Food…for thought…..by Sheila Claydon

 

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In the same way that many of my books have children in them, a lot of them mention food. Often it is merely a passing mention of a meal with maybe a sentence about the ingredients. A way of linking parts of the story. Two are different, however. The meals in Mending Jodie’s Heart and Miss Locatelli, although written differently, recall some of the most wonderful food I’ve ever eaten. 

Up in the hills of northern Tuscany, close to where  Michelangelo sourced the carrera marble for his  amazing  sculptures, there used to be a small family run restaurant. I don't know what it was called because there wasn’t a sign outside. Its reputation was by word of mouth. Nor do I know if it is still there. All I know is that I was lucky to be taken there by an Italian friend who had found it.

There was no choice, no fancy decor. Everyone was served the menu of the day sitting on benches at rough wooden tables. But what a menu.  Chicken liver pate with crostini. Wild boar with figs. Grilled summer vegetables. Homemade bread. Homemade honey cake. Bowls of fresh fruit and walnuts. Wine. And almost every ingredient either grown, or in the case of the meat, raised and then slaughtered by the family. Even the many herbs used in the cooking were picked in the surrounding fields. I’ve never forgotten it, nor the fact that one of the waitresses was a very enthusiastic nine year old girl, the youngest member of a very busy extended family. 

This all happened more than 25 years ago so there is every chance that modern life has taken over and the wonderful food replaced by something more instant, although I hope not. I hope, too, that the nine year old girl has taken over the family business and is still serving real food to those discerning customers who have managed to find such a treasure hidden away in the Tuscan hills.

Today, it is so easy to use our busy lifestyles as an excuse to buy instant meals and maybe even eat them while we watch one of the ubiquitous cookery programmes on TV,  but at what cost? As someone passionate about nutrition and real food I could depress you with facts about how so much of our food is processed and marketed today. I won't though. Instead I'll hark back to that wonderful meal and give you a real food recipe. The honey cake made by Elise, the young girl in Miss Locatelli. Easy to make. Delicious. 

And please don't throw your hands up in horror when you read the list of ingredients. Honey cake is not meant to be eaten in large quantities. It is a desert that can be eaten on its own. With coffee or a glass of white wine. Enjoyed with cream. Sprinkled with chopped almonds, or dusted with cinnamon or nutmeg. Apart from the wine, these are all things that will not only counteract the sweetness but which will also balance out sugars, preventing short term glucose spike in some people. This is made with real food, not ultra processed seed oils and cheap honey blended from different countries. Enjoy!

Tuscan honey cake

• half a cup of melted and cooled butter
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons of locally grown honey
• 3 large free range eggs
• half a tsp of real vanilla extract (check the label)
• t tbsp cornstarch
• half tsp salt
• half tsp baking powder
• half tsp baking soda
• 1 3/4 cups of flour 
• half cup plain full cream yoghurt

• Spray and line a 9" cake tin and preheat the oven to 350F
• Whisk butter and honey until combined
• Beat in the eggs one at a time
• Add the vanilla extract
• Blend in the cornstarch, salt, baking powder and baking soda.
• Mix in the flour
• When everything is incorporated add the yoghurt and mix gently until combined
• Tip the batter into the cake tin and bake for 35 minutes 
• Leave for 10 minutes before turning onto a rack to cool completely
• Sprinkle with chopped almonds or dust with cinnamon or any other flavouring of choice

Serve with whipped double cream and a drizzle of extra honey if you wish.

Slicing and storing in the freezer is the best way to prevent the overindulgence of eating all of it in one or two sittings. It also means you have a desert ready to be gently restored to room temperature when you want a sweet treat.

I realise, of course, that real food costs more. Locally grown honey is a lot more expensive that those huge jars of blended honey, much of which comes from China. Battery farmed eggs are a lot cheaper than free range. Real vanilla extract is not only difficult to find but costs a lot more than that found in most grocery stores. Even plain full fat yoghurt can be more expensive but unless you use this and not a low fat (full of added sugar) version, the honey cake flavour will not be authentic. In fact I'm not even sure if it would work the same.

There are many, many Italian recipes online. A lot of them, while undoubtedly still delicious, are versions of the real thing, in the same way that pizza, world wide, is nothing like real Italian pizza. However there is one thing that we can all do to keep us as close to the Italian way of cooking as possible, and that is to use quality ingredients, free range, locally grown, the best we can afford. That is what the Italians who live in the Tuscan hills do. Difficult I know. Not always possible, but well worth it when it is. 

Enjoy!

It's dog's life...by Sheila Claydon

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Apart from the horse in the background, the cover of Mending Jodie's Heart doesn't immediately make you think of animals! It's very misleading because two of the book's main characters are in fact  Buckmaster, an incredibly well trained horse, and Blue, an old Labrador dog. A lot of birds feature too. I found them all incredibly interesting to write about and learned a lot while I was doing so.

