We’re reading Heartburn, a novel about a cookbook author whose husband leaves her for another woman when she’s seven months pregnant. Heartburn is inspired by Ephron’s own life—she was pregnant when she found out that her second husband, Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein, was having an affair with a mutual friend. (Bernstein threatened to sue Ephron over Heartburn, but never followed through.) Though the book is about a breakup, Ephron manages to make it funny. Heartburn became a film in 1986, starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.

Join us for a conversation about Heartburn on Tuesday, November 8 at 6pm, at Max’s Delicatessen, 3431 Colonnade Parkway.

Just a note: We don’t traditionally read a book in December—we’ll have a party instead. Stay tuned for details about our December party and our 2012 book selections.

Yeah… Right.

(See? You’re skeptical, too.)

And then I went back and read “Killing Dinner“—an essay Hamilton wrote for The New Yorker’s September 6, 2004 issue. It’s a stunning, raw story of killing her first chicken as a teenager, with her father guiding her with shouts. (It was reprinted in Best Food Writing 2005.) There’s this piece, “Open House,” which she wrote for Saveur. I also read “A Rogue Chef Tells All,” a piece Hamilton wrote for Food & Wine, in which she’s sarcastic, funny, and a breath of fresh reality:

If I were a real chef, I’d be at the farmers’ market every morning in my crisp, white, conspicuously monogrammed jacket, handpicking organic produce so vital it practically bursts into song. Anything I couldn’t find there would be delivered to my door just hours after it was picked by my own private forager, a former stockbroker who had tired of the grind and discovered the simple joys of mushroom hunting. A short time later, I’d be back in my kitchen, its walls lined with freshly polished copper pans, tossing off words like fond and entremet and concassé with my staff of culinary-school graduates while we washed the lettuces by hand in mineral water and dried each leaf individually with a chamois cloth.

When this was finished (a leisurely two hours before service) we would all sit down to an intimate and convivial staff meal, passing big platters of nutritious, well-prepared and delicious food that, we would all agree, one could write a book about. And even if I had flown off the handle earlier that day, thrown a fish or a pot, indulged myself in a peevish chefly tantrum, I would know I had only deepened the respect of my underlings and that all was now well.

I read those pieces, became far more intrigued, and realized why many are calling Hamilton the next big name in food writing (even though she says she doesn’t call herself a food writer).

No matter. We’re reading it. Join us for food and a great conversation at 6pm on Tuesday, October 11, place TBA (check back for an update, but I have an inquiry in to a relatively new restaurant in Mountain Brook).

You may remember Estabrook’s article in Gourmet magazine in March 2009, “The Price of Tomatoes,” which won a James Beard Award. In that piece, Estabrook wrote about modern-day slavery in Florida tomato fields, and a campaign to increase workers’ wages a mere penny per pound by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. (The CIW has had some success with McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King, Yum Brands, Compass, Aramark, and Sodexho, but many grocery chains still refuse to pay the extra penny per pound.) Estabrook has continued to follow the Immokalee workers… and in Tomatoland, he also uncovers much more about the tomato industry, and how a beautiful fruit that originated in Peru has become a tasteless, styrofoamy-textured shadow of the real thing, sold in grocery stores all over America.

Join us Tuesday, September 13, 6pm at the Central Library, 2100 Park Place in Birmingham. Our September book club meeting is also the first event of The Eat Drink Read Write Festival, a five-day celebration of food, film, and literature that’s been organized by the Foodie Book Club, Slow Food Birmingham, the Desert Island Supply Company, and the Birmingham Public Library.

Be sure to check out the other great events of the Eat Drink Read Write Festival:

• Food Stories: Join us Wednesday Sept 14, 7pm, at Woodrow Hall for a MOTH-like live storytelling event with the Desert Island Supply Company. Listen to hilarious, amazing, and touching 5-minute stories—and come share your own! Cash bar and snacks.
• Foodie Movies: Thursday, Sept 15, 6:30pm at the Central Library, catch a series of film shorts by Joe York, who works with the Southern Foodways Alliance to create films about food in the South: barbecue, cheese, fish, cocktails… his camera captures what we love. Local restaurants are cooking up some good eats. (Tickets are free, but you’ll definitely need one to get in.)
• Bards & Brews Poetry Slam: Friday, Sept 16, 6:30pm at the Central Library, hear the best lines from previous Bards & Brews winners. Toast the poets with craft beers from regional breweries.
• Food Writing: Find the Desert Island Supply Company’s booth at Pepper Place market Saturday morning, September 17. You’ll find locally-grown, in-season inspiration—and you may even get a start on that great American food novel you’ve been dying to write.
• Foodie Talk: Saturday, Sept 17, 3:30pm at the Central Library, get ideas for how use food to live a healthier life. Robyn O’Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It, and founder of the Allergy Kids Foundation, and Michael Nolan, author of I Garden: Urban Style, talk solutions that anyone can do.

In this book, the main character, Hassan Haji, a Muslim from India and a talented cook, moves to France after a tragedy. His family opens a small Indian restaurant in a small town… stepping right into the territory and on the toes of Madame Mallory, the local celebrated French chef. After a bit of a culinary war, Mallory takes Haji under her wing and mentors him. Hassan eventually goes to Paris to take on French haute cuisine. The book raises questions of cultural identity and following your destiny… even when it seems a foreign one. The Hundred-Foot Journey has been called a fable, a culinary Slumdog Millionaire, and has been compared to Disney-Pixar’s Ratatouille.

Join us at 6pm on Tuesday, August 9, for a special treat: The Birmingham Indian Food Lovers will demo how to make a homemade curry with rice. Mmm! We’ll meet at LivonFifth, 2201 5th Avenue South (leave a comment to get an email for directions), and we’ll talk about The Hundred-Foot Journey.