I’m a creature of habit. I don’t like change. Which explains why once I settle into a routine I’m all about inertia and am unlikely to budge. A couple instances to illustrate this: I’m coming up on a 1500 day streak of daily language study on Duolingo. Need another example? Well there’s the small matter of ten years of this weekly blog, serving up the memories of meals of more than 500 authors.

I awoke this morning with the realization that breaking my inertia would be a good thing. A welcome thing. That the reason for doing something should be because I choose to do it, not because I’ve surrendered to the habit of it. So I’ll keep my Duolingo streak through 1500 days, and after I’ll still keep using the app to study languages, but if I miss a day, if my streak ends, that’s fine. Indeed, I might even get more pleasure out of it as a result.

And the same here with EATING AUTHORS. I’ll probably stop the weekly posting soon — I have a few other authors’ meals “in the can” and it would be unfair not to run them. But before the end of August, Mondays will come and go without the need for a post here. I may continue to do such posts, but going forward they won’t be regular or as frequent. We’ll see. Likewise, I’ll curtail the supplemental email that goes out to the folks who have subscribed to my newsletter. They’ll still get the monthly updates, but not the weekly Monday morning reminder and link to each current episode.

And we’re all going to be okay with that. Trust me.

But while I’m still here, let me do some good. This week’s guest is Sanam Asif, a Pakistani author who came to my attention when she reported how she’d gotten screwed over by a local publishing house. Sanam is an indie author trying to eke out a career in a country that apparently has little or no resources or support for indie authors. Fortunately, the community of indie authors is global, and quickly responded to her plight, with a couple of high profile members stepping up to offer to pay the printing costs that she incurred when the publishing house bailed on her. In that same spirit I reached out and asked her if I could do my part to boost her signal by featuring her here and help spread the word of her work.

And hey, maybe this being the week that I announce that I’m stepping away from this blog will make it a landmark of sorts that draws even more folks to check out her books. Bonus!

When she’s not writing fantasy romance, Sanam works from home as an Upwork freelancer, and also finds time to practice her entrepreneurial skills with an online natural skincare business. She’s married with two kids and a cat. She also introduced me to the word paracosm, which you’d think I’d know since I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember.

LMS: Welcome, Sanam. Please tell me about your most memorable meal.

SA: I am one of those people who enjoy their food. So, you can say I am a bit of a Foodie. Never in my life was I able to go on a diet because of my sheer love of food.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I had high blood pressure and hyperemesis gravidarum, which is a fancy word for extreme nausea. So I was basically waiting for the baby to be born so I could enjoy a decent meal and keep it down.

Before I tell you about the most memorable meal of my life, let me give you a little intro about my Dad. He was the kind of man who wasn’t comfortable showing his affection. He was always strict with my siblings and me. But the day I gave birth to my daughter, something changed in him.

In Pakistan, it is customary for a woman to live at her parent’s home for a few days after giving birth. So when I came home from the hospital, my sisters were at work, and it was only me, my newborn daughter, and my parents. It has been ten years, but I still remember as if it were yesterday. My Dad asked what I wanted to eat, and I told him I want something spicy.

The man, who would never step into the kitchen, rushed to the market and got all the ingredients to make Haleem, a traditional Pakistani dish that includes wheat, barley, meat, and lentils. Then, following a recipe on Youtube, he prepared the meal, and all the while, I just stared in awe at him cooking. Since my mother had dementia and couldn’t cook, I knew he wanted me to feel loved and cared for.

Later, I helped him set the table, and it was just us three, me, my Mom, and Dad. The Haleem my Dad made for me that day is the most memorable meal of my life.

My parents are in heaven now, and no matter how many fancy meals I try, this one tops them all.

#SFWApro

The last few days are a bit of a blur that included the three-day 28th annual conference of the Klingon Language Institute — or as we like to call it, the qep’a’ cha’maH chorghDIch. Unfortunately for me, a freak storm (though some insist a tornado was involved) hit my area late the day before the conference, toppling trees and pulling down power lines. It knocked out the power here for 46 hours and there was also the small matter of an electrical cable that hung five feet off the ground spanning the entrance to my driveway so for most of that time in addition to being without electricity, we couldn’t leave. I got by, carefully husbanding various battery packs and overtaxing the hotspots produced by my phone, managing to put in some limited time at the conference. Eventually the power came back, we dealt with the horror of what had gone on in the freezer, and I returned to the conference. It was, as it always is, glorious! We had over 100 people attending, connecting from all around the globe. Hard to believe that I started all of this 30 years ago on a lark.

