Welcome to the Reader's Roundtable edition of CADL Cast

with Jessica Trotter, Mari Garza and Cheryl Lindemann.

Welcome back to the Reader's Roundtable edition of CADL Cast.

I'm Jessica Trotter.

I'm joined by Cheryl Lindemann and Mari Garza.

We are it's it's November already.

Yeah. I don't know quite how it got there.

We did decide we were kind of talking about what we wanted to do.

It's it's weird.

We're taking the seasonal route

and we wanted, you know, Thanksgiving is weirdly right around the corner.

Yeah.

So we're kind of approaching this seasonally

with ideas about feasting, family and gratitude.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Drew One of my favorite months, like November.

There's a lot of there's a lot of goods.

It's sort of a little bit of a.

Calm to it. Yeah.

You know, after even the excitement of all the colors of the other parts of fall,

I mean, some people don't like the bare trees,

but there's something has its own sort of beauty.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think at least lately, I don't know if it's just this year,

but it just it's still very pleasant outside.

It is.

I mean, there are some days, at least lately, it's been very,

very nice to be walking and, you know, catching the last bit of of glow.

The color and then.

Yeah, that light is so beautiful.

Yeah. The trees. Yep. Yes.

So let's start out with some cookbooks.

As a nonfiction selector, I have the joy of purchasing cookbooks for the library.

It's always been

one of my personal favorite subject areas, so that makes it fun for me.

And sometimes it takes me a while to get the ones I'm looking for

and some a lot read do release in the fall.

So one that I'd like to start out with is called I Am From Here

by Weisz Welsh, but stories and Recipes

from a Southern Chef and Vishwa

grew up in the city of Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat in India.

It is actually the state and city where Gandhi set up his ashram.

And he grew up in a very with a very large extended family in a three bedroom flat.

He had one point in time 11 people living there.

And it was a really close knit, loving family, multigenerational.

And he has a lot of memories of going to the market

and buying all these wonderful fresh foods with his father, learning about

how to pick the best spices, you know, all the best ingredients.

And then his mother cooked for the entire family and he was the youngest.

So he was a little one that was kind of at her feet.

And he learned from her

and he helped her with all the preparations

he has all these beautiful memories of that.

Well, the movie The Family ends up moving to the United States

and he ends up settling in Mississippi, in Oxford, Mississippi.

And I'm going to read something really brief from the book.

I don't always do that, but I think it's so perfect.

As in the introduction, he says, I want people to see me as I see myself.

An immigrant, a son of immigrants who chose to make the South

his home, and in doing so became a Southern chef.

I claim the Americans South and this is my story.

So there's a lot of lovely story,

a lot of great information about ingredients, about rice,

about beans, okra, about

both of the traditions of okra in India and in the American South,

and some fantastic basically

fusion recipes of Southern and traditional Indian food.

And I'll just I like to bring up just a few.

He has his mother's mom's rice pudding.

And here he has a really unique sandwich

called Bombay Toasties, sort of like a spin.

It's a his mother's recipe and almost like a grilled cheese,

but it's with potato and spices, sweet tea, brined fried chicken.

No, he grew up vegetarian, but he actually learned from other

Southern chefs how to cook me, how to prepare me, how to learn about me.

So this is a beautiful book

that, again, is a lot of great information, plus wonderful recipes.

So that as I am from here.

It sounds really cool. Yeah.

Yeah, it was just wonderful.

And you know how much I love

rice and it's filled with wonderful rice dishes, so that's pretty cool too.

A Good Day to Bake is my second book Simple

Baking Recipes for every Mood by Benjamin a Brookie.

And Benjamin Anna was on the British Bake Off in 2016.

She was one of the finalists.

And this book is absolutely beautiful.

It's it's just stunning.

It's kind of a understated photograph, sort of a flat finish to them.

But what I love about this book is it seems very, very approachable,

and it's filled with recipes that include herbs, has recipes

that have tea in them, and a lot of just fruits.

So very earthy, I would say.

And a few of the recipes

that really stood out to me are Earl Gray, Orange and White Chocolate Tray Bake.

I love those tray bakes they make in England

a mint and lemon drizzle cake

and a simple cupboard cake, which is a very basic chocolate cake

that looks like you could make this

possibly this weekend without a lot of new ingredients.

And also a very simple pound cake, too.

So that's just a few.

But they're just many beautiful recipes in here that seem like something

you could really just do on a weekend and pick up and make that feature a lot of

ingredients from nature, essentially.

Very cool.

Well, I'm going to follow that with a cookbook as well.

This is one

I'd heard about a couple of different times and finally got a hold of

just came out.

