Maybe I need to eat more--or at least cook more

I have noticed the use of food in more of the books recently. There mysteries where the protagonist is a chef, or runs a catering business, and one book I read, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, has several yummy recipes at the end of the book. Preparing food is also a backdrop while protagonist Alafair Tucker, attempts to learn who killed the much-hated Harley Day. Casey's well-constructed mystery is a period piece set in 1912 Oklahoma, and warns at the beginning of the recipe section "These are not health foods". And they sound delicious. The mystery was quite good, too.

All this got me thinking of my own paltry pantry and lack of enthusiasm for stove-borne pursuits, and I wonder if this has affected my writing. I used to have an annual day-long banquet for all my friends and relatives, beginning preparation weeks in advance (feeding more than 100 people some years), and I developed several tasty dishes over the years. But cooking, as with other arts, is stimulated by some sort of approbation: "Gee, Mom, this is really good!" or "Can I get a copy of that recipe?", and so on. For writers, the positive response from editors and readers serves this purpose, and when not forthcoming, it's a bit hard to get enthusiastic about creating new fare.

I'm in that phase of things at the moment. Perhaps I need to host a dinner party, or at least a small luncheon, and maybe that will at least boost my creative efforts.