Kari invited me to an event at the library that sounded like fun. Two local women recently published cookbooks–one on soups and one on pastries–and were the guests at a book signing event.

The moderator had excellent questions and the two women had interesting answers. The hour-long event went by too quickly. Both women have always loved cooking. The “pastry lady” has a local bakery; I don’t remember if the soup lady works at a restaurant or not. Some of the interesting things they said in the interview portion of the evening included the following:

–When people ask me how long it took to write my cookbook, I tell them “30 years.” It only took 4 months to get the book published, but she had perfected her recipes over a 30-year period.

–When you write a cookbook that you want people to use, you have to be very clear in your directions. You cannot assume their knowledge of cooking matches yours, so you need to define terms like “simmer,” “cream,” “fold,” “dice,” etc. If they don’t understand your directions, their end result will not be successful and they’ll never open the cookbook again.

–You can’t take a recipe you’ve make at the bakery in a batch that yields 5 dozen pastries and divide it by 6 to yield only 10 pastries for a home cook. The proportions of the ingredients change with the size of the batch of dough.

–When asked which ingredient they could never do without, the two women looked at each other, laughed, and simultaneously said, “Butter!”

Kari and I each bought a soup cookbook and had the author (pink sweater) sign our copies.

As you can see, I’ve already selected the first 5 soup recipes I want to try.

A few days later, Kari was out shopping and saw the pastry book on display (“Made. by Lia”).

It was a fun night out and we’re both looking forward to some new items on our home menus.