Say What?

I read a book I can’t forget.

Setting: A B&B in Wisconsin. Time: Dead of wintertime. No, I don’t remember the title. No, I don’t remember the author. I do remember it was a cozy mystery complete with winter sports and a dead body. What I do remember is the main character who owns the B&B is a gourmet chef who moved from a fancy New York hotel restaurant to open this B&B.

She went into great detail describing her salad specialty garnished with a thin, fresh slice of Vidalia onion that was on the menu for her guests that night. Whoa. Vidalia Onions, grown only in Georgia, are available from April until early September. Unless she’s a magician as well as a gourmet chef, this is where her research is lacking. Fiction writing gives the author a great deal of latitude, but a little research is still essential. I like Vidalia onions! To me it was a glaring error that should have been caught in editing, and this is all I took away from the novel.

In her defense, maybe she copied the recipe from someone who was preparing this particular dish during the Vidalia growing season. In any case–faux pas.