But I overdid it at the conference Thursday through Saturday, and paid for that indulgence on Sunday. I was tired all day, to the point where it’s about 10pm as I write this for you to be reading at 7:30 tomorrow morning. So, sorry, but no segue to cleverly introduce Wendy Van Camp, who is this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest.

Typically, the people who share their meals here are novelists, but after 72 hours of speaking Klingon, I’m okay bending the rules a bit. Wendy doesn’t just write science fiction, but also regency romance and, more significantly, poetry. She’s also incredibly organized, as I learned when we did a panel together on “Juggling Multiple Projects” for SFFcon last month. And she’s old-school, making use of day-timers and filofaxes and notebooks, generating calendars and scheduling entire years in advance, freeing up time for working on her own projects.

Wendy is also the creator behind No Wasted Ink, a blog on the craft of writing that features author interviews, sci-fi and fantasy book reviews and poetry, and her a scifaiku poetry collection, The Planets was a finalist for the Elgin Award.

In addition, a little tidbit that I doubt she realizes, Wendy and I both attended James Gunn‘s Speculative Fiction Workshop (albeit during different years).

LMS: Welcome, Wendy. Please tell me about your most memorable meal.

WVC: When Covid-19 arrived in March 2020, I remember feeling completely terrified of leaving my home and fearful because we had no food reserves in the house. The pandemic caught me unprepared.

The mail delivery system became my friend. To bypass the empty store shelves in my neighborhood, I learned to find small independent mail order groceries that still had supplies. Basics such as pasta, rice, flour, and canned goods slowly returned to my larder. We relearned how to bake bread and cooked everything from scratch. The cooking helped keep my mind off the troubles in the world.

In October, our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary arrived. In the “before time,” as we now call the time before the pandemic, we would have treated ourselves to dinner out and perhaps catch a play. This anniversary, our entire state was in lockdown. No movie theaters were open. All our favorite restaurants did not allow a sit down meal. Delivery services were lackluster, even when they could find us. The best we could hope for was fast-food with a drive-thru window.

The afternoon of our anniversary, we settled into our car and drove toward the beach. The weather was warm. The wind through the car windows tasted of salt and seaweed. We played our favorite music on the radio and cruised through areas we used to visit when we were dating. We remained in our car to be safe.

Around four thirty, it was time to pick up our anniversary meal. One of our favorite restaurants was Ruth’s Chris. We love their steaks and have gone before for special occasions. The restaurant had no in-person dining along with a limited menu, but their take-out counter was still operating. I dropped my husband off and circled the lot because of no available parking spots near the restaurant. The restaurants in the complex had converted much of the parking lot to outdoor dining. The weather was hot, but a few brave souls were under the tents. Our restaurant had four little tables in front of it, all uncovered and in the hot sun. I was glad we had not considered that option.

My husband remained inside for a quarter hour. Once he stepped out, I popped the trunk. In the back of our car, we had a pair of coolers. One for hot food and one for cold food. We packed the coolers according to temperature needs.

When we got home, I pulled out my china to set our table and opened a bottle of wine. We opened the coolers to see how the food fared during the forty-minute drive home. The steaks were still warm and perfectly done inside. Our baked potatoes were massive and flaky-dry as they should be. All the bread and sides were as good as they would have been inside the restaurant. The only thing that didn’t make the journey was the butter. It had turned into ghee. Opps. It had been in the wrong cooler.

We enjoyed every bite of that meal. It was a moment of semi-normality during a long period of stress that would continue to stretch out through 2021. I feel grateful for our home and for the years that I have spent with my husband. It was truly a memorable anniversary dinner.

