Recipe for Disaster

by Stacey Ballis

Genres: Humor & Satire; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Stacey Ballis cooks up a delicious broth of a novel about a woman whose perfect life falls apart in spectacular fashion--leaving her with a house to restore, an antique cookbook (but no cooking talent), and one very unhappy schnauzer. For fans of Jen Lancaster, Jennifer Weiner, and Emily Giffin.   

To an outside observer, Anneke Stroudt is a mess—her shirts are stained, her fingernails stubby, her language colorful. But, despite her flaws, Anneke’s life is close to perfect. She has a beautiful historic house to restore and a loving fiancé who cooks like a dream.
 
Until Anneke’s charmed existence falls apart when she loses both her job and her future husband in one terrible day. In need of a new start, she packs up her disgruntled schnauzer and moves into her half-finished home, where she throws her pent-up frustration—and what little savings she has—into finishing the renovation.
 
But at the first step into the house’s overhaul, Anneke is sidetracked when she discovers a mysterious leather-bound book, long hidden away, filled with tempting recipes and steamy secrets from Gemma Ditmore-Smythe, the cook for the house’s original owners. Slowly, with the help of some delicious food and Emma’s life lessons, Anneke begins to realize that, just like a flawless recipe, she’s been waiting for the right ingredients to cook up a perfect life all along…

“With the perfect blend of humor and heart, Ballis’s writing is powerfully honest and genuinely hilarious.”—Jen Lancaster

INCLUDES RECIPES

Release date: March 3, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 400

Sample

Acknowledgments

 

SIX MONTHS FROM NOW . . .

I slip the dress over my head. I can’t remember the last time I was actually in a dress. It’s definitely been over a year. I’m not big on dresses in general; it can be hard to find them for my shape. If they actually fit over my substantial boobs and wide hips, I lose my waist entirely and become a blob. Or they make me look like the mother of the bride. I was just going to wear the charcoal gray wrap dress that is always my fancy-night-out go-to, but the girls pitched a fit. And when I told them we were just going to go to city hall and then maybe have a really nice meal somewhere, you’d have thought I suggested we sacrifice puppies. On a burning altar of rare oil paintings. In the middle of the Vatican.

So my wedding gift from them turned out to be the wedding itself, and everything that entails. Caroline took charge of the whole thing, refusing to let me decline either her generosity or her good taste. It was a relief. I’m just not your girly girl dreaming of a foofy dress and bells and whistles. For most of my life I presumed that marriage itself was not for me, so now that I’m actually taking the plunge, handing over the endless details to people who think these things matter was a huge weight off my shoulders, and allowed me to keep my focus on my work while they pulled the thing together with my gratitude and carte blanche to make the decisions. Best kind of wedding? The one where you just have to show up.

At least the wedding planning gave them a chance to bond a little bit with my groom, who did have some things about the day that were important to him, and if it didn’t fully solidify their connection to each other, it at least appears to have created an atmosphere of respect and the beginnings of acceptance.

Caroline, in addition to being the wedding planner and hosting the whole shindig at her beautiful house, found the dress for me, her taste in all things being impeccable. It’s a wonderful shade of medium gray with a lot of green in it that makes my skin look creamy, and my auburn hair sparkle, and my hazel eyes pick up the green in fiery flecks. It’s made of some kind of heavy matte silk, with a sort of an early 1960s vibe, a wide scoop neck that shows off my shoulders and my décolletage, very fitted to the waist, keeping everything locked and loaded, and then a wide sweep of skirt over an actual crinoline. I’m making kind of fun rustling noises, and for once it isn’t just my ample thighs rubbing together. With the sparkly gold kitten heels I borrowed from Hedy, the effect is just perfect. The wide skirt masks my hips and substantial butt, the skirt hits just at the bottom curve of my muscular calf, giving the illusion of a slender ankle; the whole effect makes me look like . . .

“You look like a brickhouse,” Hedy says, whistling under her breath.

“I know. It’s weird.” Even when I do wear dresses, I never feel beautiful or sexy, I just feel dressed up.

“It’s not weird, it’s fantastic.” This, for her, is a statement of fact, an approval of the costume, if not the circumstance.

