Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food
Useful Tips, Interviews, and Stories to Inspire Food Writers and Bloggers
Yes, The Best Cookbook in the World is a real award for The Artful Baker: Extraordinary Desserts From an Obsessive Home Baker. And you can win a copy of this $50 book by leaving a comment below.
Cenk Sonmezsoy, a Turk who started his Cafe Fernando food blog in 2006, won Best in the World at the 2015 Gourmand World Cookbooks awards. It was for the [Read more…] about Giveaway: “Best Cookbook in the World,” The Artful Baker
What? You don’t have a signed copy of the new edition of Will Write for Food?
No problem. To celebrate its one-year anniversary, I am giving away two free copies, signed and mailed. [Read more…] about Win a Signed Copy of Will Write for Food
Author Elizabeth Minchilil has lived in Italy since age 12.
Ever since journalist Elizabeth Minchilli started a blog, Elizabeth Minchilli in Rome, in 2009, she’s been leading food tours, creating apps on where to eat in Italy, taking videos of chefs and cooks, and she rents out an apartment too. Minchilli has written six books, most recently Eating Rome: Living the Good Life in the Eternal City, a terrific part memoir, part guidebook and part cookbook.
I interviewed Minchilli about her career, photography, and lifestyle:
Q. Your life in Rome seems so glamorous. You’re dining at fantastic restaurants, pressing olive oil and making pizza with masters. Is it really so stylish and all Sophia Loren?
A. Not Sophia Loren. I don’t think of it as glamour and style but [Read more…] about Love Italy? Enter My Book Giveaway: Eating Rome
Pancake and other dry mixes are a feature of Cooking Light’s The Good Pantry.
I don’t know about you but my pantry is out of control.
There are pestos, frozen kaffir leaves, and stocks bulging out of freezer drawers. Little jars of unfinished sauces linger in the fridge. Costco bags of nuts, frozen berries, and fish snooze in the chest freezer downstairs.
And don’t even ask how many kinds of oils and vinegars I keep in the cupboard in a Lazy Susan, along with [Read more…] about Cookbook Giveaway: The Good Pantry
“When you hit a wall, kick it in.”
That’s the advice playwright Sam Shepard gave to musician Patti Smith early in her career. She had said to him, “I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations” and that was his response.
Sound familiar? This line from Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, inspired author Barbara Abercrombie to write Kicking in the Wall: A Year of Writing Exercises, Prompts and Quotes to Help You Break Through Your Blocks and Reach Your Writing Goals.
Inside are 365 five-minute writing exercises, a great way to jumpstart your writing for the new year. Dip in and pick [Read more…] about Book Giveaway and 2 Classes Coming Up
Are you a funny food writer? Let’s see your stuff.
And if you’re not, maybe these funny writing samples below will inspire you. Here are several that have tickled me lately:
1. David Lebovitz has been been honing his offbeat, irreverent humor for years on his blog and in books. A sample from The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious — And Perplexing — City shows his puzzlement of Parisian hot chocolate:
“Many visitors get a lost, misty-eyed look when describing the ultrathick, steamy chocolate chaud that glops and blurts as it’s poured into dainty white cups…
Me? I can barely swallow the sludge.
You need to clam my mouth closed and massage my neck to get that hyperthick stuff down the hatch– like forcing a dog to swallow a pill. That throat-clogging liquid hits my tummy with a thud and refuses to budge for the rest of the day. I just don’t get its appeal.”
I’d call this example curmudgeonly, in an adorable way. I love the image of someone massaging his neck, and I recognize that “thud” in the belly.
2. Comedian George Carlin, always a crack-up, wrote these gems about restaurant food and waffle irons in Brain Droppings:
“There are certain clues that tell you how much a restaurant will cost. If the word cuisine appears in the advertising, it will be expensive. If they use the word food, it will be moderately priced. However, if the sign says eats, even though you’ll save some money on food, your medical bills may be quite high.”
“I don’t like trendy food. When I hear, ‘sauteed boneless panda groin,’ I know I’m [Read more…] about Humor Writing Contest: Win a Copy of The Sweet Life in Paris
If you made a New Year’s resolution to avoid white flour, white sugar and other processed foods, Deliciously Organic is the cookbook for you.
Modeled after Carrie Vitt’s blog of the same name, with pretty photographs by blogger Helene Dujardin, her book shows you how to prepare healthy, wholesome dishes without sacrificing taste.
Carrie asked me to edit the recipes for the book. At first, I was dubious about organic recipes, thinking that they wouldn’t be too different from regular ones, except the ingredients would all say “organic.”
But that misconception downplays the mouthwatering recipes and new (to me) cooking techniques and ingredients in the book. Even though I buy mostly organic products, I learned new things, such as [Read more…] about Cookbook Giveaway: Deliciously Organic