How I got published:

My mom owned a restaurant - Liliget Feast House - a world renowned and only American Native Fine Dining restaurant of its kind. An agent came down to the restaurant and asked if we wanted to publish all our recipes. We signed on with Arsenal Pulp Press (myspace.com/arsenalpulppress). I sent in the recipes that I had - over two years - put into Word Document format. Then over the following year the publisher's editor and I have gone over each recipe to add an introduction and to finalize the instructions.

Challenges to overcome:

Going through the recipes to see which ones to keep and which ones to delete.
Getting the measurements correct. This was hard because most of the recipes were made by heart and never put on paper before.
Only had 8 days to get all the illustrations done - we spend months on editing the recipes and almost forgot about the illustrations.

Goal setting and taking action:

The publisher sent me all the deadlines - for photographs, edits and illustrations. There were a lot of long days of reading and writing. I would edit and send the cookbook recipes to the publisher. They emailed back plenty of questions that needed clarification. I would send back answered to all the questions - chapter by chapter. Then near the end - during the last month of editing - they would send the whole cookbook to check for errors. This was the hardest part - re-reading the whole cookbook more that 10 times during the month.

I though it ended there - but the promotion of the cookbook began. Cooking demonstrations, cooking classes, coobook signings, tv, radio and newspaper interviews and lectures. All very stressful. But got easier as we started to repeat the same things.

Cheers,

Annie
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Where People Feast, An Indigenous People's Cookbook- to get more information or to buy a copy, visit www.amazon.com

Add your challenges you had to overcome to get published. Thank you.

Hi,

I belong to a writers group (meetup.com) and am writing my first novel. I have 21,000 words so far. I didn't know how hard it would be. I thought I was on the right path, until I read it out loud to the other writers in the group. I have to do a major re-write.

Here is how I started. I typed all the months of the year as a heading to each of 12 pages and everytime a thought would pop up - say about a holiday, I would go to that page and write about it.

I've been doing this for 2 years as a hobby. I don't think I will finish it for another 2 years - but it's something to do.

Some of the great advise that I got so far:

1) Don't edit your work until it is all finished.

2) Don't stop writing.

Please leave your great advise as a comment, thanks.

Keep in touch and have  a sunny day,

Annie

I've been getting a lot of questions about how to get ready for culinary school. I have these few words of advise:

I attended a culinary art program a while back. You really need to know your measurements (one quart = ? cups = ? pints).

The best thing to do is use a good cookbook everytime you cook. Try out new recipes.

Know things like what a convection oven is and what foods you can cook in it. The temperature of a gas stove is different from a electric stove.

Also practice the different chopping techniques like dicing, mincing, julienne, etc.

When in school, remember there will be students with less abilities then you and some with more, so concentrate on learning how to develop your skills and don't pay too much attention to the other student's progress. Remember when you make mistakes, it's the only way to learn. If you need more advise - please leave your questions here.

Good luck and have fun!

If you have great advise, please leave your comments here. Thanks.

Mine is the Stuffed Duck Roll on page 32. Mom would make it every thanksgiving. It takes two days to prepare this recipe, so I really appreciated it. We ate it with Brown Mushroom Gravy (page 123), mashed Russet potatoes, vegetables, and Festive Cranberry-Cherry Jam (page 172).

There is a picture of it on the page opposite to page 33.

If you have attended one of our cooking demonstrations or cookbook signing events, please leave your comments here. If you have any RAVE reviews of the Where People Feast, An Indigenous People's Cookbook please write them here in my blog.

This cookbook sheds light on the unique culinary traditions and cooking techniques of Native American people who live along the Pacific Northwest Coast of British Columbia, Canada. This collection shows how to prepare and preserve wild game, seafood, vegetables, fruits, and unusual ingredients such as oolichan, herring roe, and sopalali berries, (all of which can be purchased online from distributors if not from your local, specialty or gourmet markets).