“Well, you don’t look so bad yourself.” She’s wearing a stunning deep eggplant shift dress with a wide gold architectural necklace and chunky gold bracelets. Her chestnut hair is pulled back into a bouncy ponytail, shiny and subtly highlighted. And she’s wearing a killer pair of black cage heels that I’m sure cost more than a mortgage payment, and in which I would be on my ass in less than four minutes.

“Here, let me put this on you.” She comes forward with a beautiful bracelet, an art deco design in diamonds and sapphires. She clasps it on my wrist. “Perfect.”

“Hey, you guys almost ready in here?” Marie pokes her head around the corner. She’s wearing a fun vintage strapless dress on her voluptuous figure, in pale violet with a delicate rhinestone belt. Her long curly brown hair is twisted up into a loose bun with little ringlets escaping.

I always marvel that my three best friends in the world, as different as they are from each other, are all on the same page when it comes to dress and hair and special occasions. They like to put themselves together, to shop, to plan parties, to celebrate milestones with pomp and circumstance. Caroline likes to host at home, to show off her cooking skills, to arrange the flowers and make the little takeaway gifts by hand. Hedy is a restaurant girl, she loves a private room with a specially chosen menu, leaves the flowers to Cornelia McNamara, Chicago’s florist to the stars, and has one of her many personal shoppers decide on the trinkets. Marie bops back and forth between funky venues like the Diversey River Bowl or a road trip to a drive-in movie at the McHenry Outdoor Theatre, and casual parties at the Wicker Park loft she shares with her boyfriend, John. Marie leans more toward potlucks, chili cook-offs, dogs and burgers on the grill. All different, but the impulse is the same. To gather those you care about for joy and conviviality. My best guess is that it’s because they all had mothers who taught them how.

I should be flattered that they even deign to hang out with me, since my idea of shoe shopping involves steel-toed work boots, yesterday was my first manicure in nearly a year, and I almost always forget not only their birthdays, but my own too. Also? I never host a party. Ever. Occasionally a casual girls’ night, involving ordering in pizza or Thai with plenty of beer. My idea of hors d’oeuvres involves opening a cellophane bag or two and perhaps popping the lid off some dip.

“What do you say, lady? You ready?” Hedy asks me. Her voice is friendly but her mouth is a thin line. She looks at best resigned, and at worst pissed off, but I can’t even think about that today. Your friends have to forgive you eventually, and even if they don’t approve of the marital adventure I am about to embark upon, they’ll get over it once they realize that I’m just being true to myself.

“Yep. I’m ready.” I do one last check in the mirror. My usually unkempt frizzy mass of hair is tamed into gentle waves, pulled back off my face with an antique silver clip, and my usually bare face is accented simply with very natural blush, a swipe of shimmery gold eye shadow, mascara, and a pale pink lip gloss.

“Okay, let’s go, gorgeous.” Marie reaches out and takes my hand like she used to when we were kids. Her eyebrows are knitted together, and she doesn’t make eye contact with me at all. “Caroline went insane down there, just so you know.”

I laugh. “I never suspected anything else.”

“Okay, stop gabbing, there is a party downstairs that is happening without you, and you are the main attraction.” Hedy scoots us all out of Caroline’s bedroom and we go down the wide staircase. When we get to the second floor, Caroline, looking perfect and radiant in a Tiffany-blue swirly chiffon number, claps her hands.

“You’re spectacular! Here.” She reaches forward and hands me a bundle of deep purple and mauve calla lilies. She looks me dead in the eye. “You ready?” she asks pointedly.

“Ready.”

“And you’re absolutely sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She nods, her forehead furrowed in query, her mouth a wan half smile. “Okay, then.”

We head down the second flight of stairs. When we get to the landing, I can see all the people, about twenty of them, looking up and smiling at me. Caroline’s husband, Carl, has his big camera, the one he uses when they travel, and he’s taking pictures of me as I come down the stairs. The whole thing is surreal, and shocking, yet I’m feeling weirdly really happy. And light for the first time in forever. Whatever my best friends think they know, no one knows my heart the way I do, and this feels right, and safe, and shockingly real. Caroline has filled her living room with flowers and candles, all of the antique chairs from her dining room are swagged in wide ribbons, and I’m genuinely happy as I float downstairs to meet my future.

