Lectures & Panel Discussions
Culinary Wellness: A Recipe for Success With Chef Frank Turner
Sunday September 20, 2015: 3:00pm to
5:00pm
Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
Blog Post
Ree Drummond: The Pioneer Woman
by eapearce
Ree Drummond’s memoir of how she met, fell in love with, and married her rancher husband is hilarious, romantic, and charming. Titled The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, A Love Story and published back in 2011, the entirely true story definitely made me want to find my own cowboy out there somewhere! Ree was born in urban Oklahoma and went to college at USC, where she fell in love with the city life. After a few years in Los Angeles, she moves back home temporarily before she plans to move to Chicago. When she meets “Marlboro Man” one night in a smoky hometown bar and he begins to woo her, Ree’s plans change somewhat and before she knows it she finds herself the wife of a down-home Oklahoma rancher, living over an hour from the nearest grocery store and surrounded by cattle rather than skyscrapers. Ree’s stories of her new country life are completely heartwarming.
After publishing this lovely memoir, Ree was inspired to write more and has produced several fantastic cookbooks complete with delicious, easy recipes interspersed with more stories of family life at the ranch. The Pioneer Woman Cooks: recipes from an accidental country girl, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: food from my frontier, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks: a year of holidays, are all beautifully photographed, adorably written, and extremely handy to have in any kitchen!
Most recently, Ree has branched out into writing children’s books about Charlie the ranch basset hound, who is based off of the basset hound that she and her family own in real life. There’s Charlie the Ranch Dog, Charlie the Ranch Dog: where’s the bacon?, Charlie and the New Baby, and Charlie and the Christmas Kitty, as well as several other picture books about the lazy, mischievous dog.
For more information about Ree, and for additional recipes, stories, and photos, check out her awesome blog The Pioneer Woman.
Blog Post
Barnes & Noble: Nonfiction Book Club
by annevm
The Nonfiction Book Club at Barnes & Noble in Ann Arbor will discuss the book The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball on Monday Sept. 15 at 7 pm. The book is the author's memoir about working with her husband to set up a CSA (community supported agriculture) cooperative farm on Lake Champlain in New York. Barnes & Noble is located in Huron Village, 3235 Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor, near the intersection of Huron Parkway and Washtenaw Avenue. Library Journal compares this book with other titles including Ree Drummond's book The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl. All are welcome at the upcoming meeting of the Barnes & Noble Nonfiction Book Club.
Blog Post
I Can't Stop Watching YouTubers: Books and Media for YouTuber Fans
by nicole
2014 is the Year of the YouTuber.
That's right, guys. Internet fame is now as easy as turning on your camera and doing whatever you do best, whether that's applying makeup with extra finesse, doing dance covers of K-Pop songs, or just generally being weird...and there's A LOT of weird out there on the internet. "YouTubers," as the famous video bloggers of YouTube are so cleverly called, have been around for years and years, but THIS year a number of them are putting down their cameras and throwing themselves into other media endeavors. Hence: The Year of the YouTuber. Catchy, right? If you're a YouTuber addict, here are a few dates (and titles!) to mark down on your calendars:
Hannah Hart, expert pun-maker, intrepid explorer of all the world's liquor cabinets, and creator of the YouTube show "My Drunk Kitchen," is putting out her first book on August 12, 2014. Aptly titled My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut, this book will contain pages, pictures....possibly even words! And of course, recipes, wisdom, and cooking tips from the Tipsy Chef herself. This book is sure to be a blast to read and use, both for those who drink and those who don't!
Next, we'll take a stroll outside the world of books. You don't mind, right? Libraries aren't just about books, you know! If any library has proven that, I'm pretty sure we have. Troye Sivan, 19-year-old Australian YouTuber, actor, and now singer-songwriter, will be releasing a new EP titled TRXYE on August 15, 2014. Troye officially announced his new endeavor at VidCon 2014 (causing the entire fandom to go insane and crash his website...typical) and released his first single "Happy Little Pill" on July 25, 2014. For those who are a big fan of Troye or of snyth-pop music, this'll be one to keep your eye out for.
Next up we have Grace Helbig. Comedian. Actress. Youtuber. Generally awkward person. Grace, has basically got it all. And she's willing to share "it all" with you! Formerly of "DailyGrace" and currently of the "ItsGrace" YouTube channel, Grace has been kind enough to share her infinite fake wisdom with the world in her upcoming book Grace's Guide: The Art of Pretending to Be a Grown-up. This one is set to be released on October 21st and if you're a young adult looking for uncomfortable anecdotes or advice on doing a really good impression of a grown-up (mortgages and filing your taxes and....oil changes...look, I don't know how adults live) then this is the book for you! This is following Grace's debut into film-making earlier this year with the comedy film Camp Takota, made alongside fellow YouTubers Mamrie Hart and Hannah Hart (remember her? From two paragraphs ago?).
Last, but certainly not least, Zoe Sugg (a.k.a. Zoella), British beauty vlogger and blogger, announced in June that she, too, would be taking the dive into the world of books with her fictional novel Girl Online. The novel follows Penny, who is known in the real world as a school-going, drama-having, normal girl with a crazy family. But to the internet she's "GirlOnline," a famous blogger and internet-personality. Over the course of the story Penny is dragged off to New York by her parents, struggles to maintain her online cover, and falls a little bit in love with a boy who has a secret of his own. Girl Online is set to be released on November 25, 2014, so it'll be a bit of a wait, but surely worth it to see what sort of writer Zoella will be off the screen. A blogger writing about a blogger? How meta is that?
