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
Tasty stuff on tap for our October meeting: We’re reading The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds, and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot by local author Chip Brantley. Chip is a man of many talents—he used to write about food for the San Francisco Examiner, he’s a former cheese maker, and also a co-founder of Cookthink. (A cool tool—you can search for recipes by craving!) Chip will join us for the meeting to talk about his book, and we’ll enjoy some pluot-Prosecco cocktails, homemade pluot jam, and a pluot dessert.
We’ll meet Tuesday, October 13, at 6pm, and we’ll announce the location shortly. (We’ll post the updated location here, and on Facebook—find us at Birmingham Foodie Book Club.) We will also send updates on Twitter; follow us @foodiebookclub.
If you’ve just heard about the Foodie Book Club and you’d like to check us out, you’re welcome to join us for our September meeting on Tuesday, September 15th, 6pm at Mr. Chen’s in Hoover.
Food, Inc is coming to Birmingham Labor Day weekend! Here’s the 411: All showings will be at Bottletree Cafe. There will be two showings Saturday, September 5. The 1pm showing will feature a local-inspired brunch menu; the 5pm showing will have a local happy hour menu. Tickets for those shows are $7 each, food is extra.
There’s also one showing on Sunday, September 6, at 4pm, and it will be followed by a panel discussion and a local Sunday dinner prepared by Bottletree and Chef Chris Dupont from Cafe Dupont. Tickets for the Sunday showing are $18 each and include dinner.
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.
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:
