Regency Eats: The Top Chef Edition

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I am obsessed with "Top Chef: All Stars". I love the chefs, I love the challenges, I love Anthony Bourdain...I even love Padma, even though I think she's a thoroughly unlikely food show host. As far as I know, the Regency did not have anything like "Top Chef" (they were rather short on televisions, after all). But, they did have one of the very first celebrity chefs - Marie-Antoine Carême. According to Venetia Murray's book "High Society", Carême's father was a stonemason with fifteen other children; and so, when Carême was eleven, his father took him to Paris, "fed him supper in a tavern and abandoned him in the street." Awfully nice of dear old dad to give him supper first, right?

Despite that rather inauspicious beginning, Carême found his way into an apprenticeship with in a Parisian patisserie. His master allowed him to study at the Bibliotheque Royale, where he saw all sorts of engravings of ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian architecture - and he translated his lessons into fantastic pastry centerpieces (which I suppose makes him a direct predecessor to Duff Goldman on "Ace of Cakes").

As Carême's reputation grew, he set up his own establishment and cooked for the uppermost echelons of Parisian society, including Napoleon and Talleyrand. After Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo, Prinny (later George IV) lured Carême away from the continent to cook for him in England.

Prinny's kitchen at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton was the ultimate in modern convenience - so ultimate that he once served dinner in the kitchen itself to show it off to his guests. Prinny and his household went through an astonishing quantity of food, and Carême was in charge of making sure that the food all reached the table at the right time. And he didn't just cook - like many of today's celebrity chefs, he wrote several popular cookbooks, and his techniques influenced generations of chefs.

So in regards to "Top Chef", I've been thinking that the cheftestants have it easy compared to Carême's job. For one dinner at the Royal Pavilion on 15 January 1817, Carême and his team prepared 100 unique dishes, including 36 entrees and 32 desserts. Presumably, the kitchens would have also turned out a sumptuous breakfast, lunch, and any other snacky-snacks that day as well, which makes the production of such a lavish dinner in the age before refrigeration even more incredible.

I'll be watching "Top Chef" tonight with eager anticipation, but I'm slightly less impressed with their feats of culinary genius after reading about everything that Carême turned out. Given that they aren't running the risk of poisoning a future king with spoiled, unrefrigerated food, they should feel positively relaxed about their cooking.

Are you as obsessed with "Top Chef" as I am? Don't you think Carême would look awesome with Marcel's hair? And would you be able to handle a dinner with 100 dishes, either as a cook or a diner?

My Funny Regency Valentine - Winner!

Sadly, only two people created a valentine for the contest (even though I know that there were many more visitors lurking throughout the day). But happily, the two poems were both amazing: From: Secret Admirer on 14 February 2011

Let my guitar woo you With covers of Ke$ha and U2 Ne’er did a song sing so sweet Than after a feast of loose meat. Let our hearts combine! Clever girl — won’t you be mine?

From: Fish Monger on 15 February 2011

Ah a Fish Monger that’s what I am. I sell fish and I sell clam. I make good money that is true. I’m saving it for someone special like you.

There’s nothing better than great fish and fine wine. I would ask you to be my Valentine. But I don’t know you and you don’t know me. So I’ll just forget it and sell my fish by the sea.

Both poems hit exactly the spirit of a Regency valentine, offering some sort of pragmatic skill/riches to woo a lady. The fish monger poem ended rather pessimistically, particularly for a romance, but was still lovely.

However, there can be only one winner. I went to random.org, asked it to pick a random whole number between 1 and 2, and it chose 1. So, Secret Admirer wins! I will be in touch with your giftcard, and thanks for playing!

My Funny Regency Valentine (and a prize!)

Valentine's Day is upon us again. I've no particular love or loathing for the holiday - for me, it ranks somewhere between St. Patrick's Day and Columbus Day in terms of enjoyment. However, as a romance writer, I suppose I should give the holiday its due. And what better way to celebrate than with a contest? Read on to find out how you can write your own Regency valentine for fun and profit. The first known "valentine"-type love letter was a poem written by Charles, duc d'Orleans, in the 15th century. The duke was captured after the Battle of Agincourt and spent the next 25 years in captivity in England (back when captivity of nobles was either house arrest in grand quarters or a stint in the Tower followed by a trip to the executioner - the duke was lucky enough to receive the former, rather than the latter, and was eventually released). During his captivity, he wrote a valentine to his wife back home, with perhaps the most romantic/ridiculous use of 'etc.' in a love poem that I have ever seen.

