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Well, your beloved correspondent has done the initial proofread of The Travelling Lady’s Cookbook: A Grand Tour in Twenty Recipes, (@Grieve-not Lake passim), and it could be worse. Hemingway said ‘all first drafts are shit’, but I guess that kinda implied the later ones would not be so bad.

We shall see.

You can either go back through the last twenty blog entries, or you can access, read or download the pdf of the whole novella (first draft) here. Or you can just ignore it to save time. It may get updated from time to time and a link my even be added to the Lucidity Books page, where you can check for news of such updates.  Or not.

As the method of representing the text messages between the lovers is a pain in all formats, an epub/Kindle version will take a while to sort, but there will be one. Ideally the editor himself wants one, to make further revisions easier.

And what needs revising, dear reader?

Well, all of it, but mainly it seems that a lot of the chapters could have a lot more genius loci, or sense of place added. Although it does suit the original, impressionistic, idea to have a vagueness about location, it does seem there’s a lot less about the travelling than there is about the cooking (and the sex/love life development).

So that will be the main project, once the whole thing’s had a chance to stew on the back burner for a while and the author can come to it afresh. All literary projects, on their initial completion, should be buried in soft peat on a remote Hebridean Island for a number of months and, ideally, forgotten about entirely, before being dug up and reconsidered, then, in a few cases, being revised, in a few more rewritten, and in most shredded and used to line hamster or gerbil cages.

But meanwhile a number* of readers have asked for an index of the foodstuffs involved. It does feature at the back of the book, but here it is for your drooling and delight …

Index of Foods – country – chapter

avocado with citrus dressing – UK – 17
black squid risotto – Italy – 20
chicken and preserved lemon tagine – Morocco – 10
a gallimaufry (pork, peppers, mushroom stir-fry) – International – 3
fish Panang curry – Thailand – 14
fish stir-fry – International – 7
fried pork and kimchi – Korea – 13
friendly kakapo (avocado with citrus dressing) – UK – 17
gaeng Panang pla – Thailand – 14
goulash with sauerkraut – Hungary – 11
green eggs and ham – UK – 5
hake in green sauce – Spain/Basque – 2
jambalaya – USA – 15
khao niaow ma muang – Thailand – 19
kimchi bokum – Korea – 13
mango with sticky rice – Thailand – 19
merluza alla vasca (hake in green sauce) – Spain/Basque – 2
mole poblano – Mexico – 12
pancetta and broad bean risotto – Italy – 1
pork, garlic and olives in goose fat – France/Perigord – 9
risotto al nero di seppia – Italy – 20
sausages in cider – UK – 6
smörgåsbord/mezze/dim sum/tapas/buffet – International – 8
steak with pate and mushrooms en croute – France – 18
Székely gulyás – Hungary – 11
tagine with chicken and preserved lemon – Morocco – 10
tournedos Rossini – France – 18
turkey in chocolate and chilli sauce – Mexico – 12
venison in cassis sauce – UK – 4
wild mushroom omelette – France – 16

Abnormal service should then be resumed, Maybe there will be new and random topics in the blog from now on.

I have to get a painting done by the end of the month. Maybe just a picture of that in progress will appear.

Come back and find out…

 

*the number in question is zero