I’ve been a voracious reader all of my life—and books figure prominently in some of my early memories. I remember sitting outside the childhood bedroom I shared with my little sister after she’d gone to bed, my feet planted firmly on the uneven red-painted floorboards of the hallway, my back against the wall, intently reading as many pages as I could of James and the Giant Peach before my mom would gently nudge me into my room and ask me to close the book. Or lying on my stomach on the brick hearth in our living room in winter during some holiday gathering, curled up as close to the black mesh grate and flickering flames of the fire as I could comfortably stand, reading The Hobbit as adults wandered in and out of the room—chatting and drinking and carousing—while I turned the pages, rapt with attention and oblivious to the world around me, deep in some other land.
Books have been a constant companion—they’re the first thing I loved deeply, aside from my sisters and parents and the farm, and along with those other things, one of the few things upon which I can firmly rely.
They’ve colored much of my life—I can trace phases and temperaments and likes and dislikes around books. I made my way through the classic ones that every child reads, of course: The Babysitter’s Club and Everyone Else’s Parents Said Yes and Bridge to Terabithia and the Alice series. But my appetite for books was huge and impossibly to satisfy—a cool hour spent in the public library was my idea of absolute bliss, and my mom would let me do this often.
In addition to the collection of ordinary details that comprised my real life as a kid—hot, sweaty afternoons spent on the soccer field and the sensation of clay caking under my fingernails after learning pinch pots in art class and family dinners of soup with cheese biscuits and sleepovers at Tara Lewis’s house where we stayed up late giggling about her older brother and eating miniature Twix snuck from the highest drawer in the kitchen—I lived another life in parallel inside books.
In that one, I experienced details that I still carry with me—ones that feel as real and as much a part of me as anything else. The swampy heat of the woods in Girl of the Limberlost while butterfly hunting. The cool white of the stone buildings set into cliffs above a bright blue sea in Red Sails to Capri. The cinder-coated, dusty kitchen—pots clanging as the house tumbled and tipped—in Howl’s Moving Castle. The tidy culs-de-sac of the British suburbs in The Mennyms and the bustling chaos of the Hong Kong docks where the clipper ships came and went in Tai-Pan. Sand from the beach on your feet and smell of pine trees and salt water and the feeling of a damp bathing suit against your skin on a Martha’s Vineyard August afternoon in Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters. My dad introduced me to Ayn Rand and Frank Herbert’s Dune and I tore through Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass trilogy. I read John Grisham and Tom Wolfe and The Phantom Tollbooth and I Capture the Castle and everything in between.
Books stick with you. They teach you things and they transport you and they entertain you. When I lived in New York City, I tried never to leave the house without a book—so I’d never be bored or impatiently waiting. A good book can pull you away from even the worst spots—in real life, I’d be tired and cranky as I jostled elbows with the hot, noisy crowds of tourists and commuters making their way up the subway stairs to spill out into Times Square at 8 AM. But in my head, as I stumbled onto the street towards my office building holding my book propped open precariously as I walked, I’d be in a tiny boat out at sea somewhere off the coast of Japan, lost in Laura Hillenbrand’s historical fiction tome Unbroken.
The best books had the richest descriptions, and food was no exception. Take, for example, this passage from Winnie-the-Pooh: “He was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, ‘Honey or condensed milk with your bread?’ he was so excited that he said, ‘Both,’ and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, ‘But don’t bother about the bread, please.’"
Or any one of Elin Hilderbrand’s novels about Nantucket, where her characters are always packing beach picnics or cooking summertime dinners, every bit of which she describes in vivid color, like one restaurant meal with an “inside-out BLT: mâche, crispy pancetta, and a round garlic crouton sandwiched between two slices of tomato, drizzled with basil aioli” or the surprising contents of a bread basket containing golden-brown doughnuts: “deep-fried rings of a light, yeasty, herb-flecked dough. Chive, basil, rosemary. Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. Savory doughnuts.” Or this part: “Adrienne ate her steak, the béarnaise, the garlicky fries—did she even need to say it? It was steak frites from a rainy-day-in-Paris dream. The steak was perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked, pink in the middle, juicy, tender. The salad was tossed in a lemony vinaigrette but it tasted so green, so young and fresh, that Adrienne began to worry.”
When a truly great writer describes food, you can smell and taste and see it—even if you’ve never actually eaten such a thing. I loved reading about the feasts of the mice in the Brambly Hedge picture book series: “cold watercress soup, fresh dandelion salad, honey creams, syllabubs and meringue”. Have I ever eaten syllabub? No. Would I now love to? Yes.
Another of my favorite picture books—The Maggie B—features Margaret and her baby brother living on a wooden ship at sea; when a storm comes, Margaret battens down the hatches and readies the ship for safety and comfort. “When she lit the lamps, the cabin was bright and warm. It was nearly suppertime, so Margaret mixed up a batch of muffins and slid them into the oven. She sliced some peaches and put cinnamon and honey on top and they went into the oven too.”
James and Margaret eat a lobster stew along with the muffins and baked peaches before she sings him to sleep. A cozier scene I couldn’t imagine, and though I don’t expect to find myself on a sailboat tossed about on thrashing seas any time soon, nor do I have plans to make an elaborate lobster stew, the rest of the page is one any of us can (and should) attempt to replicate.
I love that she combines peaches with cinnamon and honey—a combination that would work beautifully if you simply grilled or roasted the fruit, but also one that lends itself nicely to baking (especially since she does them alongside muffins and a glass of warm goat’s milk from the goats that live on the upper deck of the ship).
My take is a cinnamon pound cake sweetened with honey; on top, a drift of pillowy whipped cream and diced summer peaches. I use a combination of honey and granulated sugar in the cake—too much honey will cause the cake to sink and yields too dense of a crumb, but using both gives it a nice honeyed sweetness and a good texture.
Recipe note: If you want a more delicate, plush texture, use cake flour instead of the all-purpose flour. I like the sturdiness of the cake as written, but both ways are excellent.
Honey Cinnamon Pound Cake with Fresh PeachesMakes one 9” cake
3 eggs + 3 egg yolks, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (168g) honey
1/2 cup (99g) granulated sugar
2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups (210g) all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
fresh peaches, for serving
whipped cream, for serving
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9” x 5” loaf pan (you can also line it with parchment which I like to do).
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, egg yolks, vanilla, and honey.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy, about 3 minutes on medium-high speed.
Add the egg mixture in three additions, beating well between each addition.
Add the flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon and mix until the batter just comes together.
Scrape the batter into your prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and let cool for about 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
Slice into thick pieces and top with whipped cream and fresh peaces.