Elinor Bachrach Hutton

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Happy Pub Day to Me

It’s been over two years since I wrote on this old blog, and sheesh, has everything changed. Around the time of my last post, I got pregnant. Then I found out I was having twins, panicked, tried to move out of the city, got cold feet and stayed, huffed up and down our building’s 4 flights of stairs, ate a zillion avocados and eggs, until, finally, at 38 weeks, the hearts of my heart were born: Margaret and Henry.

They eat a lot, big surprise.

They were perfect. Henry was 6 pounds 14 ounces, and Margaret was 8 pounds 4 ounces. They slept, they smiled, they did cute things like hold hands while they nursed. Somehow almost 20 months have passed since they arrived, and they give me more joy than I ever realized existed. What can I say?

And somewhere in that time period after these adorable morsels were born, I was commissioned to write a book. This is my job of course, but this time, instead of signing NDAs and lurking behind the scenes, my name was to be used. Not hidden in the acknowledgments, but as the author, a “leading voice in the modern culinary arts,” as Black Dog & Leventhal, my publisher, describes me. Well, shucks. Today, that book is published. 

Happy birthday Encyclopedia of Kitchen Tools! I wrote every inch of you, and yet I remember almost none of you, since I was only working in stolen bursts of intensity from when the babies were two months old and my brain was a sieve. (Or slotted spoon, or chinois, etc: see Utensils and Gadgets chapter, page 215.) But I’m pretty proud of the bits I’ve reread. Isn’t it amazing to learn anew from a book that I myself wrote? Ha. Let me know what you think!