The library has some of these but not all, so keep checking back as those release dates get closer! And remember, if there's something we don't have, The Michigan eLibrary is always a good back-up plan!
Blog Post
Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good
by annevm
Mark your calendars: Kathleen Flinn, author of Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: Recipes of love, loss, and adventure from an American Midwest family, is scheduled to visit Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor on Aug. 20 at 7 pm. The book, according to a description in the AADL catalog, "...Presents a recipe-augmented family history that traces the origins of the author's love affair with food to her Midwestern youth and her parents' San Francisco pizza parlor . . ."
Blog Post
In-season cooking
by PattySmith
Now is the perfect time to take advantage of all the fresh produce available from local grocery stores, farmers markets and maybe even from your own back yard! For many, the biggest question is how to prepare all your yummies once you get them home. At the Ann Arbor District Library you can find a bounty of fresh produce cookbooks that might give you new ideas on how to cook old favorites or help you find new favorites to add into your daily menu. In Susie Middleton’s cookbook Fast, Fresh & Green you’ll find simple recipes that will teach you how to turn out delicious vegetable side dishes in under 30 minutes. On a side note, don’t expect a vegetarian recipe book when checking this one out as the chef uses pork in a few dishes. Of course, you can almost always modify recipes to meet your dietary needs.
If it's vegetarian recipes you’re looking for you can check out issues of the magazine Vegetarian Times. Vegetarian Times is a monthly magazine published nine times a year (three double issues) that is chock-full of healthy recipes geared for cooking with in-season produce. In addition to the tantalizing recipes each issues offers product recommendations, as well as great tips for making your cooking experience easier.
Blog Post
Permaculture: Practical solutions for self-reliance
by annevm
One of our newer magazine subscriptions at the library is to Permaculture: Practical solutions for self-reliance">Permaculture. This magazine is a "bestselling international green-environmental magazine (with) inspiring articles written by leading experts alongside the readers' own tips and solutions," their website states. More from the website: "Published quarterly, this pioneering magazine is full of money-saving ideas for your home, garden and community. It features thought provoking articles on organic gardening; food and drink; renewable technology and green building; education, health and economics; transition towns and ecovillages; personal and community development; and sustainable agriculture and agro-forestry." Permaculture magazine also runs reviews of new books, DVDs, tools, courses, and access to contacts. Sounds like a good one!
Blog Post
Summer Food and Fun: Cobblestone Farm Market
by annevm
If you’re looking for something fun and healthy to do this summer, check out Cobblestone Farm Market, open Tuesdays 4-7 pm. To see the events calendar, click here. The market is in Buhr Park, 2751 Packard Road, off Packard near where Packard meets Eisenhower.
Blog Post
Cool Summer Drinks
by theshhlady
When you think of a cool, refreshing drink that you'd like to have on a hot, summer day you think of lemonade, right? Or maybe iced tea.
But there is a lesser known, fizzy drink great for summer known as kombucha. It sort of tastes like a cross between carbonated water and tea. You can even add juice to it. There is another side benefit to drinking kombucha: It's fermented! You make it be starting with some tea that has loads of sugar in it. After adding a probiotic yeast and bacterial colony (known as a SCOBY mother) and letting it sit for several days to weeks, the probiotics break down the sugar into acids so that by the time you drink it, it's very low in sugar. With every cup you get loads of healthy bacteria and B-complex vitamins. Talk about healthy! There is a book that shows you how to make it at home here and here.
It’s summer so a lot of Ann Arborites are growing a vegetable garden. I know I am! But what if your garden is doing so well that you have armfuls of veggies that you don't know what to do with? A great way to get some awesome nutrition or to use up extra veggies and dark leafy greens is to make smoothies or juices. For a great smoothie all you need is a blender and a knife to cut up the toughest pieces. "But won't that taste icky?" I can hear you say. Fear not! The sweet fruit you add makes the bitter taste of vegetables like kale hardly detectable. Try it and I bet you'll be a smoothie addict in no time.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #452
by muffy
Delicious! * is absolutely irresistible if you are a Ruth Reichl fan. The former New York Times restaurant critic, Gourmet magazine editor-in-chief, and bestselling author of culinary memoirs is turning to fiction (some would say rather semi-autobiographical?) for the first time, and the result is "a magical novel... that draws brilliantly on her wisdom and humor about life, her perceptiveness about family, her understanding of character, her belief in romance, and ... her description of food, so vivid you can taste every bite".
My advice: Do not attempt on an empty stomach!
College drop-out Billie Breslin lands the dream job at Delicious!, New York's most iconic food magazine. She has no culinary skills to recommend her but a "superhuman palate" (she can taste any dish and list its ingredients and suggest the flavors it needs) which endears her to the colorful staff at the magazine, as well as customers at the famous Italian food shop where she works on weekends.
When Delicious! is abruptly shut down, Billie stays on in the empty office to maintaining the hotline for reader complaints, one of which leads her to a cache of letters hidden in the magazine's library, written during WWII by a Lulu Swan to the legendary chef James Beard.
This discovery leads to more clues (in the card catalog!!), a road trip, a forged connection, a glamor-makeover; and gives her the courage to face her fears, and be open to romantic possibilities.
"Reichl's... insider's look at life at a food magazine is fascinating. Her satisfying coming-of-age novel of love and loss vividly demonstrates the power of food to connect people across cultures and generations."
Also included are: A Conversation Between Ann Patchett and Ruth Reichl, and Billie's Gingerbread recipe.
* = starred review