The All You Can Dream Buffet
Praise for the Novels of Barbara O’Neal
The Garden of Happy Endings
“What I always love about Barbara O’Neal’s writing is that her voice is amazing and the layers of the story pull through the book to create a richness that I can’t compare to anyone else’s. The imagery in the garden is as rich as the soil, as is the provocative tale of Elsa’s pilgrimage through Spain. I was so captivated by the characters and this story that although I rushed to finish, I never wanted it to end. In full disclosure, I did go through a good number of tissues, but I laughed as well. I love that this is a wonderfully written book that was a pleasure to read and which I can’t wait to hand out to everyone I know.” —Examiner.com
“Powerful and effective … This book shows the power of ‘good energy,’ the healing power of community, the comfort of health food and the value of giving.… A meaningful story many readers will not soon forget. O’Neal offers her best work yet.”
—The Free Lance-Star
“This novel is vivid and honest. Hopeful and calming. Powerful and evocative. Subtle and charming. I devoured it.” —Bookfinds
“Warm, comforting … A book that offers happy … endings.”
—Kirkus Reviews
How to Bake a Perfect Life
“Mothers and daughters are at the heart of this beautiful novel by O’Neal.… Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Absorbing … O’Neal’s tale of strong-willed women and torn family loyalties is a cut above the standard women’s fiction fare, held together by lovingly sketched characters and real emotion.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Envelops you like the scent of warm bread, comforting and invigorating, full of love and forgiveness and possibility.”
—Erica Bauermeister, bestselling author of The School of Essential Ingredients
“This book will have you smiling and crying and pining for an old love, or just a hunk of really good fresh-baked bread. I loved every single delicious bite.” —Jennie Shortridge, author of When She Flew
The Secret of Everything
“O’Neal has created a powerful and intriguing story rich in detailed and vivid descriptions of the Southwest.” —Booklist
“Readers will identify with this story and the multilayered characters.… And with some of the tantalizing recipes for dishes served at the 100 Breakfasts Café included, O’Neal provides a feast not only for the imagination but the taste buds as well.”
—Romantic Times
“Barbara O’Neal has masterfully woven local culture, the beauty of nature, her love of food and restaurants, and a little romance into this magnificent novel.” —Fresh Fiction
The Lost Recipe for Happiness
“The Lost Recipe for Happiness is a delectable banquet for the reader.… This book is as delicious as the recipes interspersed throughout an incredible story.”
—Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author
“The Lost Recipe for Happiness is utterly magical and fantastically sensual. It’s as dark and deep and sweet as chocolate. I want to live in this book.… A total triumph.”
—Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author
“Beautiful writing, good storytelling and an endearing heroine set against the backdrop of Aspen, Colorado, are highlights of O’Neal’s novel. A tale that intertwines food, friendship, passion, and love in such a delectable mix is one to truly savor until the very last page.” —Romantic Times
“Will appeal to women’s fiction fans and foodies, who will enjoy the intriguing recipes … laced through the book.”
—St. Petersburg Times
The All You Can Dream Buffet is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Bantam Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2014 by Barbara Samuel
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
O’Neal, Barbara, 1959-
The all you can dream buffet : a novel / Barbara O’Neal.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-345-53686-0
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-53687-7
1. Older women—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction.
3. Organic farming—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.I485F53 2013
813.54—dc23
2013016913
All photograph credits appear on this page.
www.bantamdell.com
Book design by Virginia Norey
v3.1_r1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Photo Credits
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Lavender Honey Farms
yamhill co., oregon
Home Shop Blog Directions Philosophy
Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they’ve lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat—and drink!—with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.
—M.F.K. FISHER, Serve It Forth
Prologue
In the stillness just after dawn, Lavender Wills walked the perimeter of the farm, as she did every morning. Rain or shine—and it could be a lot of rain in the Willamette Valley in Oregon—she strode with her dogs along the lavender fields and the greenhouses, following the line of the fields where meat chickens were pastured in movable pens, checking to be sure they hadn’t been raided overnight. She eyed the fences around the chicken houses and rounded the beehives, then headed back along the vegetable fields, some of them still tucked under their temporary spring blankets of easily constructed and deconstructed plastic greenhouses.
It was nearly a five-mile walk, counting detours. It kept her alert and healthy, and even now, at eighty-four, she made the distance without much trouble, most days.
Most days.
