BOOK: Echo of Heartbreak, A Recipe for Life by Carol Ann Kauffman

Dear Gentle Readers,

Echo of Heartbreak, A Recipe for Life is one of those novella that practically wrote itself. It began as a character profile for Melina Valentina Rossetti Rosemont, a character who never even appeared in the book, MacKalvey House, although her loving and warm persona played a major part in the main character Michelle Rosemont. 

For Michelle to function in the situations I put her in, I needed to know what she was like on the inside. I needed to know what she liked, what she feared, and how her early upbringing would come to play in her relationship with the broody, dark Kenneth MacKalvey.

A profile of her mother Melina helped me do that. 

MacKalvey House is the story of Michelle Rosemont, Melina's daughter and Kenneth MacKalvey. It's a story of love and loss and betrayal on the most intimate level.

But Echo of Heartbreak, A Recipe for Life is Melina's story. It is written in the form of a letter, or a journal, from a mother with a severe heart ailment to her unborn daughter.

It includes hints on organization, wardrobe management, and life lessons, as well as scrumptious recipes. I know these old Italian (and some new) recipes are great because these are my family recipes. They came from my mother and grandmother, who never wrote down a recipe! They would sneer at those women who needed a recipe. Cooking is not a science, it is an art, as true cooks know.

My mother and my sister were the excellent cooks and bakers in the family. Me? Not so much. I once set the house on fire making hummingbird food.  (I have the fire truck pulling in the driveway photo to prove it.)

I had quite the time wrangling these recipes out of my mother during her last year of life. I had to promise not to give them to anybody while she was alive. 

I would leave the nursing home, come home, and make the recipe, and bring some back to her to critique. And critique she did: too much flour, not enough salt, you rushed it, didn't you? (I probably did. She spent all day on this cooking stuff. I had things to do and places to go and a job.)

This novella is not the first time I have given these recipes away. My mother passed in January of 2006. I made a recipe book for each member of my family. It included all the recipes I got from my mother and copies of their wedding photos, everybody baby pictures, special occasion photos, our wedding pictures. I took me all year. It was a labor of love. I put everything in plastic page protectors and into big four inch binders with our immediate family photo on the cover and everyone got one for Christmas.

It was not received well. My family members would've rather had socks.  My mother's recipes have received many more accolades from the general public.

I am still not a great cook and I'm a horrible baker. Baking reminds me of chemistry class. My cooking keeps my husband slim.

Have a great day and stay safe,

Carol