1

We can’t thank you enough, Anneke, it’s just perfect,” Claire says, her eyes sparkling.

“Really, Claire is understating, we’re over the moon!” John pipes in, sliding an arm around his wife, and pulling her close to him. “It’s a dream come true for both of us.” Their easy affection speaks to a lifetime together.

“It was my deepest pleasure, I’m just glad you’re happy.” I’m keeping things professional and calm on my surface. “Live a very happy life here.” I hand John the keys, on a custom titanium key ring engraved with their address, accept awkwardly the hugs they both offer, and quietly head out the front door. As soon as it latches behind me I hear a loud whoop from inside the house, followed by effervescent giggling. I turn and get a peek through the window, John is spinning Claire in the living room in a jubilant waltz, her head thrown back in laughter, and I’m able to let go of the tears that I was suppressing.

I’m not generally demonstratively emotional; in fact my girlfriends tease me about it all the time. Hedy will call me Iceberg Anneke or Proud Stroudt when she thinks I’m being distant or unaffected. Marie will shake her head and sing “It’s All Right to Cry” from Free to Be . . . You and Me with a smirk. Caroline will just reach over and squeeze my hand. Whatever. I can’t help it that my besties are all sappy and tenderhearted and can produce a flood of tears at a goddamn AT&T commercial. Whenever we have chick flick night and the three of them are unabashedly weeping, they all look over to see me on the couch, dry-eyed and skeptical as Bette Midler sings about the wind beneath her wings to her best friend’s orphan.

For me, I can’t really understand why they are so upset at the fictional death of an actress on-screen. I just saw Barbara Hershey in People magazine four days ago, for chrissakes. I can’t get it up for what is basically a decent makeup job, some convincing coughing, and swelling strings in the background. It’s just not how I’m wired. Which, while it may occasionally be a pain in my personal life, is a good thing in my line of work. The design/build industry is still very much a man’s game, and they can smell weakness from ten miles off. I know that tears are not in and of themselves a sign of weakness, but the boys I work with do not. So my ability to keep it together is very important to me professionally. It doesn’t matter what happens, if the cabinets show up the wrong size or the painter drops a full bucket of Magnolia White down the newly carpeted stairs, my response at best is pragmatic and at worst is pissed off. I will cajole. I will swear. I will yell. I will question the fidelity of one’s mother specifically, and the relative intelligence of the human race in general. I will punch something hard, or laugh like a hyena, or go into total crisis control mode. But I will not cry.

Except on days like today.

Despite my inner stoicism about life globally, I almost always let myself shed a tear or two on key days. When you get to look at the people for whom you have sweated over the course of months, or sometimes even years, and hand over the keys to their personal kingdom, that hits me where I live. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a small bathroom remodel, or a complete empty-lot-to-dream-home build from the first shovel to the final nail. The satisfaction of getting the job done, of making dreams come true for people, of creating home for them, it makes the long hours, the lost weekends, the damage to personal relationships completely and utterly worthwhile. Even though I’ve effectively been doing this for over half my life, it never gets old. It’s always worth a quiet moment of self-satisfaction and a tear or two for someone else’s joy that you made possible.

This had been an especially fun project. John and Claire lived in their bungalow for over twenty years, saving their money for a complete renovation, which happened to coincide with their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It included finishing both the basement and attic, effectively tripling the square footage of the place. We created a wonderful, bright master bedroom suite in the former attic space, with his and hers walk-in closets and a spa-like bathroom with a steam shower for John and a huge tub for Claire. In the basement, we gave them a large comfortable space for entertaining, a small office for John, an updated laundry room, and a guest room with an en suite bathroom. On the first floor, we renovated their 1970s-era kitchen, opening it up to their formerly cramped dining room and living room for a large, open-concept space. We were able to honor and highlight the Arts and Crafts details they loved about their 1919 house, while making all of the systems pure twenty-first-century functional.

