The next step . . . and measurment problems.

It's been a busy month. The holidays kept coming and there wasn't much time to work on the book. Holiday season starts a couple of weeks before Rosh Hashana and (this year) ended with Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday. Each weekend was another holiday and it kept us hopping at the store.

Between holidays, I managed to squeak out enough time to finish testing all of the recipes. I even put everything together in a (really large) Word file. So we've moved on to the next step. Right now I have a couple of family members reading through the book doing a basic edit -- the first of many. I'm spending my time working on some formatting and photos.

I'm trying to work out what to do with the formatting. When my first book was published I sent in the manuscript for the first round of edits and got a note back that all of the weight measurements needed to be converted to volumes. It's not uncommon for North American publishers to say no to weights and insist on volumes -- in fact, there's a great discussion topic on this subject over at the eG Forums (click). You'll see that many of the posts on this topic are strongly pro weight measurements.

Some of the arguments publishers give for going with volume are that most home cooks don't have scales in their kitchens and that the North American public doesn't want weights. I'd say the truth about what the public wants lies somewhere in the middle. Many cooks like to use weights because the results are more consistent. Many home cooks use volume. So I'm trying to include both.

The next question is metric vs. Imperial measurements. I plan on including both. The question is how do you include all of that information in a way that's still easy to read and understand? It's a lot of numbers to include for each ingredient and I'm trying to figure out the best way to present it.

Do you have a preference?

What's in a name? Help name my book!

I'm not yet done writing my Passover cookbook, but with self-publishing comes a whole bunch of tasks that I didn't have to worry about with the first book. I need to get an ISBN number, get it registered with certain sites and libraries and take a look at how I'm going to distribute it or get it sold.

As I look through guides that my printer sent and try to navigate Amazon's Advantage program (it allows self-published authors to list their books), I'm beginning to realize that I have to figure out what I'm going to call this one. When I talk about it, I call it 'the Passover (or Pesach) cookbook'. Not very catchy.

I've gone through a long list of titles, but nothing really seems right. This book has a real mix of traditional Ashkenazi recipes and what I would call non-traditional recipes. So "Passover Recipes From My Bubbe's Table" isn't an option; nor is "New Age Passover Cooking".

So what I'm going to do is ask you to come up with some suggestions. Send me a title (or several) via email, a comment here, on twitter @pamreiss or Facebook. When I've chosen a title, the person who came up with it will get my gratitude and a copy of the book when it's printed.

Shana tova u'metukah!

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks because we've been swamped at work. When I'm not working on my cookbook, I work in the family business. For the last two weeks it's been non-stop -- helping customers do their holiday shopping and then preparing food for hundreds.

With only a couple of orders left to be picked up and a few more to be delivered, I just wanted to take a moment to wish everybody a happy, healthy, peaceful, prosperous and sweet new year. I hope 5770 turns out to be a wonderful year for all.

Shabbat shalom and shana tova,

Pam

Cooking, Tweeting and the CBC

In April, I signed up with Twitter. As a soon-to-be self-published-writer, I thought that I had to take advantage of any and all marketing tools. Especially the free ones. I've since made some interesting connections and no longer think of it as just a marketing tool. But, it is a good one.

As I cook my way through the recipes for the upcoming Passover book, I tweet about it. Just little notes (under 140 characters) letting people know what I'm working on. Sometimes I'll ask for some input (ie: Matzo Balls - Floaters or Sinkers?), sometimes I'll complain about a failed attempt (ie: today there was a power failure while I was baking a pie crust -- the oven and timer timer shut off -- will have to try that one again.)

My account is set up so that whatever I tweet then gets posted on Facebook as my new status. So an interesting thing happened last week. I got a phone call from a CBC radio producer that I know and she asked me if I'd talk about my summer of cooking on the radio. She's been reading my cooking updates all summer and thought it would be a good segment. Sounds a little like some other blog/movie that's been getting a lot of press about a writer cooking her way through a book.

I've done a bit of radio and TV since my first book came out. And I feel more comfortable doing it now, but there's still a bit of nerves each time. I think I overcompensate by talking a mile-a-minute. Have you ever listened to an interview and been annoyed because the interviewee didn't answer a direct question? I have. But then I realized that when I do these interviews, I just ramble so much that by the time I'm done answering the question I have no idea of what the question actually was.

I don't fully know what I said during the interview -- but vaguely recall that I talked about my books and cooking. My mother was happy that something I said made the interviewer laugh. Many people who heard the segment contacted me to tell me they enjoyed it. So in the end, we decided it was a success.