By the Regency, publishers were starting to give advice to hapless suitors on how to write suitable valentines for their lady loves. The first advice book was published in 1797, and I found a slightly later, vastly amusing snippet of prewritten Regency-era valentines at Google Books. Starting on page 72 of THE YEAR'S FESTIVALS by Helen Philbrook Patten, the author excerpts from a book that was published in 1812 called "Cabinet of Love; or, Cupid's Repository of Choice Valentines."

I'll leave it to you to explore the excerpts, as there are several poems worth giggling over. My favorites are:

From a baker:

"In these hard times it truly may be said That half a loaf's much better than no bread; Then surely, pretty dear, you glad may be Since sure of loaves enough, to marry me."

From a shoemaker:

"A piece of charming kid you are As e'er mine eyes did see, No calf-skin smooth that e'er I saw Can be compared with thee.

You are my all, do not refuse To let us tack together; But let us join, my Valentine, Like sole and upper leather."

Now, isn't that romantic?

So this makes me curious to see if we can do any better. I'd love to see what you can come up with as a Regency-style valentine. Length is no issue - it can be a short, poorly-rhyming couplet or a marvel of epic verse. Talking up the pragmatic rationale for your love is a plus; odd puns and references to starvation are definitely encouraged.

All entries between now and nine p.m. (PST) on Tuesday are eligible, and you can enter as many times as you like. After the contest closes, I'll choose a winner randomly (using random.org). The winner will receive a $15 Amazon giftcard - so please check back on Wednesday to see if you've won! And may you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day, filled with warm bread and well-fitted shoes.

What I'm Reading: February 2011

I've been reading a lot of non-Regency work recently - this always happens when I'm slogging thickly through my own story, since reading in my own genre can be too distracting. So, my recent reads are heavy on the paranormal elements:

• FIRST GRAVE ON THE RIGHT by Darynda Jones. This is a smashing debut from one of my fellow 2009 Golden Heart winners - and holding her (gorgeous, hardcover) book in my hands at Borders gave me chills even though I'm on the teensiest edge of the periphery of her supernova success. Okay, that may be melodramatic. Still, her voice is incredible - the best way I can describe it is that the book has the best of the early Janet Evanovich/Stephanie Plum books (kickass, slightly ridiculous heroine, not yet mired in a love triangle) with all the heat and awesome paranormal elements that I'm loving with that side of the genre. I would totally recommend this even if I didn't know Darynda (and recommend it even more because I do).

• THE GHOST SHRINK, THE ACCIDENTAL GIGOLO AND THE POLTERGEIST ACCOUNTANT by Vivi Andrews. This is starting to look like nepotism, since Vivi is another of my fellow 2009 Golden Heart winners - but I'm way behind on reading the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood's stuff, and Vivi's novella hit the spot exactly when I needed it. While the story has paranormal elements (in fact, precisely the elements listed in the title - shocking!), at its core it's really a sweet, fun romp with a lovely woman who desperately needs to get laid and the unbelievably hot man who's more than willing to help her take care of that problem. It was just as sweet and fun as the heroine herself (and Vivi, for that matter), and a great afternoon read.

• WARRIOR by Zoe Archer. I'd heard great things about this series, and so far, so good. I got the bundle a couple of months ago and devoured Warrior in one sitting sometime in late January. Having a kick-ass heroine definitely helps, and the hero was one of those uncannily-good warriors I love so much (which explains my deep, abiding love for Aragorn from Lord of the Rings).

Up next, Kresley Cole's DREAMS OF A DARK WARRIOR releases this week, and it's already on the way to my doorstep. I also have a stack of novels as tall as me waiting for when I finish the final draft of my current project - which can't come soon enough, or else my TBR pile is going to bury me.

What are you reading? Are there any recent or upcoming books that I should add to the pile?

A Brief Thought on Musicales

I adored everything about Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series, but one of my favorite running jokes was the annual Smythe-Smith musicale. Happily, Ms. Quinn is revisiting the Smythe-Smiths (the first book in a planned quartet comes out May 31, according to her website), but they were very much at the forefront of my mind last night, for reasons I will explain in a moment. The joke with the Smythe-Smiths is that they are forced to put on a musicale every year; their mother seems to think that showcasing their talents will endear them to male suitors, but as they are sadly lacking in musical ability, the evenings prove tiresome rather than enchanting. Whenever I read Regencies, I find myself longing for some sort of abstract version of days of yore - but I think I would rather die than trade my iTunes library for endless evenings of excruciating amateur music.

