"Recipe for Disaster"

Stacey Ballis is the author of several foodie novels, including: Inappropriate Men, Sleeping Over, Room for Improvement, The Spinster Sisters, Good Enough to Eat, Off the Menu, Out to Lunch, and Recipe for Disaster. She is also a contributing author to three nonfiction anthologies: Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, and Living Jewishly.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Recipe for Disaster and reported the following:

From page 69:

Grant sighs, his shoulders sagging. “I’m going to take the dog for a walk for ten minutes and clear my head. When I get back, I’d like us both to have a calmer conversation, can you agree to that?”

“Fine.”

Grants heads out and I go back to the bathroom to pee and try to fix the snarled shrubbery on my head. Half of it is mashed flat and the rest is sticking out everywhere, so I can’t imagine he could even take me seriously. I stick my head under the cold water in the sink, which wakes me fully, and I can begin to think about rationality. I run a brush through my wet hair and pull it back into a ponytail, brush my teeth, and throw on some jeans and a fleece. I pull on my work boots, coat, throw a hat over my wet head, and put my keys in my pocket. I think for a minute, and then I grab the bag and coffees on my way out.

I catch up to Grant halfway back from his trek around the block. The sky is just lightening, and Schatzi prances proudly by his side. He tilts his head down and looks at me with eyebrows raised, as if to ask if the crazy lady is gone.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi there. Want to walk with us?” He holds out his arm, and I slide my arm through it, gripping his puffy down coat. We don’t speak till we get to the park, where we can sit on a bench while Schatzi finds a patch of bare earth under a tree to groom herself, and we each open a cup of fragrant sweet coffee, and begin to munch our pastries.

Page 69 is right after a fight the heroine has with her fiancé, and while he is deserving of her anger, she takes it way over the top, which I do think is representative of where she is in her life and in their relationship. It is showing the cracks in the façade.

Visit Stacey Ballis's website.

Writers Read: Stacey Ballis.

My Book, The Movie: Recipe for Disaster.

--Marshal Zeringue