FOODFIC: Beautiful Creatures - Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Beautiful Creatures is narrated by Ethan Wate, a golden boy of Gatlin but perhaps the only person in town who dreams of leaving. Lena Duchannes is the beautiful, mysterious, new-to-town leading lady with a troubled past, present, and future. But the star, the heart, the – yup, I’m saying it – meat and potatoes of the story is Amma, and she’s the one I’m most excited to see come to life on the big screen.*

We all wish we had an Amma watching over us in both the real and mystical senses, doling out wisdom sometimes in cryptic phrases, sometimes in crossword answers delivered one deliberate letter at a time, and often followed by covertly-placed, hand-crafted dolls, charms, or other spiritual tokens.

But you know I love her most because she dishes out meals as fortifying as her advice.

For breakfast she serves Ethan fried eggs, bacon, buttered toast, and grits. And that’s not just for the first day of school; the next day it’s eggs over easy, biscuits and gravy.

For dinner there’s fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, string beans, biscuits, and even buttermilk pie on a regular old weeknight! Then comes pulled pork with Gatlin’s own Carolina Gold mustard barbeque sauce.** 

Hold. The. Phone.  Amma doesn’t make her own sauce? From scratch? I can’t believe it.

Which is ironic, because I blindly accept that the green-eyed girl Ethan’s been dreaming about for months just miraculously showed up in his town, a place where a new girl hasn’t appeared since he was in 3^rd grade. And I don’t flinch when I learn that this new Miss Lena Duchannes not only smells like Ethan’s lemon- and rosemary-scented dream girl, but that she’s been dreaming of him, too. Mystical powers, telepathy, even a secret library – I find myself believing it all because, well, it’s just delicious. ;)

*Of course I timed this review with next week’s premiere of the film adaptation!

**In case you were wondering, Carolina Gold is a real gourmet barbeque sauce made from a recipe passed down since Colonial times.