#SFWApro

The qep’a’ cha’maH chorghDIch begins later this week. For those that don’t speak the language, that’s the twenty-eighth annual conference of the Klingon Language Institute. It’s a lot like a family reunion (and indeed we’ve been doing this long enough that we have college-age second generation speakers who attend) but without the potato salad. Also, people tend to spit a bit more. We’ll be running virtual again this year, and last time I checked we had over eighty people signed up. The internet is a glorious thing.

And speaking of the internet bring people together, you may recall I was recently part of an online book bundle. Surely that’s segue enough to introduce you to this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest, Lisa Silverthorne, who was also a part of that limited offer.

Lisa has been publishing fiction for more than twenty years. This includes a dozen novels, two collections, and more than one hundred shorter works. She describes her writing as “heartfelt magical suspense.” This sometimes takes the form of paranormal angel romances (such as her A Game of Lost Souls series) and sometimes looks like genetic engineering or military science fiction. Somewhere in the middle she also writes paranormal time-travel ghost romances too.

She lives in Las Vegas, NV.

LMS: Welcome, Lisa. What stands out as your most memorable meal.

LS: My most memorable meal took place in my parent’s restaurant. World travelers, my parents had gathered favorite recipes from their travels and offered their own versions at the restaurant. It was the type of small college town, upscale restaurant that hosted many high school prom dinners and was packed on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and college football weekends. All the tables had lit candles, tablecloths, and cloth napkins. And the wait staff wore tuxedo shirts, black pants or skirts, and black bowties.

And this occasion wasn’t even a holiday. It was Dad testing out items from his newest menu, but it was a family dinner — one of the few I’d had since high school.

Tucked in a cozy booth lit with a crystal chandelier and a flickering candle, my mom, brother, and I sat with my dad. But he never sat long, always up dealing with restaurant issues.

The meal began with a crisp, lemony glass of Chilean chardonnay and buttery stuffed mushroom caps that burgeoned with crabmeat and parmesan cheese. The mushroom caps melted in my mouth and didn’t last long.

A hearts of palm salad followed with thin-sliced tomatoes, capers, red Bermuda onion slices, white asparagus spears, artichoke hearts, and hearts of palm drizzled with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. It looked like artwork, every layer arranged in a circle and drizzled with dressing. Back then, every bite had been an evocative new flavor, the tangy capers, artichokes, and vinaigrette mixing with the mellow hearts of palm and asparagus. I’d never heard of hearts of palm back then, so I’d been intrigued with the whole notion of this salad and its combination of flavors.

After the amazing salad disappeared, I experienced my first taste of Bearnaise sauce in a dish my dad called Salmon Oscar. The flaky cut of salmon nestled on top of a layer of white asparagus and grated potatoes topped with crabmeat and Bearnaise sauce. The tarragon mixed with the rich sauce, the tender salmon asparagus, the potatoes almost grounding the dish with a hint of shallots and garlic. Accompanied by my first glass of merlot, rich and hearty like a warm autumn beach bonfire.

Long after the entrees and the wine disappeared, the final course was a white chocolate mousse cake with fresh strawberry sauce and cups of hot coffee. I was already beyond full, but my mom and I split the cake with its white chocolate mousse icing decorated with shaved white chocolate. The fresh strawberry sauce was the perfect complement to the fluffy mouse and white cake.

This meal remains one of my favorite meals. My parents are both gone now and so is the restaurant. It was a place where I grew up, a place I worked for well over a decade, and a place I learned to appreciate food and family. Lessons I will forever carry with me as I cook and share these recipes with others.

#SFWApro

As happens every month, this particular Monday has me heading back to the hospital for my routine oncology check-up. What’s a little different this time though is I’m four weeks out from my third COVID-19 vaccination, a jab of the ol’ J&J brew to supplement the two ineffective (i.e., non-reactive) Pfizer vaccines from January and February. I’ll be getting tested for the presence of antibodies and maybe, just maybe, I will get to come out of lockdown mode. Here’s hoping.

Meanwhile, regular readers here will know that I was recently part of a book bundle organized by the IASFA. It was a good project, and it created the opportunity for me to become acquainted with more of the group’s members. That’s the segue today because one of my co-bundlists was Eric Klein, and it only made sense to invite him to be this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest.