Every now and again lately, she could feel the shadow of time following along behind her. She gli
mpsed herself walking this path at four and eighteen before she left to seek adventure, at thirty-two and forty-six, home to visit, at fifty-seven and seventy-three, running the place at last. Always rangy, always walking this same path, forward or backward, always with a dog or two or three. Border collies, mostly, such good working dogs. There had been so many over the years, but she could remember the names of all of them. Jacob and Mike and Andy, Percival and Athena and her beloved Rome, the best of the lot, gone three years now.
Many more. Humans, too. She’d outlived all four of her siblings, despite being the oldest. Her parents were long gone, as were any cousins she knew about and a nephew she mourned deeply. Even most of her friends were gone now.
Sometimes, walking the perimeter, she imagined she spied one or another of them, people or canines. Someone she had loved once upon a time. Her mother, wearing a straw hat as she picked raspberries. Her grade-school friend Reine, who’d died only last spring, looking for mushrooms. Sometimes she saw Rome trotting just ahead, his black coat gleaming, tail high and swishing.
She had no preternatural warning that she might be ready to toddle off this good earth; in fact, she felt as hale and hearty as ever, despite the odd creaks. Her mind was still pretty sharp, sharp enough that she kept up a blog three times a week, a venture that had begun as a marketing gimmick a decade ago and had become much, much more. It was her forum, a place to express her love of the land, of the right and honorable way to bring food to the table, of the way to care for food animals and to grow healthy vegetables in uncontaminated soil. It was the way she had connected with three other bloggers, too, forming a tight-knit group they called the Foodie Four.
Mainly, it gave her an excuse to revel in her passion for lavender—growing it, harvesting it, using it.
No, she felt plenty lively.
And yet … this morning she had awakened in the predawn quiet, and knowledge filled her. Life circled. The land taught you that. Soon or late, she’d sleep in the earth she had tended all of her life. What would become of the farm then? This farm, which had been her greatest achievement.
She could not let it pass into the hands of her remaining, indifferent nephews, two of them, businessmen in Portland who rarely came to visit. They had no love of the land, and they would sell it. She didn’t blame them. But it was too valuable, too important to the growing organic movement, to let just anyone buy it.
As she walked, she mused. Lavender and honey, fresh eggs and fine wool. An empire for the right heir. An honorable heir.
It was only as she turned the last corner that she saw Ginger near the beehives, her long red hair loose over her shoulders, her face young and remarkably beautiful again. It was the first time Lavender had seen this particular ghost, her friend of nearly sixty years, who had died last year in Carmel. She was kneeling to gather wildflowers from the forest, her knees bending just as they should, her hands—the hands that had betrayed her in the end—free of the gnarled knots that had ruined them. Lavender waited, but Ginger did not turn, did not seem to know Lavender was there.
By the time she returned to her little office, she knew exactly what to do. Firing up the computer, she wrote an email.
FROM: Lavender@lavenderhoneyblog.com
TO: FoodieFour@yahoogroups.com
SUBJECT: Birthday bash
Well, gals, it’s official. I’ve decided I’m going to have a little fiesta for my eighty-fifth birthday on June 30. That is, in case you don’t know, the night of the blue moon, which is a sign none of us should ignore.
You all know the house is tiny, but there’s lots of land around it. Bring those trailers you haven’t driven; I’ll get you fixed up for water and power, no problem. We’re set up for extra help during the harvest and shearing seasons, so there are plenty of hookups.
The lavender will be in full bloom—a sight you do not want to miss—and we can all take turns showing off our fancy cooking skills. Or not, as the case may be (not naming names, but, Valerie, you can serve the wine. As long as it’s Oregon wine).
Who’s in? Ruby, it’s time to stop mooning (snort!) over Liam and have some fun. You’re too young to be moping around so long. Valerie, you’ve been fretting about that daughter of yours, so bring her and we’ll put her to work in the sunshine. That’ll cure just about anything. And, Ginny, I hear you coming up with all kinds of objections about why your thankless family can’t do without you, but I reckon that Bambi you’ve been showing off in your blog arrived in your life to be taken somewhere, not parked in your driveway just to aggravate your neighbors and husband. COME!
Adventure awaits, chickadees. And I’m not getting any younger.
Lavender
Chapter 1
Dead Gulch, Kansas
Camera in hand, Ginny Smith bent over the still life she had created on the kitchen counter. Her husband, Matthew, had built her a photographer’s light box, but she preferred natural light when it was available, and this was one of the prime spots in her house. The pale-green counter and heavy swaths of indirect light pouring through the big kitchen window gave everything a serene look. It was one of the secrets of her blog, this very spot.
