The Season for Food & Books

After a couple of years of blogging, I’ve learned only two things: 1.) writing a long post around Thanksgiving is not time well spent as blog traffic is light over the holidays and 2.) if you really want to get people’s attention in Atlanta, write about food because more people love good food than good books. (Case in point: There are dozens of Atlanta food blogs and only a few book blogs.)

There’s always been a food-book connection in metro Atlanta, but lately it has been especially prevalent.  A Cappella Books and Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene are promoting a book-restaurant pairings, with Mark Kurlansky appearing at Restaurant Eugene on Monday, November 22 followed by David Tanis on December 6. (Ticket price includes a meal and a book.)

Last Wednesday, my friend Denise attended the kickoff for the new Southern Foodways
Alliance Community Cookbook at the Decatur Public Library. Denise reports that it was a packed house, which included free samples of pimento cheese with homemade crackers, barbecued pulled pork and glazed nuts. The Southern Foodway Alliance promotes the importance of eating together whether it be grits or greens or the fancier stuff.  The cookbook, which compiles favorite family recipes from all over the South, is just one way to pull communities together.

Also last week the ex-husband of Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi (Salman Rushdie) was promoting his new book Luka and the Fire of Life at the Carter Library, but I don’t think the book was about how to regulate the temperature in your oven.  And Anthony Bourdain was at the Cobb Center on Saturday night as well. The tickets for Bourdain ran in the $30 to $125 range, so one only wonders what he was cookin’.

 

Comments

[William Gwin]

Food and books. Hmmm . . . I think you're on to something here, Murray. William

by the way, a couple of weeks ago, had 3 great hikes in the Smokies, including the Chimneys. Thought about you.

[Dry Cleaning Delivery Service Guy]

I love the idea of a community cookbook. Growing up, all of my mothers and grandmothers recipes were on little recipe cards in a recipe box and were a combination of family recipes and neighborhood recipes. It might as well of been a community recipe book.