“Life is like a recipe. What do you want in your life cake? What ingredients do you need to make it rise and taste wonderful? Sometimes the simplest recipe is the best, because the more you add to the mix, the more things can go wrong.” pg 136
We had a wonderful tea with Lesley Crewe on Saturday, January 13th! We served Crewe Brew, a limited edition tea made by Teamancy in Cape Breton which can be ordered online. Teamancy describes Crewe Brew as a gorgeous blueberry black tea with hints of lemon, created in partnership with Lesley’s release of Recipe for a Good Life. Lesley told us that the blueberry was for her granddaughter whom she calls Blueberry and the tea idea came from a publicist in Toronto. Since Lesley has so many people sitting around the table drinking tea in her books why not come up with a brew- Crewe Brew?
“Once they were sorted, Bertha, Jean, and Ruth sipped their tea and ate gingerbread cake heaped with whipped cream.“pg. 130
Along with the tea, we served teapot and cup mini cookie sets to each of the 20 attendees and Lesley received a larger cookie gift set made by Jen Ziobrowski at BZ Cookies & Crafts. This is the second event that Jen has made us custom-decorated cookies and I’m sure she will be designing cookies for us for many more of our upcoming events.
“Food is her language of love. She keeps filling you up, in more ways than one.” pg 213
Lesley becomes a real writer after 20 years of writing!
Lesley was asked to be interviewed by CBC’s The Next Chapter’s Ali Hassan on January 5th. This has always been on her bucket list and she told us that she has listened to this show for years and that only real writers go on the show. By being asked she feels that she has now joined the ranks of real writers. I think she was the only one who thought she wasn’t a real writer, including her husband of more than 50 years.
Recipe for Good Life is considered a Historical Fiction set in 1955, the year Lesley was born and the Canso Causeway was built. In this story are details of a generation that is almost already lost, a time of party-line telephones, big purses that click, bee-hive hairdos, wearing aprons, and large families. Lesley encourages people to write these stories as a way of remembering and saving these memories.
Lesley told us that some of her favourite authors included David Sedaris, Maeve Binchy, and Rosamunde Pilcher. She said that she just loves Children’s Literature, Roland Dahl, and Anne of Green Gables and that Anne of Green Gables was the second book that ever made her cry. The first book was Charlotte’s Web, but when Matthew died she was devastated.
Lesley also spoke about her next book, due out in June of this year; Death and Other Inconveniences. This book is a little shorter than her previous books and was the first book she has ever had to rewrite. We are looking forward to hosting Lesley again next January and discussing it!
