Eat All About It

I only met Sheila Lukins once, but it was a meeting to remember.  Oddly, my husband brought it up just hours before we learned of her untimely death. We had been talking about the logistics of eating with visiting authors, a pricier practice now than when I had an expense account for working lunches. Lukins, though, wouldn’t let me pick up the check last year even when I assured her it wouldn’t come out of my mom-of-two-with-a-broken-stove budget; that it would be reimbursed by my then-employer,  who had just paid $500 million cash for a “resplendent” new Manhattan skyscraper. She still wouldn’t drop the bill. “I want to get this,” I remember her saying in her hoarse voice. “I like you!”

Coming from the woman who, as Nancy Leson wrote, was everyone’s kitchen girlfriend, that was a memory as worth savoring as a plate of Skewered Shrimp With Prosciutto, the first dish I remember cooking from my college roommate’s Silver Palate Cookbook.

I wrote a little more about the lunch, and how impressed I was with Lukins, assistant Laurie Griffith, and their final cookbook,  here in today’s Christian Science Monitor. 

I’ve been trying to find obituaries that do her justice, or tell me more than the basic well-trod storyline of her life. (Maybe what I really want is a biography. Anyone out there planning one?)

So far, Morton Goldfein has one of the best remembrances I’ve found, here in the Huffington Post.

Farming is a different enterprise entirely when it’s done near a city. Photographer Roddy Scheer has spent the past year documenting that life, and his new exhibit, “Agriculture on the Urban Fringe: Farming and Conservation in the Snoqualmie Valley” will open Sept. 20 at Novelty Hill-Januik Winery in Woodinville.

The exhibit (including the image on the left) will be on display through Nov. 1, but the opening night’s celebration will include music, food and wine from local “salmon-safe” farms and vineyard, and guided tours by Scheer. Cost: $35, benefiting Stewardship Partners and its Salmon Safe certification. For tickets, call Nikki Dunbar at the winery, 425-481-5502, x104.

And if you can’t make it, you can still feast your eyes on a few more of Scheer’s pictures below. (more…)

When people ask me where to go for advice on food writing, I often tell them to talk to Kathleen Flinn, author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry,
who is both a fine writer and remarkably good at helping others figure out the publishing world. When I spoke in her class at Hugo House earlier this year, I only wished I’d gotten there earlier to write down more tips for myself.

Kathleen is teaching another Introduction to Food Writing class Nov. 14-15. Details are here. The cost is $192 for Hugo House members; $213.50 for non-members, but you still have time to snag a chance at a free reserved spot. Just send your name and phone number to bumbershoot@kathleenflinn.com by 12:01 a.m. Sept. 9. One lucky winner gets a free spot in the class plus a signed copy of her book.

The new book by James McWilliams, Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, set out to be provocative, and I guess I got provoked. My review of it is in today’s Christian Science Monitor here.