You see, last night I found myself at something akin to a musicale. One of my friends is a singer (quite a good one, actually), and she invited an army of her friends to see her perform in a recital comprised of fellow students of her vocal teacher. Sadly, the army failed to materialize; like musicales, these activities do tend to scare people away. And while I was very glad that I got to hear my friend sing (again, she is amazing, and hearing her sing Ke$ha around the house is no match for the power of her voice performing an aria), the opening bits with the true amateurs left me feeling as cranky as any Smythe-Smith musicale would.

So while I would happily attend rout-parties, Venetian breakfasts, and the like, I think I would have to draw the line at making musicales a regular part of my social whirl. Are there any Regency entertainments that make you have second thoughts?

Visit or Die: Brighton's Royal Pavilion

I've already seen Brighton's Royal Pavilion - it was one of the highlights of a research trip I took to England in 2008. While the Prince Regent (later George IV) was generally a wastrel, glutton, rake, and any other old-timey insult you care to use, he did have extraordinary taste in architecture, fashion and the arts. His stamp is still all over London, but while his ongoing masterwork at Carlton House was ultimately torn down so that he could start over with Buckingham Palace, Brighton's Royal Pavilion remains as a testament to the insanely opulent life that he lived. But if that's not reason enough to go, there's more: you have one year to see a fabulous temporary exhibit on Regency fashion. From now until 5 February 2012, the Royal Pavilion is putting on "Dress for Excess: Fashion in Regency England". According to their website, "This major fashion exhibition celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Regency Act by looking at the life of George IV as prince, regent and king through fashions of the late Georgian period." If you are going to be anywhere near England this year (and I'm considering California 'near', given how excited I am about this exhibit), you really must go. Brighton is a short, easy daytrip from London, with frequent trains to and fro; or, you can stay over (although for my money, I would rather do a daytrip to Brighton and save the overnight trip for Bath).

Are you going to England this year? Would you consider going to Brighton for this exhibit, or are there other places that top your list?

Steal This Look: Stays and Corsets

For this week's Regency edition of Steal This Look, I am biased towards considering fashions that can mask the pound (or five) that I may gain from the usual gauntlet of holiday parties, family feasts, and generally slothlike activity. While our Regency heroines were free from the tyranny of the dreaded Christmas sweater, and they would certainly never show up to a house party in a Playboy-style bunny costume a la Bridget Jones, they still had to wear those low-necked, high-waisted clingy white dresses - a silhouette that was extremely unforgiving to all but the willowiest of girls. So how did they make their dresses look more svelte and less sacklike? It all starts with a good pair of stays. While Regency fashions were much lighter and less restrictive than what you would have seen in the Tudor, Restoration, or even the Georgian period, almost all women wore stays to smooth out their shape and add support (how else do you think all those Regency cover models get their breasts elevated so close to their chins?). Unlike modern corsets, stays were usually laced in front and back, and almost always had shoulder straps to provide additional support.

When I went to England in 2008, I was thrilled to go to the Fashion Museum in Bath. It's a must-stop if you go to Bath, particularly since it's located in the Assembly Rooms - you can check out both the dancing and card rooms of the Assembly Rooms and see some incredible fashions in the same building. They had a small exhibit on undergarments; most undergarments haven't survived the test of time (but really, as I don't intend to leave my prized underwear to my grandchildren, this shouldn't be a surprise), but the museum does have a few pieces that are worth seeing.

So how can you steal this look? If you are into steampunk or fetishwear, or if you go to much more interesting places than I do, you can rock a gorgeous, custom-made corset in place of the usual tshirt. Dark Garden looks interesting - I know absolutely nothing about them and can't vouch for them, but they're based in San Francisco, so if you go to them and they treat you badly, let me know so that I can avoid them :). They also make bridal corsets, which would be a really fun way to take the corset from the bedroom to the runway (er, aisle) on your big day.

You can also make your own corset - Simplicity pattern 2890 is for both a corset and drawers, although it looks quite costumey and not particularly period perfect. This pattern at Truly Victorian looks more appropriate, while CorsetMaking.com sells all manner of material, busks, boning, and lacing to make your corset dreams come true. Again, I haven't tried any of these myself, but if you are more intrepid than I am, please report back with your findings.

However, the easiest way I've found to steal the look and smooth out my shape doesn't involve corsetry - instead, it involves the thoroughly modern smoke-and-mirrors made possible by Spanx. Armed with their weapons-grade nylon/spandex, I might just be able to wear one of those white muslin dresses without looking pregnant. And while Spanx are more expensive than, say, a three-pack of Hanes, they are much less expensive than a custom-made corset, and without any of the discomfort of having steel or boning digging into your lungs.

