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Taste of Nabeel's at Home

Nabeel’s Café & Market in Homewood is a Birmingham institution. So is John Krontiras, who still runs the restaurant although he and his wife, Ottavia, sold it to their son, Anthony, some 11 years ago.

Now, after nearly 20 years in the restaurant business, John is sharing some of the secrets of his success (and a few stories behind favorite dishes) in a new cookbook, Beloved Family Recipes.

John will sign copies of his new book on Wednesday (Oct. 3) at The Alabama Booksmith beginning at 4 p.m.

The Booksmith is at 2626 19th Place South in Homewood. If you can’t make the signing but still want a signed copy, get in touch with the Booksmith at 870-4242.

For more info about the book, go to www.belovedfamilyrecipes.com

Hope to see you there! 

George Singleton in Town Today!

George Singleton is one of my very favorite writers … ever!  I can always count on him to take the most ordinary of things (like a dog needing its vaccinations) and making it into a laugh-out-loud story.

His new book, Stray Decorum, features 11 short stories that were originally published in journals like The Atlantic, Oxford American and The Georgia Review. The collection is just out, and George will be in town today (Sept. 26) to sign copies.

Catch him this afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. at The Alabama Booksmith (2626 19th Place South) in Homewood. If you can’t go but want a signed copy, get in touch with the Booksmith at www.alabamabooksmith.com.

Hope to see you there! 

Western’s Wine and Food Festival

Come read between the wines … Friday, Sept. 28 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Birmingham Zoo.

There’s still time to get your tickets for Western’s Wine and Food Festival, which will benefit the Emmet O’Neal Library.

You can expect a wonderful evening of wine and food in a great, fun setting.  Tickets are available at the library and at the Mountain Brook, Rocky Ridge, and Highland Avenue locations of Western Supermarkets.

Advance tickets: $45.00

At the door: $55.00

Group discount for 10 or more tickets: $40.00 each

Too busy to drop by the library or a Western? Go to http://westernsupermarkets.info/buy-online/ to get your tickets. (Must be 21 to attend.)

 

In My Beach Book Bag

Last summer was an especially good time for beachcombing. The sea yielded surprising things.

I found lots of fabulous shells including five perfect Scotch bonnets in graduated sizes—a family of sorts to mirror our own. They sit on my kitchen windowsill alongside a tiny, green, plastic dinosaur that I also found in the surf.

But the most surprising find that summer was the golden spoon. My son fished with this flashy lure for days and days and caught a great many fish. (He also helped sell quite a few at the Destin Bass Pro Shop; everyone who saw him reeling things in wanted to know his secret.) He finally lost his lucky lure to a redfish. Then three days later, he and I were walking along the beach late one afternoon and we found a golden spoon washed ashore, a slighted dented yet still shiny present tangled in a patch of seaweed. We like to think it was the very same one he lost. One more surprise from the sea.

I’m packing my beach bag to return. I have a new floppy hat, plenty of 50 SPF sunscreen and enough good books to keep me entertained when I’m not roaming the dune-strewn beaches. On this trip, I’m sticking with fiction, which lets me travel even while sitting in my beach chair. These are the books I’ll have with me:

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

This debut novel was up for a Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year. Alas, it didn’t win … but then, neither did either of the other two finalists. This is the story of Ava Bigtree and her diminishing, eccentric family who are trying—and failing—to run an alligator-wrestling theme park off the coast of south Florida. From the way my reading friends go on and on about this book, “it’s beautiful and creepy!” and “just brilliant!” and “a mystical and really great coming-of-age story,” it surely must be one of the year’s best books.

The River Witch by Kimberly Brock

Novelist Patti Callahan Henry (Coming Up for Air, another great beach book since it’s actually partially set on the coast) told me about this debut novel (a travel-friendly paperback) by Kimberly Brock, who lives in Georgia. The protagonist is 24-year-old Roslyn Byrne, a professional ballet dancer who is broken and grieving after a car accident and a miscarriage. She retreats to the wilderness of a Georgia island hoping to discover a new self, and in this magical setting of old ways and old songs she discovers a great many other things, too.  

Fidelity by Wendell Berry

I’ve already read the first of the five absolutely lyrical short stories in this collection, which was lent to me by a dear friend. Berry’s connection to the land and the people who work it and love it is honest and profound and memorable. His sentences are among the most beautiful I’ve ever read. Consider this passage from A Jonquil for Mary Penn:  “At his best, Elton was a man in love—with her but not just with her. He was in love too with the world, with their place in the world, with that scanty farm, with his own life, with farming. At those times she lived in his love as in a spacious house.” Published in 1992, this is the kind of book that reminds me that there’s much I might have missed reading along the way, but there’s plenty of time to catch up.

