Why I wrote Love at First Bite, The Unofficial Twilight Cookbook
Gina Meyers
On November 21, 2008, my life changed. That was the night my
friend had an extra ticket and invited me to the midnight showing of Twilight. Instantly, I noticed how the movie premier was striking a
chord with many different ages and generations, even men were at the premier donning
Twilight inspired tee-shirts. Before watching the movie, the only exposure
to Twilight I had was knowing that my
teenage stepdaughter had requested the entire collection of the Twilight Series of books by Stefanie
Meyer and that they were in her closet on her bookshelf. I honestly thought the
books were about vampires and werewolves, little did I know. After watching the
movie, I saw it was a love story. Basically, I ran to my stepdaughters’
upstairs bedroom and took Twilight
off her bookshelf and went to my bedroom and started to read it. It took me
about three days to read Twilight.
While I was reading Twilight,
it literally just came upon me, why not write a cookbook based upon the book?
This thought didn’t seem odd in the slightest. While reading, I took notes
every time there was a food reference. This took more time than the initial
three days to read the book. For me, food is love and seven and a half years ago,
I set a goal: to reignite a passion for cooking and getting people of all ages
back together having meaningful conversations. This personal goal has continued
to thrive in my life and the lives of others and still is my personal goal.
As a writer, I also realized that the Twilight series had a
similar tone to what I like writing about, a love story with a twist.
The love story with a twist, is that we are all slightly
different, but it is in the sacrifice where we can find true love and our true
selves.
As I saw the story, a human girl, pasty and white, leaves
her mom and stepdad to go hang out with her semi-recluse dad, Charlie Swan,
Police Chief, in the rainiest place on the planet, Forks, Washington.
As the story goes, Stefanie Meyer had a brilliant dream
which later became the Twilight book. She referenced the “rainiest place in the
U.S.” via the Google search engine to
locate Forks. For me, a cookbook author, the name “Forks” couldn’t be more
appetizing. The setting couldn’t be more appealing, the setting was chosen so
the human, werewolves, and vampires could have a place to co-exist.
What about those vampires? Well, The Cullen Clan was a breed
all their own, “vegetarian vampires”, preferring to consider themselves more
civilized than the ordinary run of the mill blood sucking vampire, preferring
to only suck the blood from animals. Well surely I wasn’t going to use real
blood in my recipes, that’s totally disgusting and this wasn’t a “joke cookbook”,
this was a “novelty cookbook” and so I opted to play upon the whole vegetarian
vampire thing and made a slew of vegetarian inspired dishes. Some vegetarian
dishes in Love at First Bite are: Yellow
Squash and Tomato Parmesan, Salad a la Cullen, Artichoke Cheese Squares. As for
the werewolves, they feasted, so I did a hearty Wolfpack Waffles. During the
holidays, my daughters’ Lauren and Makenna always made this dessert with Chex
cereal, melted chocolate chips and peanut butter. I added powdered sugar to the
concoction and renamed it Werewolf Chow.
Then I experimented with red velvet cakes and created some
semi-homemade recipes. Charlie, Bella’s dad wasn’t much of a gourmand, he was a
divorced bachelor. My mom used to joke that my dad only knew how to make a “dinner
in a skillet”, which consisted of sliced hot dogs, sliced potatoes, and diced
onion, so I renamed it, “Charlie’s Dinner In A Skillet”.
There was a reference to an apple to signify original sin
how Eve tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, so in keeping with the theme, I did
“sinfully” delicious apple recipes. I also researched the different type of
apples and there are many different varieties to choose from. The cookbook has
a three fork designation as well. “Three Forks” recipes are the most difficult,
“two forks” means they are “medium” level of difficulty and “one fork” are the
easiest recipes in the cookbook. I also did a play upon Edward’s eyes being the
color butterscotch, with “Butterscotch Eyes”, a butterscotch pudding recipe
with teddy grahams.
On their first date, Bella orders Mushroom Ravioli, so there
is a Mushroom Ravioli recipe. Bella, aka, Isabella Swan is Italian. So being
part Italian myself, I utilized a lot of family recipes in the Chow Bella
Italian Food Section, including Bell’s Lasagna, Chicken Cacciatore, Veal
Scaloppini, Tallerina (my late Great Aunt Rose’s recipe) and many more. For the
Biscotti dessert, I used my Grandma Julie’s Biscotti cookie recipe, a family
favorite.
How I came up with the title Love at First Bite. It felt as if
I instantly thought of it (and no, I hadn’t heard of the movie of the same
moniker) , however, one day I was looking through the picture album of my
daughters’ 3rd grade Halloween party. I was in charge of teaching
the kids to make Monster Hands. You pop popcorn, use a clear clean plastic
glove, take five or so candy corns and place the candy corns as fingernails in
each slot of the plastic glove, then you add cooled popcorn and use a ribbon or
twisty tie and it looks like a hand. Anyways, as I looked at the picture, I
noticed that I was wearing a Halloween inspired Orange tee-shirt with the
words, Love at First Bite in black.
Vampires are known to “suck” or “bite” us and we “chew,” and
“bite” our food. No other title could have worked as well as Love at First Bite
to me.
On this Twilight journey, I have had book signings all over
the United States, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Memphis, Tennessee, Cleveland, Ohio,
Fresno, California, San Jose, California, and many other wonderful cities. I
have done live cooking demonstrations on TV all over the United States. In
2012, I was presented with The Gourmand International Award for Best
Fundraising Cookbook in the World. While in Paris, France, I met a woman who
was in charge of The Culinary Institute of America. She also was a Marketing
Professor and she told me that she had utilized my book, Love at First Bite to show
her student’s an example of an innovator
who took a great idea and ran with it.
Much to my delight, they mentioned my Twilight Cookbook on
the hit TV Show, The Office. A pregnant Pam is talking with Kevin Malone and
Kevin says, “I cooked my way through the Julia Child’s Cookbook, I am half way
through the Twilight Cookbook, last night I cooked Edward Cullen’s Cornflake Chicken.” The
LA Times wrote an expose on my life and appeasing the haters. A dude on Amazon
was starting a Twilight war stating my Team Edward Tacos caused his girlfriend
to “break up with him”. Fun stuff like
that, I don’t have a Taco recipe in Love at First Bite. The Calgary Herald
featured my Twilight Cookbook and many reporters came up with super fun titles
for their articles: my personal favorite, “Running All The Way To The Bank, The
Twilight franchise now has a Twilight Cookbook!”
The friends of the Visalia Library, cooked their way through
my Twilight Cookbook and had a special evening with me. And, by far, the
biggest compliment was when The Allan Carr Chatty Man TV Show (out of London,
England) met up with the stars from Twilight, they featured my cookbook and
served the stars of Twilight my Twilight Tribute Punch. Kellan Lutz, also known
as Emmett Cullen went nuts over my Twilight Tribute Punch, secret ingredient,
gummy worms. I modified my late Great Aunt Mildred’s punch recipe by adding the
gummy worms. Allan Carr agreed to pay me
1 pound which is equivalent to $1.00 U.S. dollar, I’m still waiting. No worries, the
experiences have been priceless.