It's ghetto gastro presents Black Power Kitchen by John Geer

excuse me, John Gray, Pierre Serrao and Lester Walker.

They are the group behind Ghetto Gastro, which is a

Bronx based

collaborative, collective, culinary collective.

They're called a lot of different things.

This is it's a gorgeous cookbook by itself.

It's actually it's very stark in some ways.

It's a black

it's the white wording on black cover, but then the ends of the papers are red.

So it's sort of eye catching that way.

But once you get inside it, it's

it's a blend of a cookbook.

It's a blend of social justice history.

It's including the way food has been weaponized and disenfranchized

communities.

Again, ghetto gangsters out of the Bronx.

It's a culinary collective, but they pull from for inspiration, from visual arts,

music, fashion and social activism

to curate experiences with food.

It features the recipes.

It features conversations with influential figures

like activists, artists, writers, Thelma Golden, writer and documentarian.

Dream Hampton, who has the was the executive director of Surviving, are Kelly

Emory Douglas, who was an early artist, and then later

minister of culture for the Black Panther Party.

And what they were really looking at and there was the the breakfast programs

that the Black Panthers put on for black children.

And there's a there's a chapter that's devoted to mothers and black women,

and they interview their mothers in the process.

And one section of it, it's

because it's the Bronx.

It's a it's a culinary crossroads.

There's a lot going on.

So it's a fusion.

It's southern, it's fusion.

It's so you've got African influence, Caribbean influence,

Portugal, South America, Chinese, Southeast Asian and more.

It's also very

the majority of it is plant based

versus there's

a couple of like a couple of chicken dishes, a couple of fish dishes,

but it's really very purposely and they explained at the beginning why.

But it's very purposely mostly plant based, particularly

when you're talking about communities that have trouble.

You know, our food deserts, you have trouble getting a hold of

different ingredients. They talk about that.

And it's that's part of what they're trying to change and standout things.

There's a Jollof rice recipe.

There's a crazy chickpeas recipe.

I had been a little confused because I had been showing

Cheryl some of the pictures and there there was a general.

So I was thinking it was a chicken dish, but it was a it's a

general sausage,

usually sort of a breaded fried chicken type thing.

This is actually a breaded cauliflower that they had in, you know, roll

and the so sauce. And it looks lovely.

A lot of plantain dishes, a lot of it, just a lot of lentils, a lot of rice

dishes. It's just quite a variety and really interesting.

So that's when I was excited to kind of add into the feasting portion of this.

Sounds great.

Sounds and eat well this time of year.

I mean, all throughout the year, really.

I am just always interested in seeing new picture books that feature,

you know, all the holidays

around this time of year, especially as we think about Thanksgiving.

And what I am recommending

today is a it's a nonfiction book in the form of a picture book.

It's Harvest Days Are Giving Thanks Around the World by Kate De Palma.

It is illustrated by Martina Peluso.

And the reason I like it, I mean, we have a lot of these types of books

where you look at cultures from all over the world, they're always very popular.

It doesn't matter when they were published, you usually find them checked out

around this

time of year, especially when you're looking at food.

Celebrate wins and harvest type celebrations for seasons.

This book is like a picture book that would have your typical rhyming

sections to it, but it features 12 cultures from around the world,

11 countries, and each page

has, you know, the rhyming section.

You get a little bit of pronunciation of I know how to say

the celebration in that particular country.

I think one of the things that was unique about this book is that it

features countries that you don't always see,

you know, being singled out for their celebrations

or Thanksgiving type seasons.

Countries like Iran, Korea, Liberia.

Yeah, that was really, really interesting.

There's also a section on Algonquin culture, which I thought was really neat.

Harvest festivals and celebrations.

So the end of the book you get a lot of really interesting back matter on

just how, you know, the celebrations are not just obviously

at this time of year but throughout the year related to harvest time.

So yeah, I really enjoyed reading that.

Yeah, very cool.

Sounds really. Lovely.

I love those.

As a parent, I feel like they're really educational,

you know, like

seems like kids get so much out of these and you sit down and you learn so much

and then you learn so much yourself, right? So that's wonderful. Oh,

okay.

I know this one's going to go a little bit in a funny, funny direction.

Okay, we're digging around. Yeah, I'm going, like, backwards. Okay.

So I think a lot of poets have sort of a quintessential poem.

This is very arguable, but one that you see about the poet W.S.

Merwin.

You see it posted I think the most is his poem called Thanks.

And I don't know if either of you've seen that or out and about, but

it is a beautiful poem, sort of a complicated poem in some ways

to think about, because it's thinking for really difficult things.

