ROSEWATER PISTACHIO CAKE TRIFLE WITH ROASTED APRICOTS + WE’RE HAVING A BOOK BABY!

Everyday when I came home from school, I’d sit down at the small, 1980’s-infused particle board desk in our tv room, turn on our modular gray Apple computer, open up a new document, and write a short story. I wrote the characters that lived in my mind—the cousins I didn’t have on our isolated island home, best friends who loved me undyingly, adventures in jungles that existed only in the liminal magic of the word. Where other kids wanted to grow up to become actors and astronauts, I just wanted one thing: To write a book.

As I grew older, my writing practice become a refuge. If I was limited in the real world, writing made me unlimited. Though my first form was the short story, in college I abandoned fiction for poetry. And after college, after my mother got sick and died, I turned to creative non-fiction to unearth my voice, my anger, some truth in the heavy silence of grief. I began to study with the extraordinary author Rebecca Walker, and remembered that singular, long ago desire. And so I wrote a book.

I wrote about my mother, I wrote about my break-up with yoga and the New Age industry, I wrote about the two heartbreaks that had occurred nearly simultaneously in my life. And then, in the catharsis of telling the truth, I decided I couldn’t bear to publish the thing, to spend another few years being this person drenched in motherless daughter grief. As so many first books do, it ended up digitally shelved in my desk drawer.

And then Kale & Caramel came along—a place where I could write life, write beauty, write the full spectrum of who I am today, and share with you all the bits and pieces that have made me hurt, that have made me closer to whole. As Kale & Caramel grew, requests for cookbooks came in here and there, each one making me giddy, each time with my knowing it wasn’t the right time yet. Not yet.

But last spring, that changed. If you look in the bottom of my suitcase, even now, you’ll find visitor badges for Simon & Schuster, for Penguin, for the meetings I had with publishers I had only ever prayed I’d get to meet. And, on a bright late February morning, I sold my very first book. I decided I should treat myself, so I went out and bought a box of raisin bran. I wanted to be more exciting than raisin bran, I really did. But it was the one thing I gosh dang wanted to eat, and I let myself have it.

Which is to say: The Kale & Caramel cookbook is a thing (!!) that, come April 2017 via Atria / Simon & Schuster, you will be able to hold in your sweet little paws (!!!). It is filled with 85 or so recipes and photographs—savories, sweets, tonics, and, of course, body and beauty products also made from food. It is filled with stories of loss and longing and love and absurdity. It is the story of me becoming whole again after grief. It is the story of the herbs and flowers that healed me along the way.

It took everything I had to wait this long to tell you, and I’m so excited to share more about it with you over the coming weeks. Writing, recipe developing, and shooting a cookbook has plunged me into the depths of my humanness. It’s given me hives. It’s thrown out my back. It’s taught me that I cannot do it all alone. And it’s also reminded me that the singular desire I held as a little girl, to write a book, was still there all along.

Much more to say, but first: Rosewater pistachio olive oil cake trifle! With vanilla bean roasted apricots! And goat cheese rosewater whipped cream! And pistachios! And rose petals! Because we’re having a book baby!!! This is the dreamiest spring-to-summer dessert I could conjure to celebrate. It’s not too sweet, the goat cheese and apricots lending a mellow tang to a rosewater-infused pistachio olive oil cake.

I literally, truly, madly, deeply could not, would not be doing this if it weren’t for you. Yes, you. You, sitting or standing or picking your nose or listening to Britney Spears you. This book is for you. And I wanted to give you a big fat gift about it. So I bundled up my two absolute favorite Zwilling J.A. Henckels knives, some handmade dark chocolate mendiants with rose petals, cacao nibs, and orange zest, a jar of handmade lavender rose oat milk bath, and a jar of the honey rose facial cleanser I use every day. It’s an early taste of things to come in the book. (**UPDATE: GIVEAWAY CLOSED**)

I love you. We made a book baby! I’ll just be over here eating some celebratory raisin bran if you need me. (**UPDATE: GIVEAWAY CLOSED.** And make sure you enter the giveaway below! Picture below is what’s included. If you’re already on the mailing list, just mark complete and let me know. US only.)

GET YOUR COPY OF THE KALE & CARAMEL COOKBOOK!