For the record, I have tried Spanx, so I know that of which I speak. What do you think? Do you secretly wish that corsets were back in style, or are you quite happy with the more relaxed silhouettes of the future?

How to Live Like a Romance Heroine: Drink Tea

On this week's installment of "How to Live Like a Romance Heroine," we have a topic very near and dear to my heart - tea!

I love many types of tea, but my go-to drink while writing is strong, hot black tea with milk and sugar. My obsession started young, when I reread The Secret Garden every week for months. In my Iowa youth, the only tea I had was Lipton in a bag, and I compensated by having a sugar:liquid ratio that should have given me far more cavities than I actually suffered. Now, though, I am much more refined (read 'snobbish') in my tastes - only loose-leaf will do, and only in a proper mug. Tea is delicate enough that I swear I can taste the paper if it is served in a to-go cup. But where can you find these teas, and how can you make them yourself?

My favorite place for tea in San Francisco is Samovar, which has three locations scattered across the city. If you ever visit SF, you must make a trip to the Samovar at Yerba Buena Gardens; it overlooks a terraced garden nestled in the heart of the city, creating a warm little oasis of pleasure in the midst of the skyscrapers of the Financial District and the pressing humanity of Union Square.

This is the inside of Samovar on a recent weekend - doesn't it just make you want to sit and drink tea for hours? Luckily, the staff sincerely do not mind if you linger (which is much to be preferred from the 10-15 minute tea-guzzling social calls of the Regency period!).

But you do not need to pay someone to make the perfect cup of tea for you - unlike espresso, it's easy and cheap to make great tea at home without any special equipment. You only need the following:

• Loose-leaf tea of your choice. There are hundreds of varieties out there, divided into categories such as black, green, white, oolong, rooibos, herbal, etc. My standby is English Breakfast (excellent with milk and sugar). There are hundreds of stores out there that sell loose-leaf tea in tins, as well as online sites like Teavana and Samovar. Better yet, seek out your local tea purveyors so that you can test the products and learn more from them about how to brew the perfect cup. You should look for full, unbroken dried tea leaves; generally, crumbled bits of leaves or the dust that you find in teabags are the most inferior byproducts of the tea production process and should be avoided.
• A tea kettle. Either stovetop or electric - I'm certainly not advocating for living like a real romance heroine, with a kitchen servant keeping a pot of boiling water over the fire all day! You could also boil water just as easily in a saucepan, but I prefer the aesthetics of a real pot.
• A tea ball or a strainer. The advantage of a tea ball is that you can keep the leaves contained within the ball; as they expand, they stick to the insides of whatever you are brewing the tea in, and a tea ball makes it much easier to clean up. You may also see this called an 'herb ball', and it should be available for only a couple of dollars at a kitchen supply store or Target.
• A teapot. By combining the leaves and boiling water in the teapot, you can brew the tea in one vessel, leaving the leaves there when you pour the tea into a cup. Note: when making tea for myself, I've become lazy and just toss a tea ball directly into my mug; this saves me from having to wash up a teapot, since I don't have scullery maids at my beck and call.
• A teacup or mug. Pretty self-explanatory, really - you need something to drink out of, don't you?

It's all quite simple after that: boil the water, spoon the appropriate amount of tea (usually as directed on the package) into a tea ball, pour boiling water over the tea ball and steep as directed, and then enjoy. Steeping for longer than recommended won't kill you, but it will release more tannins the longer it steeps, making for a more bitter brew.

For those of you who want to learn more about the history of teadrinking in Britain, the wonderful writer Joanna Bourne wrote an excellent (albeit long) post on the subject a few weeks ago at Word Wenches, replete with lots of photos and fun historical tidbits - check it out and let me know what you think!

Do you like to drink tea? Or would you rather live like a Regency heroine by drinking champagne, ratafia, or the insipid lemonade at Almack's? All comments are welcome, even if you (like me) secretly nurse an addiction to Diet Coke that cannot be eclipsed by the beverages of yore.

There, but for the grace of God...

One of the authors I follow on Twitter is Courtney Milan, who has released a series of excellent historicals over the past year and has another book, UNVEILED, coming out in January. If the cover alone wasn't enough to seduce me, I'm quite intrigued by the premise - the hero has just found information to get the heroine (and her brothers) declared illegitimate, which means that he will inherit their father's dukedom while the duke's kids will be cast out of society. But, as these things happen, the hero and heroine meet and fall in love despite all that. Sounds lovely, right? So I was quite saddened for Ms. Milan when my Twitter feed gave me all the details of a review for her book that went horribly awry.

