When you're on a swing, without a push start from the ground, you begin pumping your legs to get the thing moving. Leaning far back to move the swing forward, and then bending the knees back trying to generate some momentum. At first it feels like you're going nowhere, that people are watching you laboriously thrust yourself back and forth, barely off the ground. Awkward as it is, you are moving, you are gaining energy. We started this cookbook nearly two years ago, and in just a couple weeks it will be out in the world. It started with lots of work and food and research and mistakes and emails and more food - the pumping of our legs. With a blog, you get a response almost immediately, but you have to sit on a book for awhile before it generates feedback. That time that we've been sitting with it has made me anxious, so I'm thrilled to set it loose. We are no longer flailing our legs to get off the ground, we're moving, really swinging, on this ride of writing a cookbook. I have a big stack in our office for family and friends, copies are in the mail to my recipe testers, and there are a number on the desks of media folks. This is the part where you just allow the momentum to take you. And even if it's been years since you've found yourself on a swing, you know that feeling - once the cadence takes over, the woosh of speed, the moment of weightlessness, arcing back again - and the freedom of giving in.
Below is our homemade promo video. We improvised some material and Hugh did a fabulous job of teaching himself how to shoot and edit, if I do say so myself. It's so "us," incapable of taking ourselves too seriously, and it makes me happy.
Ten Speed Press also put together a great sampler of a few of the recipes from the book so you can get a taste of what's inside.