It's really thankful for for being alive, essentially.

So to me, the sort of quintessential Merwin poem,

and I'm a lover of me, Merwin all around, he did die in 2019.

And so when I saw actually one of my colleagues

pointed this out to me that this was purchased by Matty.

The poem. Yeah. Thank you.

The poem, Forest.

It's a picture book, a nonfiction picture book about Merwin poet W.S.

Merwin and the palm tree forest he grew from scratch

by Cory Fountain and illustrated by Chris Turnham.

And this is a wonderful biographical picture book about

William Stanley or Willie at W.S.

Merwin and about his childhood growing up in the city.

He loved nature,

but he was pretty removed from it, and he kept seeing development around him.

And then those natural areas that he knew about became developed more.

In that time, he he developed his career as a poet.

He ended up becoming

the poet laureate of the United States.

He's had this large career in poetry, but he craved the wild,

and he really craved wild in poetry.

That's why he loved poetry so much.

He loved the wildness of it, and he didn't want to live in a developed place.

He wanted to live where it was wild.

So he finally got to the point in his life where he moved to Maui

and he purchased a piece of land.

And it was actually it had been damaged by humans.

It was considered a wasteland.

It was affordable for that reason.

He purchases this land and he sits with it

and he feels that he can make it wild again.

And he starts planting palms.

He ends up collecting palms from really all over the world and creating this huge

palm forest, which is now a conservancy that he gave for before he died

and is continues on as a nature conservancy.

So it's really about that love of the wild and how he turned that

into something tangible in planting a forest.

But about

I love that link between the

love of the wild in the poetry and the love of the wild in nature.

So just a wonderful introduction to W.S.

Merwin for children.

And there is a wonderful poem that is thank is not really a child friendly poem,

but the one at the end of the book is called The Poem, and it is child friendly.

And of course it's a wonderful offer.

Author's Note for kids to learn about Merwin as well.

So a beautiful book, the poem Forest.

Okay, very nice.

I'm also kind of loosely staying within the theme.

My next book is actually I wanted to get a good fiction book in here,

and this is just a fun light romance.

It's called The Romance Recipe by Ruby Barrett.

It is.

It's a smart, queer, feminist romance about a type a

reed control freak restaurant owner

and her very grumpy head chef who has has done a spin in reality TV,

not really found it for her, lost her passion for cooking,

but was able to spend that into getting this Ted chef position

where she thought she would have a little bit more control and, you know,

be able to get back her passion for cooking.

But Amy is a little bit over her bearing

and wants control of everything,

including her kitchen, even though she is not the head chef.

And Sophie is a little bit curmudgeonly because she wants control of her kitchen.

The restaurant restaurant is not doing well.

The pair of them are noticing each other.

But then I don't want anybody

to know that, except everybody does, because that's the way life works.

And they're trying to figure out a way to save the restaurant

when, of course, reality TV comes knocking again.

They they

have the opportunity to try and spotlight the restaurant Amy and May,

and they decide to take it, but they have to make

some, uh, have to come to a truce

and they have to make some choices about the restaurant and their relationship.

So it's just a, it's a nice, um,

interesting take on a romance story with a food twist.

And it was fun.

Some nice

well, I do have a two more sort of picture books.

The first one is another nonfiction title.

It's Giving Thanks How Thanksgiving Became a National Holiday by Denise Kiernan.

And the pictures are by Jamie Kristoff

and this was something that was really interesting to me

because I, I can't I couldn't say like off the top of my head, do I know how

Thanksgiving started as a national holiday?

Well, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, someone who lived in born

in the late 1700s and lived in the 1800s, mostly

was an American writer and activist, something I didn't know.

The author of The Nursery Rhyme, Mary had a Little LAMB.

She is the one

who kind of petitioned for years with

Abraham Lincoln and others to make

Thanksgiving a national holiday.

This is a beautifully illustrated

story, just kind of focusing on

not just the woman, but how the role of gratitude

kind of became a focal point of the holiday.

It's it was really interesting to read

about the implementation, really, of Thanksgiving, for example.

You know, that that tradition that we have of

pardoning the turkey in the White House, I don't pay attention too much to that.

But it actually has a little bit of its roots

in one of Abe Lincoln's sons, Tad,

who was known to be a little bit rambunctious and eventually, somehow

or another got a turkey in the house as a pet and was running around.

And then the family decided to, well, it's time to say goodbye.

We're going to eat the turkey.

And he was like, Oh, he's such a good, good turkey.

I mean, this kind of like he's a good guy.

I just had to laugh.