My favorite kind of project, to be honest. The kind of thing that has spoken to me ever since I was thirteen and my stepdad, Joe, took me to one of his work sites, the renovation of an old Victorian brownstone, showing me the magic in how houses used to be constructed. I thought the intersection of architecture and artistry and archeology was extraordinary, the perfect arrangement of imperfect stones to create the foundation, old solid bricks supporting wooden lath and hand-applied plaster. I came home with sawdust in my hair and cement crusted on my sneakers, and new love in my heart. Both for Joe, who was the only thing I ever had in my life that could be considered family in a positive and rational way, and for old houses that needed to find their full potential.

I jump into my 1967 Ford F-100 pickup, formerly Joe’s and part of my inheritance from him. Lola is a classic, with the original turquoise paint, now pitted and scratched and dulled from the years, and an engine that purrs like a lion cub. She’s hauled endless loads of drywall and lumber, schlepped salvaged bathtubs and brand-new dishwashers with ease, and despite her nearly 250,000 miles, has never let me down. Plus, I get major street cred with the subcontractors. They’re used to women architects and designers teetering around job sites on inappropriate shoes, and trying to climb ladders in miniskirts. I am, it goes without saying, not that kind of girl. I usually have paint on my face and grout under my stubby fingernails, and 94 percent of my wardrobe is covered in permanent filth.

I steer Lola through the icy streets of Chicago, heading back to the MacMurphy offices for a final debrief with my bosses. As much as I love the work? The job itself is craptastic on a good day. I knew when Joe retired that I wasn’t ready to go out on my own. I didn’t have enough experience under my belt. I knew I needed to work for a firm where I could get a wide variety of projects, where I could build relationships with subcontractors and tradesmen and suppliers. MacMurphy seemed like the perfect place. They do everything from small single-room projects to quick and dirty house flips to multimillion-dollar custom-home builds. They appreciated that I’m a general contractor who is also an architect, since they can charge the client for the two separate services but just pay me once. I sometimes think that one of the reasons I cry on key days is because it means I have to briefly spend some quality time at the office instead of out on the job site, and I hate the office.

The day is typical blustery December, overcast and dreary, with a biting wind. I pull into the lot on Clybourn, parking next to Liam’s brand-new F-150. He gets a new one every other year. Always shiny, showy red, always completely kitted out with bells and whistles and every possible add-on. In-dash GPS navigation screen, upgraded Bose sound system, custom leather interior. Mud flaps with chrome shamrocks. They shouldn’t say it has EcoBoost; they should say it has EgoBoost.

Liam? Is a total douche. In case that is unclear. I’m sure he thinks the slight lilt of an Irish accent makes him charming, but I like to remind him that he hasn’t set foot on the olde sod since he was six, and it just makes him sound stupid and affected.

Liam is the first cousin of Brian Murphy, one of the company owners and my direct boss. Brian, Murph to his friends, runs the build side, while his partner, Marcus “Mac” McPherson, runs the design side. Liam and I have the same title, senior project manager, but somehow he always gets his pick of choice jobs and cool clients. Which is why I loved working with John and Claire so much. Usually I get the problem children, the cranky, the indecisive, the ones with questionable taste or insanely limited and unrealistic budgets. This one was just fun and easy and a real treat. Joe always said that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, and while it always still feels like work to me, there was much happy in the last nine months.

“Hey, Anniekay!” one of the Barbies says as I come in the door. Mac and Murph hire an endless series of buxom blondies with limited vocabularies to man the front desk and do basic secretarial work. There are usually three or four of them teetering around on those platform stilettos that look like high-heeled hooves. They all get titles like customer relations specialist or office manager. I’m always eye level with a wall of silicone and perpetually erect nipples. None of them lasts much more than a few months, and none of them can ever pronounce my name, Anneke. Ann-uh-kuh. How hard is that?

“Hi. Is Murph ready for me?”

She grins a blinding smile, veneers sparkling strangely bluish behind thickly glossed and plumped lips. She looks like a deranged grouper. “He said to give him fifteen minutes,” she says breathlessly, bosom heaving, nipples aimed at me in a shockingly accusatory fashion, with the top button of her tiny shirt straining against the effort. I better extricate myself from this conversation before it gives way and blinds me. I would not be cute in an eye patch.

“Great. I’ll be in my office.”

