My "Cookery" Book

I declared on New Year’s Day 2007 that this would be the year I wrote “my book.” I had been talking about writing “my book” for a long time, not that I had any idea what my book would be about or that I felt any inclination to write; I just always had the nagging feeling that I should be writing. At the time, I was living with a Scottish writer who, upon hearing my resolution suggested I write a “cookery book.” I was not opposed to that idea, in fact it made a lot of sense, but I didn’t know if I had any unique take on cooking, as much as I loved it and was good at it.

I met Lachlan on a street corner not far from my home a few months earlier when he stopped me to inquire where he could find a copy of Time Out. I thought he was incredibly adorable and when he told me he was a writer I offered to help him get published in the U.S., just to keep the conversation going. Our relationship started off happily then went bad quickly. Nevertheless, I continued to feel obligated to help him with his career. Six months later, as he was packing to leave me and the United States, he had a six-figure book deal brokered by one of the most impressive agents in the business.

Because of the serendipitous way we met I believed Lachlan was my destiny; I still think he was, just not in the way I was initially thinking. The day after he left I picked up my laptop and started writing. As I told the story of what happened with Lachlan I found myself flashing back to previous boyfriends, tracing my past failures to round out this latest devastation. I wrote 500 words a day and at the end of every session I was wiped out. I didn’t know where I was going with this discipline, but I had faith that a book idea would come to me. I was right. I was struck by the culinary story interwoven throughout my romances when I was writing about Mitch Smith and I initiating our “friends with benefits” arrangement. When I got to the part about making a cake to serve him with post-coital coffee, I knew what my book was. Though my approach to love and sex was a far cry from my traditional upbringing, there were ways in which I insisted on keeping up certain traditions. I found my behavior sort of funny, if not a little sad.

Once I had food to connect all my confusing and disparate heartbreaks I was able to see some value in the disappointments I suffered over nearly twenty years of dating. I wasn’t merely failing; I was cooking! Cooking is a passion that has not let me down; it is the one love that had given something back. It made me into what I always wished to be: an author.