Very soon Red Rock Press will release a little book I did for them called A Reader’s Cookbook – it is a compendium of recipes from around the world that are matched with writers from a specific region.  Its purpose is to inspire members of book clubs to cook and serve the foods of their featured author’s home base.  Red Rock decided to do some videos of me preparing a few of the recipes that they will then share with readers and various book sites.  I had a wonderful time doing them – began the day making a classic New York martini and ended it with Marcel Proust and madeleines.  What they didn’t catch on video was my classic kitchen disaster – letting the lid fly off of the blender while puréeing hot cherry soup – the kitchen and I looked like a mad man had attacked!  Fortunately, I had extra cherries and a clean shirt!  I thought that they should have saved it and put it on YouTube so that my blunder could inspire a few jokes and possibly sell some books.  Authors have no shame!