“font-family: Verdana;”>“We talked about food and talked about me being from the Midwest and her being from
Houston,” Ellen Sweets said of
her late friend, Molly Ivins, Tuesday night at Left Bank
Books.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>The veteran journalist, whose father N.A. Sweets was longtime publisher of The St. Louis American, was visiting from Austin, Texas to celebrate her new “font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>book Stirring it Up with Molly Ivins: A Memoir with Recipes.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>Sweets’ book revisits the wicked wit of the firebrand, progressive Texas columnist, who died in 2007, while offering a personal taste of her friend of more than 20 years.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“The more we talked about food, the more we discovered we had in common,” Sweets said. “The more we cooked together, the more we were willing to try or to dream up.”
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>Their love for food, laughter and each other create a captivating read that exposes Ivins’ lighter side.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>“ “font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>We would play in the kitchen and would have wonderful, wonderful adventures,” Sweets said.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>Within the pages of the book, Sweets and Ivins carry on like Lucy and Ethel with their cooking escapades that seemed to always manage a culinary masterpiece in the midst of utter chaos, complete with bloody onions from Ivins’ slit finger and a duck with dog bites.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>Stirring it Up “font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>weaves together stories that stretched from the moment they met to the last meal they shared before Sweets lost her dear friend to breast cancer on the day before Sweets’ birthday.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“There was a panel dedicated to her at the Texas Book Festival the year after she died,” Sweets said. “And I was the only one who didn’t have anything erudite to say. All I could talk about was our misadventures in grocery stores and in the kitchen.”
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Someone in the audience encouraged her to write a memoir, but Sweets did not want to write a tell-all.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“And so help me, maybe a month after that I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, ‘Of course, adventures in cooking with Molly – because no one knew this side of her,’” Sweet said.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“People saw her as a very intense – which she was – and humorless, which she wasn’t. She did not confine her wit to her writing.”
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family:”>Sweets is a renowned journalist in her own right. She has written for her family paper The St. Louis American, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post, Austin American-Statesman, Edible Austin and Co-Op Power.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family:”>It was through her love of food that she discovered her journalism niche as a food writer, which garnered her the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Food Section, among a host of many other honors.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>Sweets clearly used laughter as medicine to sooth her grief and honor her friend. Even the book’s recipes – including “Beer-In-The Butt Chicken” and “Ellen and Molly’s Garbage Gumbo” – incite instant and steady laughter.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN;” lang=”EN” xml:lang=”EN”>“ “font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>As her health deteriorated, bit by bit she became less interested in cooking, less interested in eating, but we had these memories to fall back on,” Sweets said. “Gumbo and artery-clogging casserole we used to make with spaghetti, cheese and bacon – a pound of bacon.”
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Their last meal together was a bowl of homemade chicken soup she and Ivins shared with a handful of their closest friends.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“We laughed along with her fighting back tears,” Sweets said.
Stirring
it Up with Molly Ivins: A Memoir With Recipes is currently
available in bookstores and online. For more information, visit
www.utexaspress.com
