JENNIFER TRAINER THOMPSON is the author of the best-selling Beyond
Einstein, as well as seven cookbooks. She lives in Williamstown,
Massachusetts, where she and her young family are developing family
traditions of their own.
THE AUTHOR SCOOP
What's been sitting in the back of your fridge for more than a
year? Armageddon Hot Sauce. It's made by a former Navy Sea Dog who
runs a bar in the Adirondacks that you can only get to by
snowmobile in the winter. He marinates chicken wings in this
incendiary sauce, and if you can eat a dozen, you get your name on
his "Wall of Flame" next to his live tarantula. (I have not
succeeded.)Are you "six degrees of separation" away from anyone
famous? Well, my father's name is Harry Potter Trainer. My kids
think it's pretty cool, and a Boston radio station once reported
that Harry Potter was alive and well living in the Bay State. Last
year he had stickers made up that say "Harry Potter was here" and
leaves them all around - on the examining table at the doctor's
office, on the underside of the toilet seat in my kids' bathroom,
and so on.What was your first job? My first real job was supposed
to be at the U.N., editing a new magazine about the African kingdom
of Lesotho. The night before I was to start my job, I got a call
that the king had been deposed and the job was off. I already had
my car packed, so I moved down to New York anyway, found an
apartment in the East Village, and got a job working as a lowly
editor's assistant at Simon & Schuster. I got fired after six
months, and my boss told me I should be writing instead - best
advice I ever got, and I signed my first book contract several
months later.Where were you when you found out your first book
would be published? I was in my apartment in the East Village,
which had been abandoned by the owner (we tenants were just
starting to figure that out because we'd gone over a month with no
hot water or heat and the landlord was unresponsive - he was in
Hawaii, avoiding city authorities and a jail sentence). It was very
cold in the apartment, and I was all bundled up; I remember I was
wearing gloves and making myself tea, when I got a call from Carol
Houck Smith at W.W. Norton. It was like getting a call from God.
She remains a friend to this day.Do you have pets?It's a joint
family effort, led mostly by my nine-year-old son. He has a pet
gecko and we also have 5 chickens. We live in a really small town -
last year when some dogs crashed through the chicken fencing, our
neighbor (thankfully) called the dog officer, who called the chief
of police. When the chief of police couldn't find me, he called my
husband's office and told his secretary to get him out of an
important meeting - it was a "chicken emergency." The girls, as we
call them, are good layers, providing us with eggs and atmosphere
daily.
Ask a Question About this Product More... |