Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Hunger Moon

February moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! We have moved into the lunar cycle known as the Hunger Moon in the Old Farmer's Almanac, and entered the Lunar New Year in the traditional Chinese calendar. The Year of the Dog has begun.

It is an exciting time for me personally because the book that I have been working on -- in one way or another -- for five years is about to be released. The cover has been designed. The foreward has been written. The advance-review galleys have been sent out. You can even order the book! (Though it won't ship for at least another six weeks.)

Perhaps surprisingly, one of the last things that happened was that we fixed on a title. A good title is a notoriously elusive thing, and this project went through many different ones on its road from dream to reality. The first proposal I submitted to Chelsea Green Publishing in 2001 was for a book called "The Soul of Cooking." After pitching it to the staff at CGP, I was simultaneously disappointed and encouraged by a response that said: "this project has potential, but it's not there yet." The title was given to me by a consultant who thought it would be an easy sell, and follow in the line of the classic best-selling cookbook, "The Joy of Cooking." (Despite the fact that the proposal included no recipes!!)

Almost two years later, I submitted a re-worked proposal with the title "Amid the Alien Corn" -- a phrase from the same poem by John Keats that gave F. Scott Fitzgerald the title "Tender is the Night." It is an allusion to a sense of homesickness, dislocation, and displacement -- feelings I have always associated with our industrialized food system. It is also a biblical reference -- to the Book of Ruth. I should have known that a title both obscure and mournful would not inspire people. Alas, I was once again told that my proposal had potential, but was not yet workable. The title was the least of my worries. This time, an experienced food-book editor in New York gave me a point-by-point critique of the project as I proposed it, and her points were all well taken. I went back to the drawing board.

In the meantime, I had been sending out my new moon newsletters for a few years, and often received emails encouraging me to put them together into a book form that included recipes. I was resistant -- almost petulant. "I'm already working on a book idea," I would tell people. But after my second rejection I suddenly wondered what I had been thinking! Why NOT use the lunar calendar structure as an organizing principle to say what I wanted to say about food? Also, in the meantime, my full-time job at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market had forced me -- kicking and screaming -- into writing recipes. And I realized it wasn't so terrible after all.

I completely reworked the proposal for a book a third time. This time I used the lunar calendar names as chapter titles and included a handful of recipes in each chapter. I toyed with the idea of "Eating on Earth" as a title, with a reference to the moons in the subtitle, but finally submitted the book with the working title, "Thirteen Moons." Finally, the publishers felt I had a structure for the project that made the whole thing work. The proposal was bought; the contract was sent, signed and delivered, and I started to write.

A year later, the edited manuscript was submitted to Chelsea Green. They read it and were pleased. After reworking a couple of sections, the manuscript was "accepted" and began to move through all the behind-the-scenes stages that make a manuscript into a book. Part of this is fixing on a title. We had already decided that Thirteen Moons would not work. Lyrical and poetic though it was, it didn't say anything about food. It could have been a book about anything -- and truth be told there are both books and a movie with this (or similar) titles. But what should we call it?? Publisher, editors, and author all began brainstorming and emailing to each other any possible candidates.

It was the publisher who, clicking around on my website, found a title that met all our hopes: Full Moon Feast.

I had been hosting dinners with that name off-and-on for two years, and it only took me a minute to realize how perfect it was. People throughout the world have feasted on the full moon for millennia, and it was very satisfying to me to have that universal and historical reference. Additionally, each word had layers of meaning and imagery that clicked with the book. "Full" has the meaning of well-fed, satisfied, and nourished, as well as the connotation of abundance and generosity. "Moon" refers to the calendar and seasons, as well as to a mythological and earth-based perspective on life. "Feast" is a meal of abundance of course, but it is also a word used to mean a religious festival in the liturgical calendar, as in the "Feast of Epiphany." It is also a metaphor for anything that feeds us on a spiritual level -- as in Gertrude Stein's famous quote that "Paris is a moveable feast," and Hemingway's famous use of the phrase as a book title.

I was thrilled.

Meanwhile, one part of the book had remained constant throughout all of its various incarnations -- the subtitle. This is what tells you what the book is really about. Mine had not changed from the first moment I stumbled upon a phrase that captured my subject aptly: Food and the Hunger for Connection. And so the title had evolved through these variations:

I especially love how this final title contains both "full" and "hunger," creating a tension between our human longing and its fulfillment. It is a reminder that each day we find ourselves in dynamic movement between hunger and fullness -- a never-ending cycle that characterizes life on earth for all animals.

And so, on the Hunger Moon, I have to apologize for having written about the book itself rather than food, history, and culture as I usually do. But I must admit that I wanted to leave you a little bit hungry for more -- in the hope that you will be filled with anticipation for the book and the 'fullness' it promises. Maybe you will even order a copy in advance! It is my greatest hope that you will indeed experience it as a feast -- as I so often do with books I read. If you do not, I can only say that I tried my best.

Check it out at: fullmoonfeast.com

In the meantime, may we all remember that appetite makes the best sauce.

click to: book summary

Full Moon Feast Food and the Hunger for Connection by Jessica Prentice Full Moon Feast invites us to a table brimming with locally grown foods, radical wisdom, and communal nourishment.