTHING that happens to you. I'm not sure exactly how I'll use all this, but I know I will.

My Mother's Faith

Note: My sister Jane asked me to share a copy of this. She's printed out all the eulogies from my mom's memorial service, which we held down in Florida in August. When I pulled up my piece, I thought some of you might enjoy it, too. The photo is one of my mom as a child. I guess you could call it a publicity photo because it was used on the front of the brochure of the orphanage where she was given up as a child. -- Joanna (aka "Jonie")

My mother built her life around the church. Most recently, she attended healing services on Wednesday, worship on Sunday, and for as long as possible, she volunteered at the church thrift shop.

Back when we lived in Indiana, Mom helped with coffee hour, taught Sunday School and participated in any way possible.

Her goal was to raise us up in the Episcopal Church, but more importantly to teach us how to be good people. All these activities doubtless contributed to who we are today, but the most memorable lesson we derived didn’t come from sitting in the choir—or the Sunday School rooms—or the pews. It came from sitting in our car. The greatest lesson that my mother ever taught me in faith happened when she agreed to give a ride to Elizabeth Taylor.

I can imagine your thoughts: Elizabeth TAYLOR? And I’d guess you are thinking about the famous movie star.

No, not THAT Elizabeth Taylor.

I’m speaking of another Elizabeth Taylor—and trust me, this woman was not movie star material.

This Elizabeth Taylor was a unkempt newcomer who showed up one Sunday at church. Mom quickly learned that Elizabeth lived a block away from us—and didn’t have a car. So my mother volunteered to give Elizabeth a ride to services.

Which would have been well and good except…except that Elizabeth didn’t keep herself very clean. She had a bad case of body odor which she tried to cover up by dousing herself with a cheap and cloying perfume.

Summers in Southern Indiana are hot, muggy and miserable. The only air conditioning our car had was 460 air—four windows down, 60 miles an hour. It didn’t work in town. Between the heat and the closed surroundings, Elizabeth’s presence was especially…ripe.

So, one particularly stinky Sunday, after we got home from services, I started complaining, “Mom, do we HAVE TO give her a ride?”

Then Mom said something that I’ll never forget. She said, “Jonie, how can I sit there in Church, repeat the commandment to love my neighbor, and then, not give that poor woman a ride?”

She taught me a lesson I never forgot.

Some people take the Las Vegas approach to religion. You know what that is. You’ve heard the slogan: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Some people attend church or temple, and leave their religion at the door, as if it were a vestment to be shrugged off on the way to real life. My mom refused to do that.

What my mother taught me was that real faith is messy—and sometimes even stinky--it’s inconvenient, it calls upon us occasionally to put aside our concerns and needs as we care for other people. Let me back that up with scripture:

James 2:26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

Everyday Is Mother's Day Memory Questions

(Clockwise from 12 o'clock position: me, Meg, Mom, and Jane.)

I'm a little late with this post because my plane didn't get in last night until after midnight. I flew from Miami to St. Louis after visiting with my mother and sisters, and I was pretty zonked!

People often compliment me by saying, "You are so creative." But really, I'm just one of the four creative women in my family. My mom was a classically trained ballerina, and she's always been a whiz at choreography and coming up with dance ideas. My younger sister Jane has done bead-work for earrings, runs her own blog (SleepCompass.com) and loves to decorate, and my youngest sister Meg is an art teacher at an elementary school, plus a font of all sorts of crafty ideas. Meg taught me to scrapbook. All of us are, in my humble opinion, amazing in our own ways, perhaps because whatever one of us doesn't think up the other surely will.

So Meg got this middle-of-the-night idea. She wrote out these questions for all of us to answer when we went to brunch on my final day in Florida:

Meg's Mother's Day Memory Questions

1. Using your 5 sense, what are some memories you recall from growing up:

* Touch

* Taste

* Smell

* Hearing

* Sight

2. Name 1 thing your mother taught you--

3. Name 1 thing you'd thank her for--

4. Name 1 thing you really appreciate that she did for you--

5. Write a quote your mother often says:

6. Describe a memorable event or trip:

Over brunch, we filled out the questionnaire. The answers led to many great memories, and lots of laughter. I asked Meg for a copy of all our responses, and she suggested I take some blanks home. I plan to have my son and my husband fill these out. Jane thought she should have her mother-in-law and daughter fill them out, too. I think it'll be a pretty interesting family map, defining continents of interests, seas of shared values, and mountains of memorable moments.

So, I'd like to hear what YOU think about the quiz. And whether you try it with your family.

P.S. As I flipped over the papers, while I was copying the questions for this blog, I discovered Meg's answer to "Name 1 thing you'd thank her (your mother) for--" and somehow, I'd forgotten or hadn't heard this over our meal. Meg's answer was, "My sisters."

Florida

I'm sitting in my sister's still-dark room (but there's a mockingbird outside the open window, singing his heart out to welcome the coming dawn) typing this on her computer. I can't get online with my laptop down here, so I have to use hers. Please excuse the brevity of this, therefore, and also any typos.