But anyway, this book really,

I think, gives you a good, good taste

of of how it really is rooted in history and how we came to celebrate Thanksgiving.

The other book that I have, oh, this was just beautiful.

And I know I'm not going to do justice to the title.

Keep keep them keep on the mark.

We are Magellan's Thanksgiving story.

This is written by actually three authors Danielle Green,

Dara, Anthony Perry and Alexis Brunson,

illustrated by Gary Meacham, senior.

It is a picture book and it's kind of not really the Thanksgiving story

that I daresay we might have heard when we were in school.

It's I think it's a little more truthful or true to the narrative of,

you know, that when the story

is told from a native perspective, First Peoples might view

Thanksgiving as a day of mourning, because it was a time when

the the settlers coming over

introduced a lot of, you know, illness practices, you know, like taking things

that didn't belong to you, things into their their culture.

And so it's it's not it's not a downer by any means.

But I feel like it was

very balanced, I guess you could say.

And what I really liked is that, you know, it's a grandma

and her two children who are going through,

you know, all these things that are in their their community.

And they're talking about, you know, what was the first Thanksgiving like?

Well, we call it keep on a much the time of harvest.

And this is what really happened.

And they go through, you know, you know, both some good stories and some

she goes through some good stories and some not so pleasant stories

about the introduction of that community

and the white person settler coming

and you know, the relationships that that started to form.

What I really liked is at the very end

you get to see a picture of the real

maple and quill.

So these are the children that are featured in the book.

It's a picture books fiction, but there are two children

who the book is based on and the grandma,

they live in Mashpee, Massachusetts.

So it's just a beautiful, beautiful book.

And there's also a little recipe at the end on how to make

let's see, I can pronounce this correct.

Allie one Wampanoag recipe.

It's cornmeal and dried berries,

walnuts, sunflower seeds, water

and some maple sirup.

So yeah, those are two really beautiful books to check out this season.

Hopefully. All right.

And I think I'm closing out.

I do not want to be accused of pushing past

Thanksgiving to skip the Christmas.

I'm actually

but I am about to talk about a book which technically probably is a Christmas book,

but I'm pulling it out because I think

it delivers a message that I kind of want to see delivered daily.

But definitely any time we're gathering and feasting

and this one kind of appealed

to my genealogists heart as much a family history lover,

as much as just for the story and the art it is.

May your life be delicious

by Michael Gernhardt and illustrated by Lance Excuse me, Lance.

Laura

sorry

it is a book that sort of it's a family

who's gathering and it's a child who's telling the story

in parts.

But they're traveling excuse me?

They're gathering to assemble tamales for the feast.

And in that process, the grandmother

tells them her wishes for them,

tell stories of their family in the pictures, you see, you know,

family represented in pictures, on the tables, in memories,

the grandmothers having, thinking back of when she was married

and thinking about the important things that the what's

important in life that people should be looking for.

It's just a it's

it's just a family story.

It's so important to kind of encourage people to share their stories,

to share the experience of working in a kitchen together,

if you can swing it, because you just it's a love letter

to the community in preparation for a feast to the families

that, you know, getting together a family and shared stories.

And it's it's ultimately for the two for the author and the illustrators,

it's a love letter to Michael Isabella and and

Laura's

nurse, Laura's abuelita, respectively.

And really any grandmother who was passing

on their love through recipes and the stories.

And it is one of those very clearly, it's sort of like I do not measure,

you know, those that you know

in my head in the back of thinking, yeah, never measuring speed around.

No I measure with my you know I measure with my heart,

I measure with my if there's a lovely line in there that it

but it goes through

every person I've ever heard who's tried to get a recipe out of a family member.

You'll know it.

Doesn't appeal to my insecure son.

What? I'm trying to do something that I know.

But it's so real, isn't it?

Asked you.

It was just. Yeah, beautiful.

And I don't know.

For me it evoked a lot of like family memories

of doing things together like that.

And tamales making is pretty labor intensive, so it's nice to see that story.

And not having a family assembly line in my family, it's it

it really felt when I was reading it, I very, very much felt

the way we did, getting ready for Thanksgiving at my grandmother's house.

And right now, southern grandmother, big, giant spread.

So and dad would help cook and I would be in the kitchen and so it really was

and my aunts were in the kitchen and my uncles would be in and out

helping or not helping, you know, it's sort of a it's that's what it evoked.

And I think that's just a cool.

Yeah. Memory for me.

Yeah, that sounds beautiful.

We hope

you enjoy the holidays, whichever ones you celebrate,

but be together in community

whenever you can and

come back and listen to us later.

So thank you. Happy reading.

Happy reading, happy feasting.