Sweetgrass Studio

Anne Copeland - One of my Secret Life of Trees series pieces, 8-1/2 x 11. This is hand painted with acryllics used like watercolors, and it is threadpainted. You can click on the photo to make it larger. Every piece in this series has been sold. And yes, I might do more someday. I have a special love for trees.

My Shoe's Got Soul by Anne Copeland - When my favorite pair of shoes lost their old soles, I decided to turn them into this little piece of happy art. Doesn't a comfy pair of shoes just make you feel happy? You can make this photo larger by clicking on it.
I have just listed my pumpkin cookbook on Kindle.com and the price for the downloadable there will be $9.99 so I have made my price for the downloadable format the same for consistency. If you do want a CD with the downloadable format, I have also reduced that to $12.95, and that is a labeled CD that will be shipped to you. I have written right up above the Paypal section on the sidebar about the cost of shipping the CD which is additional. Let me know if I can serve you in any way. My e-mail address is anneappraiser@yahoo.com. Thank you so much for coming to visit my blog.

Pumpkin and Baby Image by Kathy Burns


Finally, the book is ready, and on the right side of this blog, you can find Paypal and the notes on ordering the book in either CD PDF format or downloadable PDF format. The way it works is that once I see your name and address and your Paypal payment, I will ship the CD or send you the downloadable format. I have included the additional amounts for shipping if you get the CD for shipping first class or priority in the U.S. or shipping first class or express for international.
Thank you all for your support. I have so enjoyed doing this book, and I hope you will enjoy cooking from the recipes as much as I have enjoyed creating them.

Anne Copeland - 15 minute fiber art bird piece - All images on this site are copyrighted.

In the late 1980s, after I had published my first version of the cookbook, I was asked to co-instruct a course in How to Write a Cookbook. My co-instructor had written a cookbook on survival cooking for university students living in dorms. The course included not only the things you might expect, like the types of recipes to use, how to obtain permissions, research, testing, etc., but also some interesting legal matters.


It seems that there have been some legal suits in the past from people claiming to have been injured while creating recipes in cookbooks. I know this seems pretty ludricrous, but I guess if people can sue a restaurant for their own accidental spilling of hot coffee over themselves, people can sue a cookbook author as well. Some of the more humorous cases in my mind were a lady who literally put an unopened can of evaporated milk in a double boiler, and if memory serves me right, a lady who baked the spoon into a cake because the recipe didn't call for her to not include it. I guess all cookbooks should contain some sort of legal caveat that recipes are to be completed at the maker's risk.


Aside from the ridiculous suits that in my mind are a waste of everyone's money, sometimes the recipes themselves are written as if we have very limited (if any) intelligence. Take, for example, the instruction to season to taste. Pray tell, how else do you season anything? Do you just follow the amount given without ever questioning whether perhaps more would be better, or perhaps it is a little too much for your taste? What about all the recipes that call for 1/4 tsp. of salt for ingredients that would easily serve four people? Have you ever considered WHY that ingredient is even in the recipe in the first place? Come on, do you REALLY think that 1/4 tsp. of salt will make a difference? I can tell you for sure it does not. I have made the same recipe with and without the salt, and nothing changed at all. Maybe it is just an old superstitition that calls for the use of 1/4 tsp. of salt, kind of like throwing salt over your shoulder.


And did they really need to tell us to mix the ingredients in a large bowl? I don't know about you, but I sure don't pour them out on the counter and just start mixing them. Or how about the instruction to stir until blended? Oh yeah, I just leave it all lumpy and know things will just work out ok in the end. Yes, there ARE a few recipes (very few) that call for you to leave the mixture sort of lumpy at some point, but eventually it all gets stirred until smooth.


I love it too when a recipe tells you it will serve four and there are only two cups of main ingredients. What are they serving - midgets? And are these recipes for people who NEVER ask for seconds? This would never happen in the kitchens of most people I know. One strapping kid alone can easily wolf down the two cups of ingredients and then be looking for something else.Is there some sort of science to how much any one person will eat at one sitting?

Just how large IS a large bowl? What would happen if I used a medium bowl, thinking it WAS a large bowl? Would my recipe fail? Here's one that states that it makes about 1-3/4 cups of the recipe. Is the problem that they can't read the measuring cup very well, or is it that sometimes it makes 1-3/4 c. and sometimes it doesn't? Or how about when a recipe states that it will make 2 dozen cookies and I don't even get one dozen?
And think about it, when you add a pinch of something according to a recipe, is your pinch the same as mine? And if the need to add it is so imperfect, is it really important in the first place?

