Meeting Inspiration Face-to-Face

For my birthday, I got to meet the creator of my inspiration. 

In the Acknowledgements section of my novel, The Forager Chefs Club, I share that the idea for the book came from a dinner my husband, Tim, and I shared during a 2019 trip to Quebec City and the restaurant Légende. The ethos of Légende is "A tribute to our ancestors. A return to our roots. A thought on culinary history, from the first nations to today." This takes forest-to-fork, farm-to-fork, and foraging to a completely elevated level. It was during that 2019 dinner that, upon learning there was nothing in the kitchen that could not be sourced within 50 miles of it, Tim and I talked about what a unique cooking competition it would be to have it limited to only what was seasonal and locally sourced. A true foraging adventure. And the idea for The Forager Chefs Club was born.

Tim and I visited Quebec City for my Winter Solstice birthday this past month and were delighted to learn that Légende not only survived Covid, but is thriving and still "highlighting the richness of Quebec's regions, offering a creative and original tasting approach that celebrates our terroir." We booked a table for my birthday, and I brought two copies of my novel, hoping I might have the opportunity to meet the creative genius behind Légende, Chef Elliot Beaudoin.

Our five-course dinner was inventive, beyond delicious, and with surprising details – coal-seared halibut, for instance! The bison hanger steak with a honey and smoked tomato glaze, fermented sunchokes, and a boreal spices broth was one of the best main courses I've ever had the pleasure to eat. One of the most inventive courses was dessert, which featured boreal "chocolate": a charcoal tomato and cranberry concoction that I swear to you tastes like a fruity chocolate mousse.  "Boreal" features strongly in the Légende cuisine – forest-to-fork ingredients specific to the temperate forested region south of the Arctic circle.

Chef Elliot's cuisine is minimalism with finesse. It looks like art and tastes heavenly. I got to meet Chef near the end of our meal when he was able to spare a few minutes from his very busy kitchen. It was definitely the highlight of my birthday! He was gracious and engaging and seemed truly interested in the copy of The Forager Chefs Club that I brought him. (The second copy I brought went to our server, Max, who had asked to read a few pages.) 

My first meal at Légende inspired me to write The Forager Chefs Club. My second meal there, and meeting its amazing chef in person, has inspired me to share my novel's core message of foraging, cooking, and eating seasonally and locally with as many people as I can. If you share that ethos or want to explore it, I hope you'll consider spending some time with The Forager Chefs Club. 

And I heartily recommend a visit to Quebec City and Légende! I know that Tim and I will be back.

Bootstrap Marketing and the Power of a Review

Marketing a novel—particularly when you’re published by a small “indie” house rather than one of the “big five”—is a bootstrap endeavor. It turns out writing The Forager Chefs Club was only the start of the creative work necessary to make it a success. 

With so many books out there vying for what little time people can devote to reading, reviews are particularly important. While my “TBR” (to-be-read) book stack continues to grow, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a novel without reading the synopsis and what other people had to say about it. But unlike ads or blog posts or other ways of getting the word out about your book, an author has absolutely no control over what people write in a review. Which is why they can be so powerful. 

I received my copy of this week’s Publishers Weekly. It’s their “Best Books of 2024” issue and the BookLife review of The Forager Chefs Club is in it. As you might recall from an earlier blog post, I got word of the review—and that my novel had been selected as an “editor’s pick”—in September, but holding the magazine in my hand and seeing it in actual print… Well, that’s a whole ‘nother level of gratitude. Here’s a snippet of what they had to say:

"Walston's epically delicious second novel summons readers to a table piled with purpose, twists, and, of course, a passion for food. Precise and sumptuous dish descriptions prove just as enticing and involving as the character portraits, making this feast for the senses one readers will fall in love with and revisit to have their souls and hearts nourished." 

You can read the whole review here. I can’t get that one added to the actual book, but I am grateful to the very accomplished authors who have given me reviews, including this one by New York Times best-selling author J. Ryan Stradal:

"The Forager Chefs Club has everything I love in a novel: complex characters, beautifully described settings, a ton of heart and empathy, and incredible food. Curl up with this one by the fire and enjoy." 

And what Warren Buffet is to finance, Samuel Thayer is to foodie foraging. He wrote this about The Forager Chefs Club:

"What a treat—it's not often that foragers get to see our pastime realistically depicted in a work of fiction. I had to stay up late in my hammock reading by moonlight just to find out how the threads of all five forager chefs were tied together in the end." 

To my readers who have provided a review on Amazon and GoodReads, thank you so much! 

Getting the word out about The Forager Chefs Club is a work in progress. I’m lining up some book signing events and seeking out opportunities to connect with those of us who love forest-to-fork and farm-to-fork cooking. If you have any ideas for me, please let me know!

A Tale of Two Tomatoes

Now that I have a greenhouse, October no longer means the close of my garden and forage season. I plan to harvest tomatoes and other ingredients for my foodie cooking experiments all winter long! I’d read that an easy way to start tomato seedlings is to place a seed-filled slice in garden starter mix, so I thought I’d give that a try.

As an experiment, I bought one tomato from my local Wegmans grocery store, and one from a vendor at my local farmers market. I chose the organic Beefsteak variety. One of the reasons I like Wegmans is that they support sustainable sourcing, buying regionally and locally as much as possible. Still, you can’t get much more farm-to-fork than a vendor at the farmers market, right?

I planted a thick, seed-packed slice of each tomato into my growing mix on September 8. Want to guess which tomato slice produced more seedlings by mid-October?

I know I was surprised…

Yup, the grocery store tomato. The farmers market tomato only produced one viable seedling—which really surprised me. It makes me kind of wonder about that particular vendor and his produce…

I also have the Black Brandywine heirloom variety in the greenhouse that’s quite tall but not yet producing, but a hearty slice of Beefsteak tomato in the middle of January sounded too good to resist. I’ll keep you posted on progress!

In other news, I had a wonderful book signing at Twigs in Purcellville last week! Thank you, Amy Turner, for the opportunity to sit on the front porch of your lovely shop on a gorgeous Saturday and talk to people about gardening, foraging, and The Forager Chefs Club! If you don’t have your copy yet, The Forager Chefs Club is available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org, as well as at brick-and-mortar locations in Virginia like Twigs, Fields of Athenry Farm Shop & Sidesaddle Bistro in Middleburg, and Birchtree Bookstore in Leesburg.

Thank you for all your encouragement and well wishes!