The Viable Paradise Kitchen, part 1: Cooking the Books with MacAllister Stone

Viable Paradise workshop takes place each year in October on Martha’s Vineyard. Current instructors include James D. Macdonald, Dr. Debra Doyle, Elizabeth Bear, Steven Gould, Steve Brust, Sherwood Smith, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Each year since 2007, MacAllister Stone, Editor in Chief of Absolute Write, has fed the able hearts and crumbling minds of the annual Viable Paradise workshop with meals that are amazingly good (if you’ve been to VP, you know what I’m talking about), and insidiously healthy. Cooking the Books specializes in examining the intersections between food and fiction. Today, we bring you a public service announcement from Mac herself, about how writers can learn to cook from scratch, fast, rather than out of a bag:

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from MacAllister Stone: 

You. Yes, YOU.

You with the giant-size C*stco bag of pre-fab pasta and chicken and chemicals?

That’s not food. And it’s not really saving you nearly as much time as you think it is.

An alarming number of us think of cooking as this inscrutable, difficult, mysterious process. And when we struggle with ingredients we’re not familiar with and not comfortable using? It turns into one of those stories our spouse’s tell when they’ve had few too many cocktails.

You know the kind of scenario I’m talking about. It goes something like this:

Foxhole Pizza and Interstellar Quail: Cooking the Books with Joe and Gay Haldeman

Joe & Gay Haldeman [Photo: Sharon Tackaberry, 2011]

If you look carefully, you’ll find that diverse meals are served regularly and with gusto at Joe Haldeman’s fictional tables.

Haldeman is the author of award-winning novels including The Forever War (St. Martin’s Press, 1975), Forever Peace (Berkley 1997), Camouflage (Ace, 2004), and, most recently, Earthbound (Ace, 2011), the third book in the Marsbound trilogy.  He and his wife Gay are lifelong travelers and cooks. Haldeman’s cooking experience extends to some startling methodologies, as you’ll see below, and his books often take up cooking-related issues of scarcity, line of supply, and alien foods.

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A Place to Connect: Cooking the Books with Michael Swanwick and Marianne Porter

Among the things you should know about author Michael Swanwick and his wife Marianne Porter, should you be lucky enough to dine with them: your dinner conversations will never be dull when they are near, they are literary epicures of the highest order, and Michael is a consummate storyteller, offering colorful information that may occasion a Look from Marianne.

Furthermore, Marianne is the author of a recipe for “Metaphysically Areferential Chicken.” More about that in a moment.

That this is the first Cooking the Books interview conducted over a meal (although the meal is sadly not Metaphysically Areferential Chicken), is very fitting, given the subject matter. We have gathered to talk about gatherings, conventions, writing, and how a community comes together.

Bug Stew: Part 3

Thus we come to the third, and final part of our interview with the authors of the Journal of Unlikely Entomology. You can find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here. I want to thank all our participating authors for playing along with our odd questions, and, of course, a huge thank you to our most gracious host, Fran Wilde. I hope you all had as much fun with this Cooking the Books interview as I did!

Bug Stew: Part 2

We are pleased to present part two of our three-part interview with the wonderful authors of the Journal of Unlikely Entomology. Part one may be found here.

Many cooks don’t enjoying eating a meal they’ve prepared; they’re more interested in the process than the product. How do you feel about reading your  stories once they’ve been published?

Bug Stew: Part 1

We, your humble guest-bloggers, are very pleased to present a group interview with several of the Journal of Unlikely Entomology’s authors. Not only were these fine wordsmiths foolish kind enough to let us publish their stories in the first place, they’ve extended the kindness by providing insight into the inspiration behind those stories, and indulging our odd questions about cooking and bugs.  I urge you to read their Journal of Unlikely Entomology tales, and seek out their work in general. They are a talented bunch! And now, without further ado, the first segment of our three-part interview, where our authors talk cooking, craft, and creepy-crawlies…

Tell us about the inspiration behind your Journal of Unlikely Entomology story. What inspires you in general, what recharges you when you’re drained or when you’re stuck on a plot point?

