I really liked this man and I'm not alone. I miss him, miss watching for another book he wrote. I came late to them, first meeting him in his cookbook The Pat Conroy Cookbook: The Recipes of My Life and then going on to his novels.
In A Lowcountry Heart, Reflections On a Writing Life, Pat made me chuckle writing about this cookbook that I love.
We all know what we should eat, what's healthy; I wrote that cookbook for people who were trying to speed up the dying process. If there was a just and merciful God, a dry martini would have one calorie and a bean sprout would have three thousand.
Tell me about it!
I won't go on and on about this beloved author but will close with another quote from the same book because it shows why it's so easy to love this author who didn't seem to have a pretentious bone in his body. He writes about visiting Paris, a city he loved so much.
When Parisians spoke to each other in restaurants and cafés, it sounded to me as though they were passing orchids and roses through their lips. I spoke French like a donkey, and no amount of mimicry or fakery could make any of the French think differently. There was not a French word I could not make potted meat of as it fell to the floor from the meat grinder of my tongue.
You have to love that.
Every time I make Pat's Roasted Chicken I think of him, or his Swordfish and Pasta Salad, or his Spaghetti Carbonara.
Or his chicken stock, some of which is in my freezer now.
I'm thinking of you today, Mr. Conroy.
