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So I had this cookbook launch party at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe on Monday night. I hadn’t done anything like this before, so I was mostly just terrified that no one would show up and it would be me, Ryan, and my husband standing onstage with five people in the audience who thought they were there for a Malcolm Gladwell reading. My parents, mother-in-law, and great-aunt Lee came into town for it, boosting our potential numbers to nine people, at least four of whom would know why they were there, but it also boosted the potential for embarrassing disaster that would destroy my self-confidence for all eternity to much higher levels, too. Click on through for the photo tour of destruction!

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Housing Works, flying the flag of Dirt Candy.

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At first I just thought these chairs were confused, but it
turns out they were there for the reading.

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Ryan, the artist on the book, did the flowers. I forgot to
take a picture of them at the party so here are
some of them on my floor, because he did an amazing job.

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Good things all those chairs came, because
after a while some people showed up.

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If you’re going to have a cookbook reading then you
need to have a recipe read. If someone’s going to
read a recipe, then it should be Edgar Oliver.

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Edgar thrilled the crowd and brought a tear to many an eye with his
heart-rending reading of “The Kimchi Recipe”
(“Something I’ve never had before,” he said).

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Some people thought it went on too long, but even if it had
cleared the room, I would have been happy. Edgar is a
national treasure and he deserves room to breathe.

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Then Ryan, my husband, and I did a quick slide show history of Dirt
Candy because sometimes even I look around and wonder,
“How in the world did I get here?” Also, let’s take a closer
look at that slide…

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…yep, it is as horrible as you feared. This was a failed attempt to make a chard
cracker. Shortly after this photo was taken it crawled out of the
steaming tray and vanished out the front door, never to be seen again.

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We gave away prizes, although Ryan and Grady don’t look very happy
about it. Winner #8 never showed up to claim her
prize and so I’m still expecting a knock at my
door at 3AM and for the winner to be standing there,
clutching her ticket and demanding her t-shirt.

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Then we thanked my customers (and seriously, again, “Thank you!”) and Ryan
and I started signing books…

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…and signing books…

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…and signing books. We had around 100 of them, and we sold out and then started
signing book plates…

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…and even empty bottles. These guys wanted us to write
“Stay in School” on their bottle. Sure! Whatever you want!

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There were a lot of people there. The space holds 300 and there was a line to get in
and a bunch of people got turned away, which I feel bad about,
but also I’m glad about because
I couldn’t have handled it if it had only been five people
and my parents. And some chairs.

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This is not an outtake from Dawn of the Dead.
This is one of our cater waiters getting swarmed.

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Cauliflower and waffles, bravely getting ready to sacrifice
themselves for the greater good of Dirt Candy.

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It is a far, far better thing this popcorn pudding
does now than it has ever done before.

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What it looks like when a cater waiter’s
“fight or flight” mechanism kicks in.

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And I kept signing books. Those post-it notes are where I make sure people write
down their name before I sign their book because even if your name is
“Bob,” chances are that it’s actually “Bobbe” and if I spell it wrong that’s
a book that can’t be sold.

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I was trapped behind the signing table so I missed seeing lots of folks,
but Ted Lee was there, which was super-nice. He and his brother Matt
went to high school with my husband and when the cookbook was
finished they sent us an obscenely large bucket of boiled peanuts.

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Towards the end they switched on the lights and the party was over, and I actually
got a chance to talk to people, including Florent, who I’ve known since I
was about 18 years old.

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After signing that many books, this is how my brain felt.

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It was such an amazing night, and so many more people came than I
thought, and everyone was so incredibly nice.
Dirt Candy customers are the best, and at the end
of the evening all I could think was:

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Then I came home and collapsed.

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