Voodoo in Harlem, Milagritos in Madrid, and Cocktails for When You Just Want Something Sweet

Plus: Caroline Eden's new memoir

Hello friends. These days I feel like the lid on an almost-boiling pot of water, where I’m rattling around a little bit from all the steam building up. My brain is planning out edits for Book 2, while also concocting marketing and publicity type things for the The Slowest Burn, while also working on a short-but-sweet friends-to-lovers story which I might be able tell you about in a little while. It’s probably not surprising that my reading has taking a sharp left turn into escapism.

I think escapism gets a bad rap, and I get why - how can we possibly immerse ourselves in joyous, fantastical things when the world is going to actual hell in a hand basket? But to me, another way of thinking of escapism is as respite. A breather, a refresher, something to restore our optimism and our sense of possibility before fighting the good fight once ore. The mental equivalent of the water and orange-slice break in the middle of a kiddie soccer game.

Speaking of escapism and friends-to-lovers, here’s a song I’ve been getting lost in recently:

Recently I read and loved…

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

This was my first Leigh Bardugo book, but I don’t think it’ll be my last. It’s worth buying just for the scene-setting in a magical sixteenth-century Spain - it’s like stepping into a Caravaggio painting, with luscious black velvet and pomegranate seeds and pearls glowing in low light and the ever-present violence of absolute power on the verge of crumbling. Our two protagonists, secretly Jewish kitchen scullion and part-time spell-caster Luzia and world-weary immortal Santángel are fantastic creations, both simmering with magic but relatable in their whip-smart dialogue and their fumbling towards an unlikely bond as they try to keep Luzia alive in the face of overwhelming odds. This book has bloodstained teeth and isn’t afraid to show them, but if you’re in the mood to read something equally fascinating and sinister, I can’t recommend this more.

Cold Kitchen by Caroline Eden

Our senses are the strongest containers for memory, and where are our senses engaged most but when we’re cooking in our home kitchen? Caroline writes spectacular cookbook-travel essay hybrids (even if you’re not a big cook, don’t sleep on Black Sea or Red Sands, they’re both fascinating reads), and this memoir is a reflection on a life spent adventuring all over Eastern Europe and Central Asia, from the genteel cafes of Lviv in Ukraine to rugged mountains in Tajikistan, with pit stops in her home base of Edinburgh with husband and beloved dog Darwin. She doesn’t shy away from fear, sadness, and grief, but also extolls the simple pleasures and joys of newfound friends and longtime love. When I read, I felt like I was sitting at the table in that cozy Edinburgh kitchen as she rolled out biscuits studded with dried fruit and cut up beets for a Polish-style summer soup.

A Love Song For Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

First off - Tia Williams is a master world builder, on par with any fantasy writer whose work I’ve read and loved. But instead of writing intricate dreamlands, she takes us by the hand and draws us into present-day America through the lens of Black men and women living and loving and making art, whether writing novels, composing music, or arranging flowers. This book is a romance in the broadest sense of the term - not just a love story between two people caught in time, but a celebration of how delicious it is to be truly alive. A Love Song reminds me of the best parts of Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block - the sense of wonder, the hints of otherworldly magic, the glitter and the darkness. It’s sharp-witted one moment, utterly swoony the next, and the ending…well, I won’t spoil it! Just go read.

I also enjoyed…Klopp: My Liverpool Romance by Anthony Quinn, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames by Justine Cowan, Lavash at First Sight by Taleen Voskuni

And I drank…a Red & Pink Spritz.

What do strawberry-flavored things and escapist reads have in common? They get stuck with the label “unsophisticated”. And sure, strawberries don’t have the ultra-floral fragrance of raspberries, or the tannic bite of blackberries, or the bitter edge of oranges. But sometimes we just want something that tastes like candy, and what’s wrong with that, really?

Red & Pink Spritzes came about because I’d impulse bought a bottle of Chambéryzette strawberry vermouth (look at that label, I want a poster of it!) and some kind soul had left us a mini bottle of cheap and cheerful rosé cava in our fridge. Feeling overheated after a humid afternoon outside watching Spurs Women beat West Ham, I had the idea to combine the two together with soda water in a spritz. If you don’t know the spritz formula, that’s three parts sparkling wine, two parts Chambéryzette, one part soda, poured in a big wine glass in that same order.

My husband very kindly did the mixing while I made dinner (the chorizo, tomato, and onion pasta from Rebecca May Johnson’s Dinner Document - ideal when you want to cook a comforting meal from scratch and sit down to eat in under thirty minutes). Was this spritz particularly grown-up, or complex? Absolutely not. Was it a lovely shade of scarlet, and did it taste like perfectly ripe strawberries, and was it just the right drink for a warm late spring evening? Yes, yes, and yes.

I also mixed…a Hugo and a Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, recipes for both in Richard Godwin’s Substack The Spirits.