9' x 12': Chapter 3 - The Making of a Cookbook

The question of what to write about for my next book was answered, oddly enough, with another question. In early spring 2019 my publisher called to let me know that the fourth printing of Salade, my best-selling book, would be sold out before the end of the year. He asked if I want to go to a fifth print run, or produce a new and updated version of the book?

The second option meant that I could delve back into my favorite food and share all the new salads I’d made since Salade was released. The challenge was the production timeline. This was early April. Everything had to be at the printers by mid-September at the very, very latest to have books in hand for the 2019 holiday season . I had just under 20 weeks to re-write the book in between teaching classes and re-building my online business. It was tight but possible.

I chose the second option because I had, by chance, already developed a lot of new material that would dovetail perfectly into this project. The previous autumn I participated in the Edible Santa Barbara sponsored Eat Local Challenge which encouraged people to try to only eat food produced within a 100 mile radius of their homes for an entire month. I decided to challenge myself further by creating a new dish every day for the month of October and shared them with my followers on Instagram. Fortunately for the project now at hand, the type of dish I chose for the Eat Local Challenge was salads. I scrolled back through my Instagram feed to see which could be used in the new book, whose working title was now Salade Deux. There was another element to consider too, were the images shot for Instagram be of good enough quality and high enough resolution to translate to print?

First things first. I created a mockup. As with all my previous books, this one was number nine, I start with a large ring binder filled with empty sheet protectors. For this book I would keep some of the recipes from Salade, but which ones would I choose? Some, like the very first ones in the book, Petite Salade Verte, and the Salade Verte aux Herbes were foundational to the topic so logically they remained. Working through the others was more challenging. I asked friends and fellow food writers which ones they would choose and was surprised by the voracity of their opinions. I was told in no uncertain terms that their favorite salad HAD to remain and quickly realized that there was no way to please everyone. This was something I would have to do alone.

I made my choices, laying out the rough drafts for each chapter, filling part of the binder with those salads (of the 80 original recipes I kept just over half) and the 15 salads that made the cut from the Eat Local Challenge. The gaps in the narrative now obvious with the blank pages left in the mockup. As Salade Deux was going to be a bigger book with 100 recipes, tracking progress was essential. Once I added the cooking class schedule to the production timeline, I realized there would be some very, very long weeks ahead and had moments of questioning my sanity. Was this too much to take on in the timeframe?