Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking when I approached Keith Blanchard about a piece for Cassoulet. I knew Keith in college, so, yes, I knew he was a funny guy. (Just take a look at some of his past pieces for HuffingtonPost, like this one, or check out his twitter feed.) I also knew he was smart. And I knew he’d written a novel. So I knew three things; funny, smart, writer. That was a start. I also knew that he’d help found one of the major lad mags, and was, how should I put it, …irreverent? Of course, none of this suggested he was the go-to guy when you wanted a piece about family food. Babble wasn’t exactly clamouring after him to write a kiddie column. And that was exactly why I asked. We were after fresh takes, new perspectives, suprising approaches to life with food and family. Predictably, Keith came back to us with an unpredictable, laugh-out-loud piece about the family food that most of us would prefer to ignore: candy. Caroline and I had a moment when we asked each other, can we really publish a piece about Heath bars and Hershey’s and Bit O’Honey in a book about family food? And include a recipe for Heath Bar French Toast? In the next moment we knew: of course, we could. “The Sweet Life” is everything you’d expect from Keith Blanchard: really funny, really smart, and provocative. It will make you confront your sweet tooth—and your cavities–in a whole new way.