Why am I telling you this? Well writing about them came to mind when I began training my dog...or maybe I should say started re-training my dog!  She is 4 years old and, like the fictional Buckmaster and Blue, generally very good. She likes other dogs and people, and can be walked off leash (away from traffic) without any worries at all. She is also fine indoors except for her latest habit, which is to ask to go into the garden then, when the door is opened, to rush out at warp speed barking as she goes. This mindless barking then continues intermittently until I go out and point towards the house, whereupon she immediately stops and dutifully trots indoors.  I have no idea where this very irritating habit came from but I do know it needs to be stopped. Unfortunately, until now, instead of working towards a cure I think I've been making it worse.

As you can see from the photos, butter wouldn't melt she is so cool and well-behaved...except when that door is opened when she turns into a whirling dervish, and now I understand why.  My irritation and consequent need to try to stop her barking means I am giving her attention every time she runs outside. She loves this and, in her own doggy way, has decided that because I immediately call her or fetch her I must like what she's doing. So she just does it some more!

Well now I've learned the answer and although it will take a couple of weeks of concentration from both of us, I've been assured it will work.  What do we have to do? Well for a start from now on she doesn't go out into the garden unless she is on a long leash.  Next I have to open the door a fraction and, as soon as she tries to run out, close it again, and I have to do this repeatedly until she calms down and sits quietly beside me. Then I open the door, step outside, and block her if she tries to follow me, waiting until she sits down again. Only then do I invite her outside and let her roam about on an extender lead.

Going indoors is the same thing in reverse. She has to sit outside while I enter the house and wait until I invite her inside. She is praised once her leash is removed but no treats are involved because learning that she receives treats on leaving and re-entering the house would just give us another problem.

And guess what, it works!  We started with her bouncing up and down like a mad thing today as soon as I touched the door handle, but within less than a minute she was sitting quietly beside me waiting for a command. The trot around the garden was painless (except for the rain - one of the hazards of dog ownership) and she sat and waited to be invited back in without being told.

She is highly intelligent and always eager to please, so I am now very hopeful. By the time the sun comes out again, something that is not forecast any time soon, she might be off leash again and trotting around the garden in almost silence. We don't mind an odd bark at a squirrel or pigeon or even a sudden noise from next door, but continual mindless barking? No way!

She might have been ultra cute as a puppy but that is no excuse for bad manners, something she learned once and is now having to learn all over again.  Oh, if only we could use the same technique on people!

Us or our better selves? by Sheila Claydon

Do you ever read a book and become irritated with one of the characters? I know I do. For example I might read about how a woman deals with her husband's affair, her mother's dementia, her child's tantrums, and think why on earth did she react like that?  I might find her weak or vain, unimaginative or cruel, unfeeling or a whole host of other things, while another reader might identify with and approve of her actions and really enjoy the book.

None of this is very surprising because we all have different tastes and attitudes, but what I find fascinating is how a character in a book can generate real feelings of dislike and irritation, and I'm not talking about the anti-hero here. We are meant to be upset by him or her. No I'm talking about the main characters, the people who are pivotal to the story.

Some writers put a lot of thought into the development of their characters. With others it is more instinctive. Whichever method is used however, the writer is still responsible for their behaviour,  and this is where life and fiction overlap.

Can a writer ever make the main characters do things they disapprove of? Will they let them behave in a way that is contrary to their own moral code? Are their heroes and heroines truly separate entities or are they who the writer is, or who she/he wants to be? And do I sometimes find a character irritating because their take on a problem isn't mine? It happens in real life, so why not in fiction? From time to time we all disagree with our friends and family,  and we disagree even more vociferously with the behaviour of celebrities and politicians as reported in the Media, so when I dislike a character am I actually disliking the author's own views?

When I write is my heroine reacting as I would in such a situation, or is she behaving how I would like to behave but know I could never manage?

To better answer myself I've been revisiting the characters in some of my books and discovered that my heroines are hardworking, ambitious and feisty, and never ever prepared to accept second best. Are they me dressed in camouflage? I wish!! The truth is, they are my better self. They are the people I would like to be, and maybe that's fine. Better to recognise that than to never think about it at all.

In Mending Jodie's Heart: Book 1 of my When Paths Meet trilogy, Jodie is pint sized, braver than almost anyone I've ever met, and has a heart that puts everyone else first. She is the heroine I most admire. I'm proud of Jodie. She is who I would like to be.

Extract from Mending Jodie's Heart

The tall man in the wool beanie was leaning on the top bar of the gate on the third morning Jodie rode by.  He was gazing into the straggle of woodland while a very old black Labrador sat patiently beside him. The man in the yellow fluorescent jacket, the man who had secured the padlock in the first place, was just getting into a van that was idling at the curb. With a twitch of the reins she pulled Buckmaster to a halt as he drove away.

“What did he tell you?” she demanded.