There are gekkos (is that how you spell it?) down here, those tiny lizards that serve as the model for a car insurance agency on television. These little guys aren't green, but brown -- and they don't walk on their hind legs or speak with an Australian accent, either. But they are cute and they can climb any vertical surface, even glass. There are cats in the house, and they amuse themselves by hunting the gekkos and bringing them inside. It's a catch and release program for them, the lizards are probably very annoyed, but uninjured by the experience. I took one away from the cat early yesterday morning, and found it sluggish or sleepy and went outside with it on my hand to sit in the sun. Sure enough, his problem was that he was cold, and after a few minutes of hand-warmth plus sunshine on his back, his head suddenly lifted, his breathing quickened, and he went zipping off my hand, down my leg, and into the shrubs that line our pool.

I hear it snowed yesterday in Minneapolis. The temperature here was in the mid-eighties. I went out to dinner with my sister at a restaurant called the Bahama Breeze. Had a drink called the Mojito, which consists of crushed lime fragments, fresh mint, juice from sugar cane, and rum, all over crush ice. For dinner I had the mahi-mahi with mango sauce, steamed very slim and tender green beans and mashed sweet potatoes flavored with cinnamon. We drove home under a rising full moon. As they say, "Just another day in paradise." When the sun comes up in the morning, I just want to imitate a gekko and sit in the sun, working on my tan. Do a few laps in the pool, then back in the sun. Every three hours I take Mom to the bathroom, bring her a drink of orange juice or a snack, or a simple meal, talk with her awhile, then go back out in the sun. I am getting some stitching done, but I'm not working very hard on it. I've got a whole five pages done of Buttons and Bones, the next Betsy Devonshire mystery.

As I have said before in this blog, Life is Sweet.

Snippets

Today I take a late-afternoon flight to Ft. Myers, Florida. My sister Dolores, her daughter Regina, and my mother all live in a rented house in a gated community down there, and my sister needs a break. So I get nine days of sunshine and a pool, plus a couple of nights out for fresh seafood – all in return for caring for my ninety-year-old-and-still-feisty Mom. Not a bad deal at all.

It’s hard to believe spring is coming in Minnesota in March. We have fresh snow on the ground, and the fact that the chickadees and cardinals have started singing seems like small comfort. So this time in sunny Florida will be very welcome.

Yesterday I drove a little over eighty miles to Colfax, Wisconsin, to see a traveling exhibit on the German POW camps established during World War II – only to find that it was in Colfax on Monday. Worse, it was too late to drive to Black River Falls and catch it there. It’s in Spooner today, too far to drive to see it and get back in time to catch my plane. But the librarian in Colfax said the exhibit didn’t have any German uniforms, and one major goal was to see one, just to see what color it was. There are a lot of photographs of German POWs, but they’re all in black and white. I’m sure there are other places I can find that information, but the exhibit also had other artifacts from the camps, including crafts, and I really wanted to see them, too. It was a sad drive home, let me tell you.

Earlier this week the model of the pattern that will be in the back of Blackwork arrived from Kreinik. It is very exotic and beautiful and features a witch’s hat set in a nest of blackwork. In a day or two visit my web site, Monica-Ferris.com, to see a picture of it, though like a lot of needlework, a photograph hasn’t got the impact of a model.

Just for fun, here are some edgy stitchers with a web site. Apparently they are part of a movement of people who knit and crochet things, like huge jackets for sheds, bands for the trunks and branches of trees, and plastic-bag crochet ornamenting pedestrian crossing: http://www.yarnbombing.com./ The photo is of a black and white striped ornamentation put on a Zebra Crossing marker in England, called that because of the black and white stripes painted on the street. (And pronounced "ZEB-Rah.")

The Weight on My Heart

Yesterday, my husband brought me a tray with breakfast in bed to kick off Mother’s Day. As he handed over a box of tissues, he knocked down a glass of water, which flew all over me and the bed and gave me a good soaking. We laughed and laughed.

I’m so lucky to be married to a man I can laugh with. I thought to myself as we cleaned up the mess that I was smart to marry my best friend…after all in about 90 days, it will just be David and me in the house. (Plus the dogs.) Our son, our only child, will go off to college. There’s a heaviness in my heart, a weight that presses down, squeezing and hurting. It’s the weight of sorrow, of knowing my life as a mother is coming to another phase, one of being separated—perhaps forever—from my child. I’ve heard tales of boys who go off to school, find their wives, and don’t come home. And I get this lump in my throat which competes for space with my breath.

But it’s all good. It’s all right.

David and I and Michael have been a threesome for nearly 19 years now. We’ve traveled the world, starting with a trip to Paris when he was 22 months. Then to Cairo when he was 10. Living in the UK, and traveling for 6 weeks in Europe when he was 11. We raised our boy to be a citizen of the world. Did I really think he’d stay within driving distance? No.

The school he’ll attend is a perfect match for him. He’s going to University of Miami in Florida and he’ll study to be a civil engineer. He told us he plans to wear cargo shorts, tee-shirts and sandals every day. He’s asked for a surf board for his graduation gift. He’ll move into his dorm the same week our niece, Lexie, is having her baby, a little boy, so he can learn to change diapers. (We’ve assured him that babies are “chick magnets” for college girls. He’s skeptical….)

It’s all good. So why does this feel like the saddest Mother’s Day I’ve ever had?