Chances are you’ve got an opinion one way or another, so join us Tuesday, March 9, at 6pm, in the clubroom at LivonFifth (2201 5th Avenue South in Birmingham). We’ll nibble, sip, and have a lively discussion!
Our February selection is a work of fiction, and it is Margaret Atwood’s first novel: The Edible Woman. We will meet Tuesday, February 9, at 6:00pm, location TBD (I’m hoping to perhaps see if we can meet in a local coffee shop).
As always, if you buy your book at Alabama Booksmith and mention you’re in the Foodie Book Club, you’ll get a 22% discount. But, for the month of January, you’ll also get to choose a free book from a special table of new titles in the shop. In fact, for every 2010 book club selection you buy in January, you’ll get a free book. Buy all 11 titles for the year, and you’ll get a 22% discount on all plus 11 free books! The store has our list of selections for the year.
Many of our members are interested in supporting nearby farms and the local economy as well as enjoying the benefits of having locally raised food. Here are a few sources:
Sequatchie Cove Farm: This farm is now offering a meat CSA with pick-up in Birmingham at Jones Valley Urban Farm. Sequatchie Cove is a Tennessee-based farm that raises heritage breed pork, grass fed beef, eggs, pick-your-own berries, seasonal vegetables, and they also produce cheese. (They’re hoping to do a cheese CSA. How cool would that be?)
Birdsong Community Farm: This farm offers grass-finished beef, eggs, pasture-raised chickens, fruit and vegetables.
We’re kicking off the new year with seafood and a bit of history. (I have to confess, books like this convince me that had we been taught history via food in high school, I might have been a much better student.) Mark Kurlansky is a prolific writer whose works include histories, fiction, and children’s books, and much of his work centers around food. In January we’re reading Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. We’ll meet on Tuesday, January 12 at 6pm, at LivonFifth for lively discussion, wine, and hm, maybe some Brandade de Morue?
It’s our tradition to skip a book in December in favor of a party… So join us Tuesday night, December 8, at 6pm for a cozy movie night. We’ll watch Big Night with Stanley Tucci, and fill ourselves with risotto and other film-inspired Italian fare. We’ll meet in the club room at LivonFifth (2201 5th Avenue South; it’s the green building next to Workplay). Feel free to bring a friend, and if you can bring food or drink, we’ll need a few bottles of wine, bread, salad, and dessert.
News that Gourmet magazine’s November 2009 issue will be that publication’s last has a lot of food lovers rereading and reminiscing about favorite articles and recipes. (And listening to editor Ruth Reichl on NPR’s Fresh Air, as if listening to a eulogy.) For our November meeting, we’ve decided to spend time celebrating Gourmet’s 68 years of influencing and capturing America’s relationship with food. We’ll read some great Gourmet writing, and then talk while we enjoy a potluck at Julia Rutland’s home. (Please email foodiebookclub AT mac DOT com for directions.) Cook up your favorite Gourmet recipe and bring the dish to share when we meet Tuesday, November 10, at 6:00pm.
We’ve selected a handful of articles to read, and we chose stories that are online to make it easy for everyone to access them. (You might consider saving these to your computer or printing the articles out, because it’s not yet known how long Gourmet’s site will be up.) Of course, if you’ve got favorites not listed here, leave a post… you might inspire us all do to a little more reading and reminiscing.
The Garlic War by E.A. (Annie) Proulx, published February 1964
The Birmingham (Alabama) Foodie Book Club usually meets the second Tuesday of every month at 6:00p.m. We read anything that has to do with food: Fiction and non-fiction; history, essay, memoirs, humor, anthologies, novels. We enjoy wine, food, and each other's company at every meeting. (Does life get any better?) The only requirement to join us is to love food—and no, you don't have to know how to cook! Read more about us in Slow Food USA's Fall 2008 issue of The Snail (page 16).
Check out the posts for the location of our next meeting. And, if you buy your book from Alabama Booksmith, mention you're with the Foodie Book Club to get 20% off.
We’re serving up controversy in March. We’re reading Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly by James E. McWilliams. McWilliams is a history professor at Texas State University, and he’s written some controversial pieces for national publications like the New York Times (such as this one where he wrote that factory-farm raised pork is safer than free-range pork, which raised questions from heavy-hitters like Marion Nestle, Mark Bittman, and others). And he’s ended up defending his position in the national public arena, too (like this response on The Atlantic.com). In recent posts for The New York Times Freakonomics blog, he’s even questioned whether farmers markets really are good for communities.