How to Brew a Bugzine

In which two intrepid editors ramble on about creating an unlikely journal of bug-themed fiction and art.

I suppose we should start by introducing ourselves. It seems like the polite thing to do, since Fran was kind enough to let us to infest her blog. We are Bernie Mojzes and A.C. Wise, co-editors of the Journal of Unlikely Entomology, an online magazine of  fiction and art about bugs. We publish two full issues per year, with an unspecified number of themed, mini issues scattered in-between. The Journal is in its second year, and we are thrilled by the positive response from authors, artists, readers, and reviewers thus far.

When we first tell people about the Journal of Unlikely Entomology, we generally get one of two reactions: “That is the best name ever!” Or: “Huh. Bugs. Why?” The short answer is, it started as a joke, one which rapidly turned into, “Y’know, we could actually make something of this…” For the longer (and racier) answer, you’ll have to find us at a con, and ask in person.

Obviously the first thing one should do when considering some stressful and foolhardy action which affects others (such as having a dinner party, or putting together a publication), is to try to talk yourself out of it.

For us, this process went something like this:

The Chimerical Kitchen: Cooking the Books with Elizabeth Bear

What’s on the menu in your favorite new read?

If you’re reading a book by Elizabeth Bear, you’re likely to come across a well-provisioned table, or two.

Cover for Range of Ghosts

Bear, the award-winning science fiction and fantasy author and purveyor of the delicious salt caramels currently gracing my desk, knows that food and cooking are key to worldbuilding. In many of her 23 novels, you’ll find reference to, if not outright instructions for, how a particular culture feeds itself.

This is true for her upcoming novel Range of Ghosts, although some of the meals are not for the faint of heart.

“Marmot, for instance,” says Bear.  But we’ll get to that in a moment.

For now, you should know that there is a lot of food in Range of Ghosts, a novel that chronicles the adventures of Temur, heir-in-exile to the Khaganate, and Once-Princess Samarkar, former heir to the Rasan Empire.

Range of Ghosts debuts March 27, 2012, from Tor Books.

Recipes for Darkness : Cooking the Books with Gregory Frost

Cover from Frost’s WIP notebook (Not a book cover.)

In author Gregory Frost’s new novel-in-progress, something is wrong in the 1840s White House* of John Tyler.

Actually, a lot of things are wrong.  The place is filthy, people keep dying, and Tyler’s daughter-in-law, a former actress (pearlclutch, gasp), is in charge of throwing two parties a week, under the tutelage of D.C. doyenne Dolley Madison.

Things couldn’t get much worse. Or could they?

Oh, they certainly could, Frost assures us. But we’ll have to wait for the book to find out how.  In the meantime, Frost generously agreed to visit and talk about the research he did into the 1840s kitchen of the Tyler presidency.

Cooking the Books: Elephant Stew with Steven Gould

Author Steven Gould, styling a favored kimono

You’ve probably seen an article or two dedicated to “eating an elephant” – in other words, taking on a huge task.  But what about serving one up?  Writing a novel, for instance, that’s more like cooking an elephant, right?

About a month ago, author Steven Gould and I were talking about offbeat, sometimes fictional, recipes.  Gould is the author of eight novels, including 7th Sigma (2011), Jumper (1992), Reflex (2004), and Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007), as well as numerous short stories. He has recently finished his next novel, Impulse.  He is also an instructor at the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop.  When I mentioned the infamous Elephant Stew recipe, Steven pointed out that it sounded like instructions for a novel.  He then kindly agreed (read: was pestered) into being interviewed on why the two are similar.

Although, we’re nowhere near the first to draw the parallel between cooking and writing*, I kept thinking about the monumental task of writing a novel, and the equally monumental task of cooking an elephant, and decided the best way to address both was by taking on a third gargantuan task (the author interview) in order to press the point.

So. Just in time for the conclusion of NaNoWriMo, we bring you: Elephant Stew.

(No elephants have been stewed for the purposes of this blog.  This recipe was listed as ‘humorous’ in an antique cookbook.)