Newspaper reviews . .

Not for the book. This morning I woke up to find a nice write-up about our business in the Winnipeg Free Press. You can read it here. No time to get any book work done today - the phone won't stop ringing.

Shabbat shalom!

Running out of time . . .

I've been working frantically to finish recipe testing. I'm at the point where I think I'm done with new recipes -- though if something strikes me, I'll have to give it a try. Now I'm going through my files and re-testing recipes I've developed over the last 3-4 years.

It's interesting to see what I was doing back then. A couple of recipes were eliminated immediately after reading, a few were eliminated after trying. A few of them were gems. But even some of the gems needed a little tweaking and they all need good editing. I just spent an hour going through all of the recipes I tagged "Passover" and I have 30-35 recipes to cook through over then next couple of weeks.

The rush is because Rosh Hashanah will be here soon. I know most people won't give it much thought for a couple of weeks, but I've got to be ahead of the game. My real job involves a lot of sourcing and ordering for our store. I spend hours going through product lists, on the internet looking for suppliers and on the phone trying to find out what is or isn't available.

This year, for instance, I've been having a hard time finding Israeli honey. None of the kosher food suppliers that I use have any on their lists. It's not imperative that the honey be from Israel, but I like to have a selection of honeys available and the Israel part is a nice bonus. (An assortment of honeys is a nice gift to take if you're going to dinner for R.H.) So it took 2 days, but I think I found a source - not a food supplier but a Judaica company.

It's not just about the honey. I spend a lot of time working on meat orders with my dad (he's our meat department), guessing how many briskets and turkeys (and chickens and lamb, etc) we'll sell out of the store and how many we'll need for the prepared food part of the business. Then we need to put together an order form for prepared foods and somebody had to do an ad for the newspaper. And finally, I make sure the store is stocked with all of the essentials our customers might need for the holiday (kasha, noodles for kugel, yortzeit and Shabbat candles, etc).

So that's all taken care of. Our first big order arrived late Friday and now we spend a couple of weeks getting more orders in and taking orders from customers. Before you know it, we'll all have to be in the store helping customers and in the kitchen prepping food.

And that's where the urgency is coming from. For the book to be ready to print in January, the recipes should be finished before Rosh Hashana. By finished, I mean tested and typed (hopefully). There will still be a lot to do after the recipes are done, so I'm giving myself a RH deadline. Besides, it's kind of nice to think that the testing work will be done by the new year. The question is, will it?

Supurfluous U's and Different Names

I'm Canadian. I'm telling you this because the target market for kosher cookbooks would be the USA, not Canada.

When I wrote the first draft of my first book, I didn't give a lot of thought to my spelling. If it was spelled correctly, that's what mattered. I also used names for produce that I have always used. It didn't even occur to me that this would be an issue. So when the US rights to my book were bought by an American publisher, it surprised me when I got a request to do a major edit of the whole book before it went to press.

See, there were a number of things that were fine for my Canadian editor, but for the American public, they had to be changed. At first I questioned the request. I thought then, and continue to think, that Americans wouldn't have a problem with an extra u in flavour or colour. But then I realized that if that little issue would make it a 'better' book for my target market, it wasn't too much to ask for. Just time on my part.

With the spelling changed and dozens of u's deleted, we moved on to food names. The first one to go was "English cucumber". Nope, it had to be "long seedless cucumber". "Roma tomato" needed to be "plum tomato". Etc. Now I find myself asking questions like "do more people say green onions or scallions?". A little poll I took today was no help. The respondents were almost split in half.

So what do you do when you're writing a book? Do you do what is natural for you and correct or do you tailor the book for another country (which is also correct -- but different)? And how do you decide what to do when there's no clear answer?

Next question to ponder: Metric or Imperial? Probably both.

Difference of Opinion

I've been talking to everybody I know about Jewish food for the last few months. (A lot longer than that, but really focused on it now.) The most interesting thing to me is that my sister and I have opposite views on the important things. We grew up in the same house and had the same parents and grandparents cooking for us, so how did our preferences diverge so widely?