This afternoon, she was shooting a slice of pistachio cake. Two generous layers of white cake frosted with the palest shade of green. The beauty was in the depth of field, the fine, pure white crumb of the cake against the cracked satin of the antique plate, the alluring color of the frosting. In the background of the shot was an antique green glass vase overloaded with roses she’d just clipped from the bushes surrounding the house, and in the foreground were six pistachios in various stages of undress, suggesting decadence.
As she clicked and moved and clicked and moved, zooming in and zooming out, changing angles, she hummed along with Bach. The music played on her iPod, a gift from her daughter, Christie, two Christmases ago, and it was loud. Ginny hoped it would drown out the emptiness in her chest.
She thought about the invitation from Lavender. Again.
This morning she had rushed out to the grocery store to pick up a small bag of pistachios for this photo shoot. She had forgotten last night to set some aside when she made the cake. Although they were not strictly necessary, she had time to run out to the Hy-Vee after Matthew left for work—the light this time of year reached its prime glow around ten-thirty—and she took pride in having the best details in her photos.
She came out of the supermarket and decided to make a quick stop at the drugstore for some ribbon—seeing in her mind’s eye a curl of thin, shiny dark pink satin to pick up the color of the roses. To get there, she passed the Morning Glory Café….
And stopped dead.
Standing there, staring through the window, she made up her mind to go to Oregon.
It was a shocking decision. She had never gone anywhere, except once to Minneapolis when her cousin got married. She hadn’t even gone to Cincinnati for the funerals of Valerie’s family, because—she would admit this only to herself—she was a coward and had been afraid to go alone.
She certainly had not ever driven herself nearly two thousand miles, even without a trailer. Much less driven herself and a trailer.
But this bright morning, she happened to catch sight of her three best friends sitting in the Morning Glory, eating pancakes and bacon without her. They were dressed up, probably heading to Wichita after breakfast to do some spring shopping. Karen had her long hair swept up into a comb, with feathery bits carefully falling over the top like a fountain, and she wore her beaded earrings. Marnie wore her gray top from Victoria’s Secret, embroidered around the edges, and Jean had red lipstick on, making her, with her cropped hair, look sophisticated.
The three of them plus Ginny had been the best of friends for nearly forty years, ever since they sat together in Mrs. Klosky’s fourth-grade class. Ginny knew everything about them, and they knew nearly everything about her. Not the part about her sex life, of course. That would be too humiliating. And nobody had known about the blog until the piece in Martha Stewart
’s magazine seven months ago had blown Ginny’s cover.
What did you expect? Matthew had asked in some disgust. That nobody would know it was you?
Maybe that was what she had expected. That nobody would connect Ginny the housewife they’d known their whole lives with the “Cake of Dreams” blog, even if they saw a picture of her in it. How many people in Dead Gulch read Martha Stewart Living, after all? It wasn’t exactly Family Circle.
Or maybe what she had expected was that people would be proud of her. The blog had sixty thousand readers. Every day. She’d had no idea that people would like her pictures so much, or her recipes, or whatever it was, but she was secretly very, very proud of it. She didn’t know anybody in real life (not counting her online friends, of course) who had ever done anything like it.
And it was paying her, too, from several directions, a lot more money than she’d made at the supermarket. It came in through ads, first of all. She could pick and choose among the best ones and charge a pretty penny for them. After that, funds came through demands for her photos, which had become so cumbersome to supply that she finally had to pay someone to fill the orders and set up a store on Etsy. Her assistant, a woman who worked with her virtually from Wisconsin, suggested that Ginny offer some framed and matted versions of her stuff, which tripled the income stream from that end. That same assistant also suggested that Ginny should have a subscription service for photographer wannabes, and that had proved to be the most lucrative of all. Every week she sent out tips and lessons. It seemed crazy at first—what did she know?—but some students had begun to have success on their own, so maybe it wasn’t so crazy after all.
When the Martha Stewart Living people contacted her for a feature story, Ginny had started to realize her secret wouldn’t stay secret that much longer anyway. Sooner or later, someone in town would put together the Ginny of “Cake of Dreams” with Ginny Smith, who was a supermarket cake decorator until the blog freed her.
Matthew had known she was making money on photos, of course. But he had not understood what kind of reach the blog had, how famous she had become, until the magazine people showed up.