The man in the beanie hat swung around and stared up at her, a look of puzzlement on his face.  He had very blue eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Did he say how long it would be before they start building?  Did he say how long it will be before Mr. Marcus…I can do exactly as I like because I have a lot of money and this is my land…Lewis, turns up? No he didn’t, did he? I can see from the look on your face that you’ve no idea what’s going on. I bet he didn’t even tell you when they’re going to start cutting down the trees.”

Without giving him time to answer, she slid down from Buckmaster’s back and walked across to the gate to stand beside him. Her head barely reached his shoulder. Together they surveyed the tangle of undergrowth, and then Jodie turned towards him, her body taut with impatience.

“Didn’t he tell you anything?”

“Not about the bridleway, no,” Marcus Lewis shook his head.  He was torn between irritation, amusement, and just a little admiration. She was certainly passionate about her damned bridleway that was for sure. Courageous too. He could still remember what she had said about chaining herself to the gatepost. 

“Why is this bridleway so important anyway?” he asked. “There must be others.”

“There are,” she conceded, looking up at him. “But we have to negotiate a lot of traffic to get to them.  This is the only one that takes us straight down to the beach.”

“We?”

“The children who use my riding school.”

 “You work in a riding school?”

She nodded dispiritedly.  “For what it’s worth I’m the manager, so I’ve a vested interest in keeping my riders safe.”

His gaze slid over her.  It didn’t compute.  She wasn’t much more than a teenager.  As if she knew what he was thinking she suddenly grinned at him. It totally transformed her face, changing her expression from angry to something altogether different.  He found himself responding with a smile of his own as he wondered if the hair hidden under her riding hat was as dark as her eyes.

“I’m older than I look,” she told him as she took hold of the horse’s saddle and vaulted onto its back.  “Way, way older. Plenty old enough to give Marcus Lewis a piece of my mind when he eventually turns up.  In the meantime, I’m going to start gathering protest signatures.”

“I thought you said you were going to chain yourself to the gate,” he said, squinting up at her against the early morning sun.

She laughed as she began to move away, pleased he had remembered.  “Don’t worry. I’ll be doing that too, but not until the journalists arrive. I want to inflict maximum damage to his reputation.”

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Serendipity is a Book Club...by Sheila Claydon

Mending Jodie's Heart, Book 1 of my When Paths Meet trilogy, has just been chosen for next month's read by a local book club. It goes without saying that I am beyond excited. I'd like plaudits of course but even if I don't get them, just knowing a group of people are going to read it and discuss it is enough.

How did this happen?

Well Mending Jodie's Heart is a story woven around the countryside and the village where I live. This is unusual for me because the ideas for most of my books are triggered by other places. Maybe getting away from the humdrum of everyday life gives my imagination the freedom it needs to create. This wasn't the case with Jodie however. She didn't need creating. She arrived fully formed in my mind the way the best characters always do, and so did Marcus, the hero, and the other important characters in the book.

Why?

I know it started when I spent an evening listening to a jazz band with a fantastic pianist but how that segued into Jodie's story I have no idea. Maybe it was the closure of a local bridle path and the ensuing campaign to get it re-opened. Maybe it was the demolition of an old farmhouse. Maybe it was the sight of a pretty, dark-haired girl on horseback. I'll never know exactly what started the story, and what made me continue it into Books 2 and 3. What I do know, however, is that to write it I had to 'borrow' the old farmhouse and the new house that replaced it, the same as I had to 'borrow' the bridle path, and the local riding stables.

Once the book was published I moved on, as writers do, except that I always thought of the 'borrowed' house as Jodie's house whenever I walked past it. Then Books We Love decided to make its digital books available as paperbacks and that changed things. As soon as I received a print copy of Mending Jodie's Heart I crossed my fingers and wrote to the owners of the 'borrowed' house explaining what I had done, and offering them a copy.

I posted the note into their mailbox  when I took my dog for a walk, and then turned into the adjoining woodland and set off down a narrow path between the trees...too narrow for dog walkers to pass one another without giving way. And this is where it gets weird but in a good way. I was halfway along the path when  I saw a pretty blonde woman walking towards me with her dog...a dog I recognised as belonging to Jodie's house, even though I had never seen the owner. With no option but to stop I introduced myself and told her about the letter I had posted. After all if she did decide she wanted a copy of my book I was going to meet her anyway.

How was I to know that she was an avid reader who has run a book club for the past ten years? How was I to know that she would be thrilled beyond belief that I had written a story around the building of her home, and how was I to know that she would be unbelievably friendly and interested. She even joked that she was going to see how her husband scored in comparison with the hero.

So there you have it. I, in true writerly fashion, nosey around other people's lives watching their house being built, and my eventual reward is a new friend and a book in her book club. And what of the happy coincidence that took us down the same path on that windy morning when we had spent the previous 5 years never setting eyes on one another. Serendipity is a curious thing that might just be prompting me towards another book...the second of my Mapleby Memories, but that's another story!

And there's still another copy of Mending Jodie's Heart to give out...to the Riding School that let me watch the stable girls take their horses through their paces, so maybe some more friends too.