The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan 

The manuscript of this debut novel sat in the author’s desk for about a decade before being published this year and landing Charlotte Rogan (57) on The New York Times bestseller list. Her surprising success comes after some 25 years spent writing in secret while her triplets were at school and her husband at work. The Lifeboat is historical fiction set in 1914. Most of the novel takes place on an overcrowded lifeboat. The other parts of this book are set in a courtroom where the main character, Grace Winter, and two other women are on trial for murder.

The Cranes Dance by Meg Howrey

“I threw my neck out in the middle of Swan Lake last night.” It’s an intriguing start to the story of Kate Crane, a soloist in a celebrated New York City ballet company who is struggling to keep her place in a very demanding world and, it seems, struggling to keep her sanity, too. She offers an intimate, irreverent insider’s tour of rehearsals and performances. Her dark humor masks a darker situation:  Her younger sister, Gwen, a fellow company dancer whose career quickly surpassed Kate’s, has suffered a breakdown. There’s a question of what role Kate played in her sister’s collapse.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

I’ve been meaning to read this novel, and now that it’s newly out in beach-perfect paperback the time is right. The book starts, and I understand it ends, with baseball. But it’s about way more than that. Family, friendship, love and commitment all figure into this story set on a small college campus on the shore of Lake Michigan. The New York Times Book Review named this one of the 10 Best Books of the Year in 2011 saying:  “Harbach’s expansive, allusive first novel combines the pleasures of an old-fashioned baseball story with a stately, self-reflective meditation on talent and the limits of ambition, played out on a field where every hesitation is amplified and every error judged by an exacting, bloodthirsty audience.”

Maybe I’ll start with that one. Because soon I’ll be at the beach. And, as is my habit, I’ll read a while and doze a bit and read some more. Then I’ll look up and consider the simple beauty of sugary sand touching turquoise water touching sky-blue sky, and I’ll get up to walk and see what the sea might offer on that perfect day. 

 

What You Should Read Right Now

Robert Goolrick’s new book Heading Out to Wonderful was the cover story in yesterday’s USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/story/2012-06-11/robert-goolrick-heading-out-to-wonderful/55507370/1). 

In the June issue of Birmingham magazine, on shelves now, I included Heading Out to Wonderful in my list of hot summer reads. I wrote this about it:  

This new novel from the author of the bestselling A Reliable Wife is a story of love gone wrong. Charlie Beale, an attractive loner recently home from war in Europe, shows up in a sleepy Virginia town. He finds a job at a local butcher shop and, in that way, meets all the townspeople including Sylvan, the beautiful, eccentric teenage bride of the richest man in town. The story of the ensuing relationship between Charlie and Sylvan and how it alters the town is told by the butcher shop owner’s son, Sam, looking back decades later.

The story is a haunting tale of obsession and love gone terribly wrong. And it is beautifully told with scenes readers will not soon forget. Consider this passage, which inspired the title:

"Let me tell you something, son. 
When you’re young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brand-new penny, 
but before you get to wonderful you’re going to have to pass through all right. And when you get to all right, stop and take a good, long look, because that may be as far as you’re ever going to go.”

Heading Out to Wonderful has received some great blurbs from O Magazine, Redbook, Family Circle, Entertainment Weekly, Washington Post, and more. Kathryn Stockett (The Help) called it “a delicious feast for the reader” and Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain) praised it as “a rich, evocative, and sometimes unsettling story.” By the way, those two books (in travel-ready paperback) should also be on your summer reading list if you haven't read them already.

The book hit store shelves yesterday (June 12). 

 

On Fox 6 in May

These are the books I'm talking about on Fox 6 this May. I'll be on Good Day Alabama the first Tuesday and the first Saturday. There's a the real story of Cinco de Mayo, a summer-ready garden book, historical fiction, a new way to eat and the dirt on earthworms. May you truly enjoy this month’s picks!

May 5, 1862:  A Story of Cinco de Mayo (Pine Ivy Books) by Jim Noles

This chapter book for very young readers is by Birmingham attorney and writer Jim Noles with illustrations by Mountain Brook High School senior Brinkley Edge. It is a fictionalized story of a real battle between France and Mexico:  the Battle of Puebla. On that day a brave but outnumbered Mexican army defeated the French army. The battle cost hundreds of lives, nearly 100 Mexican soldiers and nearly 500 French fighters.

One Writer’s Garden:  Eudora Welty’s Home Place (Random House) by Susan Haltom

One Writer’s Garden was written by garden designer Susan Haltom (who actually restored the Welty garden) and landscape historian Jane Roy Brown. It’s a beautiful book with photographs by Langdon Clay, whose work appears in museums and private collections all over the world.

Welty, of course, is known for weaving Southern flora into her writing.  But not many people know that the abundant references to flowers and gardens in Welty’s work come from hands-on experience digging in the dirt. Much of her knowledge grew from time spent in her mother’s garden.