For instance:

* Matzo Balls - I like them fluffy. Not super-fluffy so they're falling apart, but fluffy so it's not like I'm eating a cement ball. My sister feels that they should be firm enough that they'll bounce off the floor and hit the ceiling if you toss one.
* Fried Matzo #1 - I like it sweet with syrup drizzled on top. She likes it savoury with butter and salt or some sautéed vegetables.
* Fried Matzo #2- I prefer using the pancake method - one single pancake of fried matzo, nice and brown on both sides. She's of the "scrambled eggs" technique. You mix it up as it cooks and it doesn't form that nice crust ("I don't like it crusty!" says she. "Oh, I do" says I.)
* Even though we're (both) Ashkenazi, I like to say that I have the taste buds of an Ashkenazi and her taste buds are Sephardi. A chicken dish I made last week was liked by all, but my lips went a little numb and I made the comment "cut back on the chili powder a little". Her response "no, it's good."

This is just a sampling, I'm sure I could go on. Check back later for a new post, potential title "My Mother Prefers More Salt - I Prefer More Pepper"

Cooking & Tasting

Last week I took a few days off of work so I could spend the time at home, working on recipes for the cookbook. I got a lot done, but not as much as I had planned.

I'm going through my lists of tested recipes and to-test recipes, trying to figure out what's left to do. The problem is that I keep thinking of new ideas, so the to-test list isn't really getting any smaller.

In the last week or so I've worked on:

* potato latkes (not just for Chanukah!)
* zucchini/leek latkes
* sweet potato ginger latkes
* matzo balls
* zucchini/spinach/chicken soup (needs a good name)
* brownies
* meringue cookies with toasted coconut/almonds/chocolate chips
* sautéed eggplant & roasted pepper salad
* an old-school beef flanken recipe
* blueberry coffee-cake
* sweet potato/apple side dish
* roast chicken with roasted vegetables - a little sweet, a little spicy
* matzo brei (can't have passover without one recipe -- will do at least two -- one sweet, one savoury and maybe a couple of other variations)
* strawberry/blueberry conserves for the matzo brei ( it would also be good on matzo)

Some of the recipes I've been making for years and just needed to be written down. Some are new for me and have to be tried a few times, tweaking things here and there. Some recipes (like a brisket I cooked on Sunday) just don't work at all and aren't worth tweaking. Those are the most frustrating.

While I normally count on immediate family members for taste-testing (don't worry, there are no critiques more honest -- sometimes brutally honest -- than those of your parents and siblings), I was lucky enough to have some extended family visiting from out-of-town.


This little 2-year-old thought the sweet potato and ginger latkes were just fine . . . and she stopped eating them after latke #4 or 5.

The 6 dozen latkes made that afternoon were gone quickly. And it was a lot of fun having the kitchen full of family, grabbing the latkes as soon as they came out of the pan. It's true -- these Chanukah treats are as good in April or August as they are in December.

So I'm moving along in the kitchen, and getting as much typing done as I can between customers. It's almost time to start thinking about what has to happen when the cooking is all done. Just not yet.

It's all about the recipes.

For me, the best part about working on a cookbook is the recipe development and testing. Well, that's usually true. Sometimes the testing can be less than fun -- when I'm trying something for the 6th time and it's still not right. At that point I'm no longer enjoying myself.

The part I'm not as fond of is typing up the recipes. I procrastinate and can't do a long stretch without checking the eG forums and then Twitter and Facebook multiple times. When I wrote the last book I didn't have these distractions -- in fact, I spent a good chunk of time up at the lake doing nothing but typing.

Again, I think this probably has something to do with the self-publishing vs. using a publisher. No one's setting deadlines for me but me. So I'm trying to figure out how to lay down the law -- with myself.

I've been pretty good with the testing. Every day that I haven't been at work, I've been working on recipes. I've put all of my recipes into a spreadsheet so I can see what I have and what I still need. It's looking good and the end is in sight. I've made arrangements to take the rest of the week off from the family business. I'll spend the next few days working on recipes and there won't be much left on my recipe to-do list.

I'd like to take a couple of weeks cooking/baking the recipes that I wrote a few years ago. I haven't made some of them in 2+ years and I'd like to include weights -- something I didn't do then. Then it's on to typing.

I've tried to keep up with the typing. Typing as many recipes as possible between customers at the store. But I still have a stack of 20+ recipes that need to be typed, plus whatever I get done in the next couple of weeks. Then on to editing and writing the bits that go before and between the recipes.

There are so many things that I have to think about this time that I didn't give a thought to with the last book. I've started researching printers and shipping, layouts and photos -- but I can't devote a lot of time to these other areas until the recipes are done.

The good news is that I'm still on track and should be able to have the book done for Passover 2010, but there's a lot to do.