Table of Contents: From Breakfast With Anita Diamant to Dessert With James Patterson - a Generous Helping of Recipes, Writings and Insights From Today's Bestselling Authors (31 page)

1
In a large saucepan or soup pot, sauté onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil until the vegetables are soft, approximately 8–10 minutes. Add garlic, and sauté for another minute.

2
Add tomato sauce, basil, oregano, stock, water, bouillon cubes, and vegetables. Simmer for at least 45 minutes.

3
Add beans and pasta. Simmer until pasta is soft. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with grated Parmesan or Romano cheese. Some fresh bread is always nice, too.

Elena Seibert

SELECTED WOEKS

Lark & Termite
(2009)

MotherKind
(2000)

Shelter
(1994)

Machine Dreams
(1984)

Black Tickets
(1979)

The Risk and Joy of Writing
For me, writing is about risk and joy; the risk of never knowing where the book will lead and the joy of seeing it through, living with the material for many years until the connection becomes a (spiritual) relationship. Writing is a spiritual practice, actually, in which the writer redeems or saves stories that would otherwise be lost. My books have a core of truth around which the story illuminates and expands.
Black Tickets
looks at the mobility and energized anger of post-1970s America in brief, language-infused stories;
Machine Dreams
tallies the cost of the Vietnam War at home; Shelter follows a group of children to a primal wilderness where they confront good (in one another) and evil;
MotherKind
traces a birth/death arc in the lives of one mother and daughter;
Lark & Termite
portrays love as stronger than death, and makes real the connections between parallel worlds linked by the characters.

Readers Should Know
Lark & Termite
was a Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; the paperback is perfect for book groups. The world of the 1950s, Lark's love for Termite (whose intense perceptions comprise the “living secret” of the novel), the connections between parallel worlds, and the numerous, answered mysteries, make for complex conversations and discussion.

Readers Frequently Ask
The questions are always different, depending on the book, but many ask where the story started. I wrote an epigraph/disclaimer for my first book,
Black Tickets
, published in 1979 when I was twenty-six, that still holds true:
“These stories began in what is real, but became, in fact, dreams. Love or loss lends a reality to what is imagined.”

Influences on My Writing
A Death in the Family
by James Agee;
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner, and
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
- all for their language, their knowledge of dimensions beyond life, and their understanding of passion and loss.

Makes 6 servings

My mother's original
Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book
, copyright 1947, is one of my most prized possessions. She married in 1948 (see my novel,
Machine Dreams
) and began raising a family in 1950. The thick book long ago sprung free of its binding and is packed with recipes she wrote out by hand. She gleaned recipes from women's clubs and friends, inherited them from her own mother, or simply invented them. I was surprised to see homemade cards and notes from me (see
MotherKind
) folded into the pages. “Hometown Meat Loaf” was a staple at our house, and it was one way she made sure her children ate oatmeal.

Lark & Termite
is about a brother and sister (the title characters) growing up in the late 1950s, in a world full of family secrets. Lark, seventeen, believes that her brother Termite, who doesn't talk or walk, has his own intense perceptions. Their maternal aunt, Nonie, raises them, and her fierce protective love never wavers. Nonie and her longtime boyfriend, Charlie, run a family restaurant that serves up “home cooked” meals. Charlie's meatloaf is a specialty, and it is definitely my mother's recipe, transformed into a basis for argument between Charlie and his penny-pinching mother, Gladdy. Charlie is a beloved character with a complicated history, who watches over Lark and Termite like family.

I like to think of Charlie and Nonie, making this as a Friday night special, while Termite sits on his special stool at the counter and Lark sits beside him, filling the napkin containers.

1
Preheat oven to 350°F.

2
Combine beef, oats, eggs, onion, tomato juice, salt, and pepper in a large bowl, using your hands. Pack half of mixture into a 9″ × 5″ × 3″ loaf pan, lay cheese on top, and cover with remaining meat mixture.

3
Sprinkle freshly ground pepper over top, then top with your favorite kind of ketchup or salsa. Bake for 1 hour, or until meat thermometer inserted in center reads 160°F. Lark and Termite have a brother-sister relationship of uncommon sweetness and depth. Lark, at seventeen, has been her nine-year-old brother's protector, attuned to his wants and needs as Termite is unable to walk or talk. Termite was nearly a year old when “somebody brought him. Not your mother. Somebody brought him for her.” Lark tells us he never had a birth certificate. They count the day he came his birthday, but she declares it his birthday when it suits her, with one of her delicious cakes and candles. Lark's second section of
Lark & Termite
(“I decorate the cake …”) describes one of her cakes in detail, and ends as she whispers to Termite, “Your birthday, Termite, every day.”

Here are two of Lark's cakes, both my mother's recipes from handwritten notes. Food is love, and in Lark and Termite's Winfield, West Virginia, world in 1959, love is always frosted, and the icing is on the cake.

Makes 12 servings

Note:
The preparation time for this cake is an hour or so, but the results are worth it!

1
Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease 2 9″ round baking pans.

2 To make the cake:
Sift together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Place white chocolate morsels in a small, microwave-safe bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Heat in microwave at high power for 30-second intervals, stirring after each interval, until melted, about 1–1½ minutes total. Set aside to cool.

3
In large bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar on high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to medium and add egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add melted chocolate and vanilla, and combine. Add ¼ of flour mixture and beat just until incorporated. Then add 1/3 of the buttermilk and beat just until incorporated. Continue alternating the flour mixture and buttermilk, ending with the flour mixture. Gently stir in pecans and coconut.

4
In a separate bowl of an electric mixer, beat egg whites on high speed until stiff. Add egg whites to batter. Fold egg whites into batter by using the edge of a large spatula to cut a path down the middle of the mixture. Then, gently turn half the mixture over onto the other half. Continue to cut down the middle and turn a portion over, only until the egg whites are incorporated. (This technique helps the egg whites retain air for a fluffier cake.)