Table of Contents: From Breakfast With Anita Diamant to Dessert With James Patterson - a Generous Helping of Recipes, Writings and Insights From Today's Bestselling Authors (4 page)

1
Cook bacon on medium low heat in a large skillet until brown but not crispy. Drain bacon on paper towel. Crumble.

2
Sauté onion in bacon grease until soft. Mix in crumbled bacon, potatoes, diced beets, and milk. Flatten with a spatula to shape like a giant pancake. Cook until heated through, stirring up the bottom crust a couple of times. Make sure there is substantial crust all around; this takes longer than you'd think (about 15 minutes).

3
Serve. (Some people will really appreciate it if there's a bottle of hot sauce and a few extra strips of Benton's bacon on the side.)

Makes 1 drink

Pour champagne, port, and cognac into a glass with a stem (I recommend a champagne flute) and drop in the raspberry.

Marcia Perez

SELECTED WORKS

The Stormchasers
(2010)

Those Who Save Us
(2004)

The Power of Emotion
I always write about subjects that have fascinated me since childhood and pair them with an emotional question. For instance, I've always been fascinated with the Holocaust, so it made sense that my debut novel,
Those Who Save Us
, was set during that time period. The emotional key in the ignition was the relationship between the novel's primary heroine — a German woman trying to save herself and her daughter — and her sadistic captor, the
Obersturmfuhrer
of Buchenwald. The question this book asks is: “How far would you go to save your child?”

Storm chasing is the world in which my novel,
The Stormchasers
, is set. I got into storm chasing partially because I've been enthralled by tornadoes since I was a child and saw one in my grandmother's farm hometown. I've become a storm chaser as an adult. Yes, I'm like the guys on Discovery Channel who chase tornadoes, except I'm a lot more cautious and subdued about it! The storyline of
The Stormchasers
is about bipolarity; I've had loved ones who are bipolar and watched them struggle with the disorder.
The Stormchasers
centers on twins: a storm chasing brother who is bipolar, and his sister who acts as his caretaker. How does the disorder, and the events it triggers, twist their relationship? How far does one go to protect a sibling? These are the questions I'm exploring in this novel.

Readers Should Know
I'm what one reader kindly called a “method writer.” When I'm writing, I'm 100 percent committed to a project, to the exclusion of everything else except walking my black Lab, Woodrow. I try to immerse in the world of the book as much as possible. When I wrote
Those Who Save Us
, I listened to German music, read everything I could about Germany, baked every recipe that appears in the novel, and even dressed like my heroine, Anna, with my hair in braids…though only inside the house! For
The Stormchasers
, I lived within the setting of the book. Working at home in Boston proved too distracting for me — so much shopping potential to lure me away from my deadline — so I went to the small Minnesota farm town where my characters are born and lived in a motel for two months, until the draft was finished. It was a dreamlike, surreal time that I utterly treasure.

Readers Frequently Ask
Readers often ask why I left quotation marks out of
Those Who Save Us
. The answer, along with much more information about both novels, is on my website (
www.jennablum.com
), but the short version is this: I wanted the novel, which is so much about the persistence of memory, to have an austere, almost sepia atmosphere. The quotation marks, which are very lively pieces of punctuation, were like little firecrackers on the page and disturbed the book's tone, so I left them out. Some readers loved this. Others are much happier that my second novel,
The Stormchasers
, has quotation marks in it.

One of my favorite in-person reader questions was posed at an event for which I'd gotten a big swirly updo. A woman in the audience stood up and asked, “Is that your real hair?” There are absolutely no questions I won't answer! (Yes, it was and is my real hair.)

Books That Have Influenced My Writing

Sophie's Choice
, William Styron: I aspire to be Styron because his novels wed beautiful writing with moral substance.

The Stand
, Stephen King: Actually I like any of the very early King works, not because of the horror component but because he does such a great job of portraying what happens to people's psyches under duress. His imagination is so vivid and so extensive — and the man knows how to tell a story. Without a story, you've got only a bunch of pretty words. What I aim to do is provide my readers with a good story well told.

Shining Through
, Susan Isaacs: I love this book about a peppy everygirl-turned-spy in New York City and Germany during World War II. Another example of great storytelling — not letting the telling of the story get in the way of the story itself.

Makes about 12 (1-cup) servings

My recipe is for a Norwegian Christmas pudding called rommegrod (pronounced “room-a-grout,” and indeed it could be mistaken for and function as grout). Rommegrod appears in my recent novel,
The Stormchasers
, as a favorite dessert of the novel's heroine and hero, Norwegian twins, Karena and Charles Hallingdahl.

Legend has it that, in pioneer days on the plains, rommegrod was served not only at Christmas but also as a strengthener and curative. Norwegian settler women would give birth, be given a bowl of rommegrod, then get up out of bed and resume working in the fields.

I would think this story was apocryphal if I had not myself witnessed the miraculous powers of rommegrod in action. In her late eighties, my grandmother Luverne Joerg broke her hip while living in farm-town Minnesota. Of course, this unhappy event would normally be seen as the beginning of the end, and indeed my grandmother developed pneumonia while she was in the hospital. It was the first time I had heard firsthand what is known as a “death rattle,” which sounded like a bicycle chain in her lungs every time she took a breath. She was failing fast, so much so that she was not expected to live the night. We called the family members in from New York and Arizona, as well as other parts of Minnesota, to say their goodbyes.

While we were waiting, I said to my mom, Luverne's daughter, “Why don't we go to Decorah and get some rommegrod for her and see what happens?”

Decorah, Iowa, is a Norwegian town that prizes its heritage, and one of the cafés there still offers the pudding. We drove three hours from Rochester, Minnesota, bought a take-out bowl of rommegrod, and returned to the hospital.

I crushed my grandmother's medicines, which she had been otherwise unable to take, and stirred them into the rommegrod. Then I coaxed her to eat a bite, and another bite, and another. She managed about half a bowl.

By the next morning, when my aunts and uncles arrived — with my uncle Lowell weeping and saying, “Goodbye, little Mother!” — my grandmother was sitting up in bed.

“Why, hello,” she greeted everyone. “So nice to see you here!”

Luverne lived to be ninety-eight years old. Thanks, rommegrod!

Note:
This pudding can be reheated beautifully. My mom has it for breakfast for several days after Christmas!

1
In a large saucepan, bring cream to a boil over medium heat, stirring continuously. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring all the while.

2
Add flour and stir. (It's okay if the flour clumps up.) When mixture becomes a soft ball and the liquid has separated in the bottom of the pan (this will take about 30 seconds), remove from heat. Transfer mixture to a strainer and allow liquid to drain off. Reserve liquid, and return solids to the saucepan.

3
In a separate medium saucepan, bring milk to a boil over medium heat. Add milk to cream solids, and bring to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and simmer until thick and velvety, stirring until arms are indeed about to fall off, 15–20 minutes. Use hand-held electric mixer set on low, if possible (but it's okay if you don't have one; the old Norwegian ladies didn't either).

4
Serve either hot or cold. Top with cinnamon and sugar, and drizzle with some of the reserved liquid. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Makes 6½ dozen large meatballs

This is a traditional Christmas Eve recipe from the Norwegian side of my family — specifically from my grandmother's best friend.
The Hallingdahl
twins in The Stormchasers would eat these sweet, sinful meatballs as an entrée with their holiday rommegrod on the side.