Delicious Too

Last week Julie Larios wrote here about our new book Delicious.

Her poems are tasty, and it was a pleasure to illustrate them.

It was a pleasure that lasted for a decade! Delicious celebrates street food, much of which is fast, but creating the book was slow. I loved her idea and poems when I first heard them in 2011. I then created sample illustrations using the technique of papercutting.

Julie and I submitted the book for publication in 2012 but the world was not hungry for it yet.

Years later Allyn Johnson at Beachlane had an appetite for this project but wanted paintings not papercuts.

With this painting I figured out my new approach. I began with Julie’s Oaxaca poem because of my deep love for the place – its art and food. (Here and here are links to other posts I have written about Oaxaca.)

Painting the images for this book was a trip around the world. It involved research about the food and also about the places. For example for the illustration about Senegal I looked at pictures of baobab fruit, bouye, bissap water and lots of Senegalese textiles which I referenced in the border and also in the bark of the trees.

SUMMER DAY (Dakar, Senegal)

Cousin, cousin – cold bouye?

Cold bouye from the baobab tree?

And icy bissap water for me.

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My imaginary visit to Korea included kimchee and kites.

BEST FRIENDS (Seoul, South Korea)

First full moon day, time to play

You and I with kites in the sky.

Auntie brings us market meals:

mandu for you,

kimchee for me.

………………………………………….

Food is joyful. Food is necessary. Food is a way to keep culture alive and to connect cultures. In my illustrations I celebrate each unique place as well as the food.

After many years of cooking, this feast is ready. Hot dog!

STADIUM DOG (Boston, Massachusetts, USA)

Franks with relish

at Fenway Park,

going, going, gone-

and home before dark.

……………………..

I hope that Delicious will lead to real shared meals and experiences. You can purchase the book many places including Elliott Bay Books here.

………………………………….

What a DELICIOUS day!

I’m so happy to tell everyone reading Books Around the Table today that my latest picture book collaboration with illustrator Julie Paschkis is now officially out in the world – Delicious: Poems Celebrating Street Food Around the World has been published by Beach Lane Books! Big shout hurrah, huzza, yippee and yay!! And a big thanks to editor Allyn Johnston for the fine work her team did in making this a real, hold-in-your-hands book.

“Out in the world” is exactly where this book lives – New York City, Oaxaca, Jaffa, Marrakech, Launceton, St. Petersburg, Lima, Mumbai, Surabaya, Seoul, Athens, Dakar, Beijing, and Boston, to be exact. And there could have been so many more cities, each one with its own rich stories about traditional street food. Choosing just fourteen poems to fit the picture book format was hard! So many beautiful cities, so much delicious food. I wrote one of the poems to honor many of the foods at once.

“Syrian shawarma wrapped in a pita? / Biryani? Pork carnitas? / Maybe I’ll get a hot falafel? / Schnitzel? Pretzel? Sesame noodles? / Cajun? Lebanese? Cuban? Thai? / So many choices! What should I try?”

I set “Carts in the Park” in New York City, where doors open wide to many immigrants and many kinds of street food (thinking of hot pretzels covered with mustard, a hot dog in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and divine biryani one night after a show in the Theater District.) But my own personal experience with this kind of gathering of food carts is Portland, Oregon, a city that in the past has supported a whole city block of food carts downtown, as well as mini-parks full of carts in other neighborhoods. I hear a big apartment building might be built on the food cart block – say it ain’t so, Portland! We need some food cart advocates. Maybe this book and others like it will help ensure another generation of food cart lovers?

Food carts in downtown Portland

When you travel, do you come home with memories of unexpected moments with a local food seller? A small conversation, a delicious bite of traditional street food? I suspect you do, I hope you do, because those memories stay with you and become part of your family lore, don’t they? My best memories of Mexico, aside from visiting my husband’s family, are from the lively markets and the street carts – hot corn on the cob covered in chile sauce, all-you-can-drink orange juice, sweet peanut brittle, morning tamales, fruit juice popsicles, churros, cocoa, and – yes – deep fried grasshoppers. The poem I wrote for Oaxaca comes straight up from my love of the kind and hard-working Mexican street vendors I’ve met.

“Steaming cup of champurrado / panecitos, cinnamon churros — / mmm, mmm! Delicioso! / Lovebirds chirp: Pio! Pio!”

This is my fourth book with Julie Paschkis, and when the box of author copies arrived at my door, I said my usual hallelujah for Julie’s energy and vision, her talent, and – most important – her friendship. With this book in particular, I thank her and my other Books Around the Table friends for their patience and support – this book was a long time coming! Many first versions of the poems were just too long for a picture book collection (one stand-alone poem about Mexican markets was highlighted in 2010 in a blog post by Jama Kim Rattigan – eleven years ago this month!) so the project came to a standstill. I even put the manuscript away for a number of years, busy with my teaching at Vermont College of Fine Arts. But it kept sneaking out of that drawer in my desk, and it really does help to have an encouraging and supportive writers group to keep your spirits up. Thank you, Laura, Julie P., Margaret and Bonny.

I’m hoping someday I’ll get to St. Petersburg….“Four pelmeni / three piroshki / two sweet blini — / one big belly.”

And hoping I’ll get to Lima …. “From a tin tray / on parade day / to celebrate the Lord of Miracles — / star cookies, pink sprinkles!”

And to Marrakech. And to Athens. And…and…and….

Can you tell I’m aching to travel again? Fingers crossed. Vaccinated, wearing my mask, dreaming of Oaxaca.

Paprika Coloring Book

Last spring I started creating coloring pages and posting them on my website here. It was a way for me to offer something to people who were suddenly home all the time (kids and adults). And it was a way to steady myself in a wobbling world.

Now, a year later, I have posted more than 150 drawing pages. They are all available to download for free here.

Recently I picked 21 of my favorite pages and made a new coloring book.

You can buy the coloring book at JuliePaprika for $10. (Click here). The pages can be colored with pencils, crayons, markers or paint.

You can make up your own stories for the images as you add color.

Because I used to be an art teacher, I hope that you will also make your own drawings from scratch. Here are a few prompts for starting a drawing. These are some of the ways I jump start myself.

DRAWING PROMPTS:

1. Draw a shape and repeat it many times. Then decorate that shape with doodles.

2. Draw a straight line. Connect another line to it. Keep adding lines and see what happens. Various dimensions might appear.

3. Write a word so that the letters fill the whole page. Decorate the letters.

4. Draw something that is laying around your house. Don’t worry if your drawing is wonky or strange. If you wanted a perfect picture you could take a photograph.

5. Draw a line and repeat a similar line next to it, over and over. You can do it with many shapes (like these leaves), or just one shape over and over. The little irregularities and variations of the line as it repeats will make your drawing interesting.

I hope that you will have fun creating your own drawings, and adding color to mine. And I hope that as the world opens up there is still time to draw or be contemplative in other ways.

p.s. Today’s blogpost comes with dessert. Here is a recipe/painting of strawberry rhubarb pie by my niece Zoe Paschkis. You can see more of Zoe’s work on Instagram ( click HERE) or Etsy (HERE).