How to Cook a Wolf: Judge Announcement

It is with great pleasure that I announce our judge for the current edition of Cook the Books, in which we are reading How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher: food writer, cookbook author, and photographer Jeannette Ferrary has kindly accepted the invitation.

A personal friend of M.F.K. Fisher, Ferrary has written about their friendship in the book M.F.K. Fisher and Me: A Memoir of Food and Friendship.

In 2008 (the 100th anniversary of M.F.K. Fisher's birth) Ferrary wrote a very interesting article for Gourmet magazine about Fisher's Table Book:

It really didn’t look like much. The untitled book had a well-worn black cover and some clippings sticking out here and there. Inside, in scrabbly handwriting, I found the words Table Book, and as I slowly turned the pages, I began to realize the importance of this collection: Arranged by date, they were M. F. K. Fisher’s unexpurgated notes on those who’d come to visit, the food she’d served, the reactions of her guests, and her own reactions to them. 

Read the whole article to find out more about Fisher's notes, including the one dated October 3, 1997 describing Ferrary first visit to Fisher (in the company of poet and novelist Frances Mayes).

The same year, Ferrari was interviewed for an article on Weekend America about -- guess what? -- our current selection!

Jeannette Ferrary has been teaching food writing for years and that is how we met: I attended a food writing course she taught at UC Berkeley Extension. She is currently teaching a course at Stanford University.

A reminder that the deadline for submitting your contribution to the current edition of Cook the Books is end of the day Monday, July 29.

I will finish this post with a quote from How to Cook a Wolf:

All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are poor or rich.