How about a recipe that doesn't sound very certain of what it wants you to include. Here's a recipe that calls for 1 egg or 2 egg yolks. Hmmm, wait a minute, isn't there a difference between an egg and egg yolks?
What about a recipe that calls for an avocado, peeled and diced? How many of you serve them without peeling them, especially if you are dicing them? Wouldn't it be fun to have to peel off every bite of avocado? And while we are at it, just what IS the difference between chopping finely, mincing, and dicing? Do the authors just get tired of using the same words all the time?
Here are some of my favorite humorous descriptions of recipes:

• charming full meal salad
• captivating supper entree
• intriguing salad combination punctuated with scintillating flavors
• colorful and gay meat salad
• snappy crisp noodles
• lively spiced meat (are we sure it is dead?)

The list goes on and on. Next time you read a cookbook, look for some of the more humorous entries. You might even practice on mine when I get it up online. Pretty soon now.

Photo from cookbook is courtesy of Elaine Miller. All images used on this blog are copyrighted.

The first time I published my Pumpkin, Pumpkin cookbook in the mid 1980s, I had to typeset it and paste it up, and I had to create a layout for the pages so they would fall in the correct order when printed. It sounds easy, but it isn't. The book took me more than three years to research, write and produce. At one time I had some 32 pumpkins of various types stored under my house as I tested the recipes over time. You really know who your friends are when they are willing to test all of your recipes for you and give a thumbs up or thumbs down.
It is odd that I even wrote the cookbook in the first place, for I am a cook who loves to just create new recipes as I might paint, throwing in this and that, and sort of knowing by life's experience what works and what doesn't and how much overall of this and that is needed. And basically, I seldom make the same recipe the same way twice. But I always loved pumpkins and the season of the pumpkins, and a good friend suggested I should definitely write a pumpkin cookbook.
It was an amazing adventure, for I traveled all over the country and into Mexico during the time I was writing the book, and the cookbook helped me to make a lot of new friends, for it seemed as though everyone suddenly had a pumpkin recipe, or a story to tell me that was very special.
A couple of years ago, I began to revise the book and put it into MS Word on the PC, and at first, it seemed like such easy work. I am sure I could have scanned it and produced it quickly, but somehow, making the transition from typesetting to doing it on the computer, I still felt I had to somewhat do it "old style." Then suddenly, possibly because of health issues at the time or just getting writer's block, I put the book aside, and worked on other projects. I never just sit still; I am always working on one project or another, but in my mind, the pumpkin cookbook had to go to bed for awhile.
This last month, I finally got working on it again, determined to get it done so I could get on with other projects. I first decided I would publish it with one of the PODs (print on demand companies, one of the leading ways to publish a book these days). But the book quickly got up to 330 pages, and that was WITHOUT the Index, and when I looked at how much the book would have cost for someone to purchase in paperback format, the cost would have been prohibitive. I did reformat the book to 8-1/2 x 11 landscape, double column, and that cut down the number of the pages. Then I realized that the format I had selected would not work with their book sizes, and there were other restrictions in their layouts too that just weren't working for me. I guess in all honesty, I really wanted to lay it out the way I was used to books happening in paper form, with the chapter heads starting on the right side, for example.
Self publishing did not seem like a stretch for me with my own background in having run a graphic arts business and having worked for a publisher in the past, as well as having worked as editor of several small newspapers and a magazine.
I am glad I am doing it this way; it will allow me to keep the cost reasonable for folks wanting to buy the books, but no matter what anyone tells you, this is not without its challenges. First I learned after all these years of using MS Word that it has a memory limitation of 32 mb; this after all my photos I had worked so hard to put into the document suddenly turned into big red Xs. I had to go back one by one and put them all back in again. I have had to divide the book into separate files while I am working on it, and I have had to keep checking the memory to make sure I am not exceeding it.
I am putting the book into PDF format when it is ready, and I am on the last stretch now. Then I will be burning CDs and putting nice labels on them which I must create, and the book will also be available as a downloadable PDF format. I am still thinking about whether I want to eventually create a paperback format or not. There are certainly some excellent tools for doing just that.
The reality is that I should have the book done this week. I have to put something up on this web site so that you will be able to order and pay for it still, and then I have to start getting the word out there. The old saying, "And miles to go before I sleep," seems quite appropriate.