Best-selling New Zealand “eriginal” food memoir heads for a
print edition
From Awa Press
With the help of some mouth-watering recipes and sage advice from the
Duchess of Windsor – “If you don’t take care you may serve an entire meal
pinkish mauve, from lobster bisque to sherbet” – Anne Else’s memoir of her
food-entwined life rocketed to five stars and the No. 1 spot on Amazon’s food
memoirs’ bestseller list within a few weeks of its release as an ebook original, and has stayed there for months. Its publisher, Awa Press, was so impressed it
decided to release a print edition.
The Colour of Food: A memoir of life, love and dinner is due for
paperback release in September. Anne Else writes of her life from childhood to
marriage, motherhood and now, in her 60s, forging a community of new friends
through her food blog Something Else to Eat. Along the way there’s feminism, divorce
and remarriage, finding her birth mother, and the heartbreaking loss of her
18-year-old son Patrick and of her husband, poet Harvey McQueen, who died on
Christmas Day 2010.
These tales of love, joy and sadness are seasoned with memories of the food
that has enriched her life – from “shin meat stew with plump fleshy pieces of
kidney” in her childhood, to Harvey’s “venison and sour cherries in a sauce made
with cream, Dijon mustard and the cook’s own home-made crab-apple jelly”, and
the “salade composée with good blue cheese, a sliced apple or pear and Waikanae
friends’ walnuts strewn over my own rocket” that she eats alone.
Wellington cook and food writer Lois Daish is one of many who have heaped
praise on Else’s memoir. “I love this enchanting book,” she says. “Anne Else’s
poignant story shines a light on how food is intertwined with the joys and
sorrows of everyday life.”
Sprinkled with recipes from each era of Anne Else’s life, The Colour of
Food is a story that lingers long after the final – printed! – page has been
turned.
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