BIG WEENERS, SENSE OF PLACE & SHE HAD ME AT HELLO

And the Big Weener, in the first of twelve big give-aways, all part of our Year of Reading Dangerously, is (drum roll please...) - Teri in CO! Congratulations Teri! Now if you will be so kind as to send your mailing address to me at becky.lane(at)vownet.net, I will get your book in the mail to you first thing tomorrow. (you know that (at) really means @ don't you, and that I'm just trying to keep some bot from latching on to my email address and sending me a bunch of spam?)

So what did she win, what did she win? (I'm sure you are all clamoring) Teri will receive a copy of Nantucket Open-House Cookbook, by Sarah Leah Chase. Why a cookbook, of all things? Well, this is no ordinary cookbook. Years ago, when my children were small, I started working part-time for a friend who was a caterer, on the days when the kids were at pre-school and mother's-day-out. One of my duties was to cull out all her favorite recipes from her stash of 100's of cookbooks, and transfer them to the computer. One cookbook in particular caught my attention, in a way that no other ever had. First of all, my friend always believed that you were lucky, when you bought a new cookbook, if it had more than one or two recipes that were keepers. This book had dozens that we used over and over again. But that wasn't the reason it grabbed me. Its hook was that it also told a story, one about a young girl falling in love "not with a person or an ideal or even a cuisine, but with of all things, an island - Nantucket Island."

When she was thirteen, Sarah went to summer in Nantucket as a mother's helper for a favorite aunt and uncle, who ran a fascinating antiques business on the island. While every single aspect of Nantucket seemed to strike her fancy with magical power, it was the creations and flavors of her aunt's kitchen that were to linger most indelibly. She learned several essential lessons that were to have a grand influence on her development. One was that plentiful food and exciting people go together. Another was that there was something in her aunt's style of cooking that intuitively captured the very essence of Nantucket. What she discovered there, I suspect, was the same thing I discovered when I first picked up this book, and have been searching for myself ever since - a sense of place.

Sarah went on to college to study language and philosophy, but had a change of heart when she realized her stack of Gourmet magazines had superceded in thickness her senior honors thesis on language. She decided instead to open a food shop on Nantucket, called Que Sera Sarah, and later became the first in my collection, of authors who had discovered their heart's home, and set about living the good life. In her introduction to Open-House Cookbook, she says "I have learned how to cook fish so that it summarizes the sea, to arrange tomatoes in alternating splashes of red and orange in tribute to Madaket sunsets, and to seal memories of September in jars of beach plum jam." Like I said before, she had me at hello.

So happy reading Teri, and to anyone else who wishes to pick up a copy of this book at Half-Price, or from the library. In addition to the story it tells, I highly recommend the Baby Chiles Rellenos with Tomatillo Dipping Sauce. And don't forget to drop by Teri's blog (http://sweetbriarcottage.blogspot.com) to congratulate her!