Jennifer Moorman's Blog, page 18

Cooking Through Fiction: Little Blackbird Blackberry Pie

Inspired by my second novel, Little Blackbird, I made a special pie just for Kate (and her friends, if she wants to share).Growing up is difficult for most of us, and accepting ourselves sometimes doesn’t happen for years (and oftentimes well-past our teenage struggles). Kate Muir isn’t like others her age. She can see the future, but she’s been forbidden to change what she sees—no matter what.But will Kate change what she sees? Will she finally make friends and find love? And a final, less i...

Cooking Through The Baker's Man: Oreo Brownies

Have a case of the doldrums? Feeling blah or blech or blah-blech (not a real word, but definitely a real feeling)? Lost the pep in your step? Staring out windows? Zoning out? There is a remedy! Rejoin the living!At Bea’s Bakery in The Baker’s Man, you will find various panaceas for what ails you. If you need to get your groove back, the best choice would be Anna’s Oreo brownies, which are guaranteed to put a smile on your face, a shake in your hips, and a twinkle in your eye.These Oreo browni...

Cooking Through Fiction: Leilah's Oversize Cinnamon Roll

What if the one person who broke your childhood heart is the one who can put it back together? What if one bite of the local diner’s cinnamon rolls could sweep you right back to when you were eight, running through the backyard barefoot and dreaming?Return to Mystic Water and see how the two adventurous kids from Full Moon June have changed. In Wednesday’s Child, Leilah Hamilton, now a small-town nurse, magically brings peace and comfort to the suffering. Adam Durant, Leilah’s childhood best...

Cooking Through Fiction: Dark and Grimm German Bread

Are you guilty of watering down a story because otherwise it might be too dark or too gritty or too scary or too much-too much? I’ll admit I like rainbows and unicorns and Care Bears and sunshine and daisies. I have probably asked for the kid-friendly version of a story a gazillion times.When someone says, “I have to tell you what happened,” I normally ask, “Is this a sad story?” I need to be prepared. Don’t spring dark, gritty, scary, too much-too much stories on me. My heart needs to know t...

Cooking Through The Baker's Man: Rainbow Truffles

Randy Pausch, writer of The Last Lecture, said, “Never lose the childlike wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what drives us.” Try and remember what it was like when you saw the world through childlike eyes full of awe, when so much of what you saw was so marvelous it stole your breath, left you speechless.Walt Disney said, “Too many people grow up. That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don’t remember what it’s like to be twelve years old.” It’s...

Cooking Through "The Baker's Man": Mexican Chocolate Truffles

Eating healthier foods can give us all sorts of benefits, such as stronger bones, bodies, and minds. Eating avocados gives you shinier hair and smoother skin. Eating strawberries boosts short term memory and burns fat. Eating dark chocolate lowers your blood pressure. I would like to add that eating chocolate makes me happier.Healthy foods make us, well, healthier, but there are other benefits of food. When people visit Bea’s Bakery in The Baker’s Man, they can find just the treat that they n...

Cooking Through Fiction: Miss Trunchbull's Chocolate Cake

Roald Dahl is one of my favorite writers, and Matilda is one of my favorite children's books. Matilda is a sweet exceptional girl, but her parents think she's just a nuisance. She expects school to be different, but that's not possible when Miss Trunchbull is the headmistress.My sister loved the movie, and we used to watch it over and over again. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is of the chocolate cake. When Bruce is accused of sneaking into the kitchen and eating Miss Truncuhbull's "m...

Cooking Through Fiction: The Giver's Red Apple Pie

Can you imagine living in a seemingly ideal, although colorless, world of contentment and conformity? Your freedom of choice and your independence are non-existent. Instead, you are surrounded by sameness, but you don’t even know everyone is all the same.Imagine not knowing the vibrancy of colors, not knowing what sunshine feels like as it warms your face, or the pelt of rain against your cheeks. Imagine never feeling pain or sadness, but in giving up the difficult emotions and experiences, y...

Cooking Through Fiction: Smoked Salmon and Bacon Paté

Have you ever noticed that when people travel through time or space, they don’t seem to be preoccupied with food or travel snacks? I would not be this person. I need to know there will be snacks because I know that I will get hungry—I don’t care how awesome time traveling might be.In Madeleine L’Engle’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace journey through the universe by means of tesseract. What is a tesseract? In geometry, the tesseract is defined as a 4-dimensional anal...

Cooking Through Fiction: Cinnamon-Sugar Candied Pecans

One thing I love to see while traveling down back roads on my way to somewhere new is a hand-painted, side-of-the-road sign advertising some tasty treat around the next bend. Boiled peanuts! Peaches! Honey! (Okay, these signs are all in Georgia because so is Lost Lake!) But who doesn’t love those signs? Who isn’t tempted to stop?While driving toward Lost Lake, Kate and her daughter pass an army of hand-painted roadside signs that promise fresh fruits and candied nuts. They’ve been salivating...