Basically, Publishers Weekly's review (scroll to the middle of the page) of UNVEILED proclaimed "the love story...genuinely satisfying and Margaret's dilemma movingly portrayed", which is a v. good thing. But, the reviewer also said "the conflict [is] dependent on the unlikely scenario of Parliament legitimizing a bigamist's bastards, fatally marring an otherwise promising novel."

Daggers, right? That's the kind of review that kills a little bit of a writer's soul, or at least I imagine it is - particularly writers who really, truly care about and strive for historical accuracy. And Ms. Milan does care about accuracy; while she didn't respond to the review directly, she did a very calm, thorough post about the historical research that went into her plot, and there really was a case in Britain in which a family under similar circumstances was legitimized by an Act of Parliament. As a result of the tempest in the Twitter teakettle over this, PW did revise the review slightly to say "unlikely scenario" (before, I believe it said something more along the lines of "impossible", but don't quote me), but the review still stings.

Now, I don't know Ms. Milan (although I have won two different books from her on Twitter, so I suppose I'm biased towards thinking she's a v. nice person), I don't know the reviewer, and I don't know the deep intricacies of English inheritance law. But the hard thing about writing historical romances is that there is a divide between "history" (i.e. what really, factually happened) and "romance history" (i.e. what is commonly accepted as fact in the world that Smart Bitches/Trashy Books would call "Romancelandia"). As a minor example, in Romancelandia, the waltz is danced in nearly every London-based Regency romance -- but in the real world, everything I've read indicates that it wasn't danced until at least 1813, and didn't get a broader blessing until 1816 or later.

So the readership and the reviewers have what they consider a very clear sense of what "Regency" (or, in Ms. Milan's case, Victorian) is, and writers who stray away from Romancelandia into the "real world" are treading a very narrow line. And I must admit that before this brouhaha, I would have also said that the plot sounded unlikely - I'm part of the Beau Monde online special-interest chapter of RWA geared toward the Regency, and the fact that bastards cannot and will never inherit has been rehashed in that group many times. But, the legal case that Ms. Milan found has never come up there either, and I believe her now that I've seen it.

But as an author, how do you handle these questions of historical accuracy? As a reader, can you trust that the author has done their research, or do you throw the book against the wall when it violates the precepts of Romancelandia? As editors and agents continue to look for new and fresh stories, writers must go farther afield in search of inspiration - and what they bring back, while based in fact, may not meet the sniff test for those who believe that Romancelandia's Regency period and the real Regency are the same thing.

Ms. Milan said that perhaps an author's note explaining her research might have helped; perhaps that really is the only way to win over the disbelieving reviewer. It's certainly something I will consider if I publish a story that doesn't match readers' understanding of the period - after all, if I felt major sympathy pangs for the author after reading the review, I can't imagine how it would feel to be the direct recipient of that kind of unfounded criticism.

But what do you think? Are most readers more forgiving than the reviewer was? Or is an author's note the only way to deal with this?

What I'm Reading: December 2010

My fellow readers, I have a dark confession. I haven't read anything new in at least two weeks. If this continues, my writer card may be revoked.

But, there are a dozens of books waiting for me to read, and I hope to make some serious progress over the holidays. Given that I also intend to finish writing my book, write a hundred Christmas cards, switch blog hosting companies, start researching a shiny secret idea I have for a medieval-flavored young adult book, and spend time with the family I've shamefully neglected these past few months, I may be setting too high a bar.

Still, I've got a reading list - does it match yours? What hot new books am I missing?

• Zoe Archer's BLADES OF THE ROSE series. I got WARRIOR, SCOUNDREL, REBEL, and STRANGER as part of a discounted Amazon bundle for my Kindle, and I can't wait to dive in - I've heard such good things.
• Vivi Andrews's THE GHOST SHRINK, THE ACCIDENTAL GIGOLO, AND THE POLTERGEIST ACCOUNTANT. Disclaimer: I'm friends with Vivi, since she won a Golden Heart the same year that I did, but this book got fantastic reviews.
• Courtney Milan's TRIAL BY DESIRE. I loved her debut, PROOF BY SEDUCTION, so I'm hoping for great things in this one.
• Sarah MacLean's TEN WAYS TO BE ADORED WHEN LANDING A LORD. Extremely long titles aside, her first book in this series (NINE RULES TO BREAK WHEN ROMANCING A RAKE) was one of the best debuts I've ever read. She signed a copy for me at RWA convention in Orlando and was perfectly lovely in person, so I'm excited to read the sequel.

I'm sure there are other books on the list, but this list will change depending on what books I may get for Christmas. What's on your must-read list for December?