I head down the hall to my tiny windowless closet of an office, barely big enough for my desk and one chair, books and floor plans and blueprints scattered everywhere. Stacks of finish samples teeter in the corners, and empty plastic water bottles are erupting out of the wastebasket. I’m something of a slob. But messy, not dirty, I like to tell myself, as if this is better. Liam? Has an office three times this size. With a window. And a private bathroom. Apparently the previous office occupant was a three-man law firm, so there are three offices with en suite baths. It was empty when I started, but I still got the “one step up from coffin” all the way in the back near the alley where I get hot-garbage scent all summer, and Liam, who started after I did, slid right into the choice digs like shit out of a goose.

“How’d it go with the Osbornes?” Liam arranges his lanky frame in my door, dark curly hair artfully rumpled, piercing green eyes shining behind long, thick, dark lashes.

“Great. They couldn’t be happier, the place really turned out even better than expected.”

“Good to hear. You must be glad to get that one put to bed.”

“Always bittersweet. Glad to have a job finished, sad to let it go. But I’m happy that they’re happy. How are things over on Fremont?” Liam is in the middle of my most hated kind of project. A wonderful old building with clients that are keeping the façade and doing a complete gut on the inside. All the original hardwood floors, beautiful cabinets and built-ins, claw-foot tubs, mosaic tile work, even some historic hand-painted silk wall coverings, all ripped out in favor of new new new everything. The couple, young trust fund babies both, wanted to build from scratch, but couldn’t find a double lot on one of their seven preferred Lincoln Park streets on which to erect one of those horrible places that all look like banks, so they settled for mangling this beautiful turn-of-the-century brick home instead. I’m grateful for only two things. One, they didn’t decide to tear it down completely, and two, I was able to spend a long, exhausting weekend with some of my guys salvaging everything that was salvageable and moving it to my storage unit. If I don’t use it myself, I’ll be sure that it all finds future useful life.

“You know. Couldn’t be more generic. Open-concept main level, eat-in family room slash kitchen with homework station blah blah blah. It’s going to look like a Restoration Hardware catalog.” I give Liam credit for only two things. He does appreciate the old school and old world and hates to see people destroy things as much as I do. And he’s as big a perfectionist as I am in terms of quality. Joe’s first lesson to me was to focus my energy on doing everything the right way. “You know what I call the building codes?” he used to say. “A start.” I’ve spent the better part of my career convincing people to spend more money than they want to on infrastructure, and micromanaging subcontractors who insist that something is just fine “at code.”

“At least you won’t have budget issues,” I say to Liam, wishing he would put his arm down so that I can stop staring at the swath of exposed six-pack where his thermal shirt is hiked up, stop wondering about how he might have gotten the thin white vertical scar below his rib cage. I’d love to tell him to go away, but it’s become clear that Murph fully intends to hand him the management when he retires, which he threatens to do more and more, and while I’m far more qualified for the job and should be considered, I know it won’t happen. I’m not enough of a suck-up. I like to think of my style as honest and straightforward, but apparently, according to my annual reviews, I’m “abrasive” and “disrespectful.” At least once every few months Murph calls me in for a dressing-down because I’ve pissed somebody off. I can’t help it if I’m going to call his buddy the plumber out on reusing pipes from a previous job and charging for new, or if I tell a client that I absolutely will not come back after inspection to build out a bonus mudroom that they can’t claim on the permit drawings because it adds illegal square footage.

“True. That is something. You ready to jump onto the Manning job?” He smirks.

“Please. Don’t remind me.” The Mannings, new-moneyed distant cousins to a storied Chicago scion, with all of the entitlement that implies, are my next primary clients. And the design for their new dream home, an up-from-the-ground build in Bucktown, looks like Carmela Soprano decided to buy a place in Connecticut and hire Dolly Parton and Ralph Lauren as her decorators. Waspy, but with weird spangly twists. Never thought I’d see design plans that included both a room upholstered in padded tartan-plaid silk with a gargantuan gold-plated chandelier dripping crystals, AND a custom-paneled library with leather-tile floors and a window seat covered in magenta ponyhide. The whole place smacks of Martha Stewart’s Acid Trip Dream House. The budget is pretty astronomical, but they still want to score a bargain wherever possible, and seem to always have a “contact” who can “get a better deal.” Warren Manning, who seems to have made his money in a strange combination of flatbed trucking and school buses, is a squat, sweaty man with a badly dyed comb-over and a permanent sneer. His wife, Susie, is a pinched little round woman, who crams herself into ill-fitting designer suits, which she pairs with cheap shoes and expensive handbags. They both like to bark orders and make grand pronouncements, and they name-drop like Perez Hilton has them on retainer. I hate them and their stupid house already.