He has a keen focus on how science and technology affect us, as can be demonstrated in his nonfiction activities in the world of Telecom and Cyber Security. Somewhere in there he found time to write fiction, a hard SF novel that includes a tour of the solar system.

Eric describes himself as an avid science fiction and fantasy reader, a huge Star Trek fan, and a Shakespeare aficionado. Clearly it’s only a matter of time before he applies himself to Klingon so he can read the Bard in the original language.

LMS: Welcome, Eric. What stands out in your memory as your best meal ever?

EC: Now that is a hard question, I have had many meals with great food and company. But the one that stands out is when I was knighted into the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs. The Chaîne des Rôtisseurs is the world’s oldest international gastronomic society, founded in Paris in 1248. It was created when Louis IX, the French King later canonized as Saint Louis, ordered the establishment of several professional guilds including that of the “Ayeurs” or goose roasters. They were a well-established guild until 1793 when the guild system was dissolved during the French Revolution. In 1950 the organization was revived as the association founding the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs.

Now before I describe the meal, I would like to mention the location. Here we were, several hundred people in the ruin of an ancient Khan that was built in the 18th century during the Ottoman period. I was there with friends and family that came to see my knighting. The meal was based around venison, and each course used different parts of the red deer. Starting with the liver pâté through the filet mignon tips.

Truth be told, it was not the best meal of my life in terms of food, but the ambiance and ceremony more than made up for that. There we were, in this converted old ruin, with the light coming from candles in niches in the walls and on the tables and everyone dressed for a formal event. Then they got to the formal part of the event. There were three of us being knighted that night. And the official officiating had flown in from the main branch in Paris. But, he did not have a sword. In fact, the organization did not own a sword, so usually they would use something else for the knighting. As it happens, I do own one and had been asked to bring it. So there I was being knighted using my own sword in front of friends and family before they served the dessert.

#SFWApro

I spent a portion of the past weekend rooting through piles of papers and boxes, much of which had been shoved into this corner or onto that shelf, items that came to me a few years ago in the months following my mother’s passing. Dusty report folders with memories of things I’d all but forgotten. I’m sure many of you reading this have been in similar situations and cringed upon opening scrapbooks of ancient photos, images perhaps best summed up by the question “What was I thinking?”

My particular flavor of neuro-atypicality hasn’t left me with much in the way of memories from my youth, but I can appreciate it when I hear about it from others, which was the case with this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest, Michael J Adams as he related his most memorable meal.

Michael writes about private eyes and tooth fairies, which wouldn’t be that unusual for a genre author, except when those job descriptions apply to the same person. I’d tell you more, but I don’t want to risk any spoilers. Michael lives in a suburb of Chicago with his wife and children, living a double life by working in IT by day, and writing fiction by night. I have no idea what he’s told his kids about the tooth fairy.

LMS: Welcome, Michael. As you look back over your life, what meal sticks out?

MJA: I have a notorious sweet tooth (something the main character of my debut series shares—which is humorous because she’s a tooth fairy). However, I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a foodie and I wouldn’t say there are any specific meals that stick out to me.

What does stand out are experiences with individuals I’ve shared meals with. I was lucky enough to share a unique relationship with my late grandfather. I say that because he owned his own private plane (a 4-seat, single-prop Cherokee Piper). Every couple of months we’d fly out of the DuPage airport in the Chicago Suburbs, land across the border of Wisconsin, and then he’d buy lunch.

Sometimes it was just the two of us, and sometimes it was one of his other “flying buddies”. And the meals were never anything fancy — usually a simple Greek Family restaurant. But I’d get to sit and listen to them sweet talk the waitresses, share stories about landing in pot fields in Columbia, and pick up new vulgarities.

As with all teens, at some point hanging out with my grandfather wasn’t the “cool” thing to do. We flew less and less and before I knew it, we’d had our last flight. I wish I could say our last meal consisted of a grilled ham & cheese and fries and a country-fried steak, but I couldn’t tell you.

Cherish those memories.

Like the time he took the family to Hooters. Again, I can’t tell you what I ate, but the scowl on the faces of my grandmother and mother are all too clear in my mind’s eye.

#SFWApro