Congratulations to Joanne of Eats Well with Others for her winning post about our last Cook the Books pick “Eating for England” by Nigel Slater. Thanks are heartily extended to our guest judge and three-time CTB winner, Foodycatand to Jo of Food Junkie, not Junk Food for selecting our book and hosting that last round. Everyone seems to have really enjoyed reading and cooking from Slater’s book.
Jo passes the hosting torch to me, The Crispy Cook, as we dig into the debut novel by Seattle author Erica Bauermeister, “The School of Essential Ingredients” (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2009). This elegant novel tells the intertwined stories of a group of students at a monthly cooking class held at a Northwest restaurant. The owner, Lillian, presides over a a group of eight people of various ages and imparts her cooking secrets and imperturbable assuredness in the kitchen.
The author, Erica Bauermeister, has graciously agreed to serve as our guest judge for this round of Cook the Books, which ends on July 30. To participate in Cook the Books, one must read the book, cook something up inspired by our reading selection and then blog about it before the deadline. I will then post a roundup of delicious posts for all to digest and Ms. Bauermeister will pick our winner.
Anyone is eligible to join in the fun and we encourage new Cook the Books participants to join the “regulars” that have read and cooked from a varied batch of foodcentric books. You can check the CTB tabs above (Guidelines and Books We’ve Read) to see what we have read, look at past roundups and check out some sample CTB posts.
If you would like to learn more about our author and her book you can visit her website,where she also provides some tantalizing recipes as made by some of her characters in the novel. However, as she notes, one should use these recipes as a springboard, or as she says “Trust yourself and the food. Have fun.”
Looking forward to your foodie posts…..