Liam grins. “Yeah, have fun with that.”

Barbie Two peeks under his arm, platinum blonde extensions tipped in hot pink, because her colors are Blush and Bashful, and a skirt short enough to see her daddy issues. “Hey, um, Annamuk? Brian will see you now.”

Liam shakes his head and smirks. “Better not keep him waiting, um, Annamuk.”

Seems like everything is in order,” Murph says.

I’ve long ago given up on getting actual praise from him for a job well-done. And I was really good on this one. No fights with subs, no complaints from clients, no reprimands at all.

“Keys handed off today.”

“You got the pictures for the portfolio?” Mac asks, always wanting to pad out the website content.

“Yes, and the testimonial sheet.” I preempt the next question.

“Good,” Murph says, turning his attention to his cell phone for something terribly important, like a “Which car would you be?” quiz or something.

“And you gave them their handbook?” Mac says, conveniently forgetting once again that the handbook was my idea, and is the only thing I brought with me to MacMurphy that they have adopted. Whenever I finish any build, I put together a three-ring binder for the owners. It contains manuals and warranties for all of the appliances, care instructions for fixtures or finishes, and a one-year calendar cheat sheet for upkeep schedules. Mac and Murph thought it was such a great idea they insisted all the project managers start to do it, and even printed up custom binders to contain the paperwork. I think they just like to slap their logo on anything that isn’t nailed down.

“Of course. They’re thrilled.”

“Good. That should pretty much clear your schedule for Manning?” Murph looks at the master calendar.

Shudder. “Yep. The closet project on Maplewood is pretty much in the hands of California Closets for installation; I’ll do a walk-through tomorrow to check up, and again when they’re done. The bathrooms at the new Rick Bayless restaurant are just waiting for the stall doors to come back from the refinisher, and the footings are in for the sunroom project up in Park Ridge, so I’ve handed it off to Clark; he says it should be about a month.”

“Sounds good, Anneke. Looks like everything is in order, then. Anything we need to know about Manning?” Mac asks.

“Not really. Plans are pretty much done; they are still tweaking some interior spaces, but not in a way that will impact structure, they’re just finalizing some decisions that really only affect the electrical plot in small ways, so we’ve got time. Permit application will go in this week; my best guess is that we’ll be good to go in about eight weeks. I’ve got plans out to the usual suspects for bids; we’ll see how they come in and what the scheduling looks like and see if we need to go wider.” This is my least favorite part of the job. It is very rare that a client will just trust me to hire the best guys, the ones I know will do the best job; they usually assume there are kickbacks and dirty politics involved, so you always have to get three to five bids from subcontractors for every aspect of the project. It’s time-consuming and annoying, and then you have to hope that the people you actually want to work with come in at a decent price AND are available when you need them. And my favorite guys aren’t always the guys Murph owes favors to, and since I don’t get final approval on my teams, it is all up in the air anyway.

“Okay, sounds like that is in order, keep us posted,” Murph says, by way of dismissal.

“You’re welcome, I think it turned out great too,” I mutter to myself under my breath as I head back to my office. On my way down the hall I see Liam talking to Oliver Jacobsen, one of Chicago’s top architects, and someone I respect and admire enormously. His projects are just spectacular, Frank Lloyd Wright meets Louis Sullivan with just a hint of whimsy that is all his own. I’d give my left ovary to work with him. Actually, I’d give them both; lord knows I don’t plan on using them. Murph and Mac come out and join them, with lots of back-patting and manly joking. It’s clear that there is a new project in the offing, and Liam is essentially pissing all over Oliver to stake out his territory. I can feel my heart sink, because with this one simple tableau, I can see that I will never be able to fully break into this stupid boys’ club, and my chances of working with Oliver Jacobsen are about as good as getting struck by lightning. Twice. In my living room. On a sunny day