NOTE:  Haltom will share the story of the book and her ongoing preservation of the Welty garden when she comes to Birmingham on May 10. She will lecture beginning at 2 that afternoon at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Admission is $5 per person, and there will be copies of the book available for purchase. Or you can go to the Garden Party that follows and get a book and more. The party is from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the home of Tom and Cathy Adams on Aberdeen Road. Tickets are $50 per person and include food, beverages and a copy of the book. Again, both events benefit The Literacy Council, and it occurs to me that a ticket would be a great Mother’s Day gift.

Remarkable Creatures (Penguin) by Tracy Chevalier

In 1810, a brother and sister found a fossilized skull of an unknown animal in the cliffs off the southern coast of England. Mary Anning was that girl, and, by age 12, she had discovered the first complete specimen of an ichthyosaur. Bestselling historical novelist Tracy Chevalier tells her story, and it’s not only a story of scientific discovery, it’s also about how Mary’s discoveries challenged the accepted notions of the world and how it was created. Class differences play a big role here as Mary finds herself ostracized for her eccentric habits, and, for friendship, she turns to Elizabeth Philpot, an upper-class spinster and recent exile from London who shares Mary’s fascination with finding old things on the beach. Readers will consider issues of gender, too, as Mary’s unique talent for finding these remarkable creatures puts her in close contact (but always at a remove) with the male-dominated, middle- and upper-class scientific community.  Chevalier says she first found out about Mary when she took her son to a small dinosaur museum in Dorchester. She writes: “(Mary) was prickly and independent and eccentric. Plus, she was struck by lightening as a baby and survived. Discovering her felt like my own jolt of lightening, and I knew I had to write about her.”

Taste What You’re Missing (Free Press) by Barb Stuckey

In what she calls “the passionate eater’s guide to why food tastes good,” Barb Stuckey explains how all of us can get more enjoyment from what we eat. She looks at the anatomy of taste—what’s going on in your nose, mouth and mind when you eat. Did you know that food tastes less salty and less sweet with loud noise in the background? (That’s one of the explanations for awful airline food.) Also, taste inclinations can be inherited. Stuckey says that the most important thing she learned while writing this book is that “... we Americans don’t appreciate the flavor of food.” She says we need to integrate taste appreciation into our school systems and in the way we raise our children. “Taste appreciation,” she says, “will help you be a better eater, as well as help you eat better.” And that, of course, has countless implications these days.

The Earth Moved (Algonquin) by Amy Stewart

The author of Wicked Plants and Wicked Bugs has moved on to earthworms—just in time for all that summer gardening! With the same attention to detail and things you probably don’t already know, she takes readers on an underground journey to meet the humble, yet vitally important, earthworm. Spineless, deaf and blind, the earthworm has profound effects on our ecosystem, destroying plant diseases, plowing the earth and more.  Plus, earthworms survived two mass extinctions, including the one that took out the dinosaurs! Inspired by Charles Darwin, who also had a high regard for the lowly earthworm, Stewart writes with humor, intelligence and a great deal of enthusiasm. The Earth Moved will move you in ways you don’t expect. You’ll certainly look at this most unassuming creature in a whole new way.

 

Put a Poem in Your Pocket

Thursday, April 26, 2012 is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Celebrate poetry by putting a poem in your own pocket, carry it with you throughout your day and perhaps take it out every now and then to share.

I’ll send my family to work and school with poems I picked out especially for them. I've turned to my poetic hero Billy Collins for inspiration. The idea comes from The Academy of American Poets. And it’s a cool and simple way to share poetry with those you love … and those you might not even know.

The official Poem in Your Pocket Day started in New York in 2004. Since then, each year the city parks, bookstores, workplaces and other venues there (and elsewhere as the idea has spread!) are pocket-poem friendly.

Here are just a few ways to share some poetry and celebrate this fun day: 

• post pocket-sized poems in public places;
• handwrite some lines of poetry on the back of the business cards you give out;
• grab some co-workers and hand out poems to passersby during your lunch hour;
• add a poem to your email footer;
• post a poem on your blog or social networking page;
• text a poem to friends.

 Go to www.poets.org/pocket for more ideas and for free downloadable pocket poems.

 

Write Out of Place

The 15th Annual Alabama Writers Symposium is set for April 26-28 in historic Monroeville.

The 2012 Alabama Writers Symposium will explore the theme “Write Out of Place,” looking at all the ways in which Alabama writers are affected by their “placehood,” specifically, the ways in which Alabama as a place informs their literary efforts.

Join Fannie Flagg, the 2012 winner of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Distinguished Writer; Dr. William Ulmer, the 2012 winner of the Eugene Current-Garcia for Alabama's Distinguished Literary Scholar as well as writers Brad Watson, Wayne Flynt, Allen Tullos, Eli Gold, Irene Latham, Rachel Hawkins, Trudier Harris, Kerry Madden, Jeanie Thompson, Abraham Smith and Mary Murphy.

Featured Scholars are Nancy Anderson, Kirk Curnutt, Anita Miller Garner, Peter Huggins, Jim Murphy, Don Noble & Jacqueline Allen Trimble



You’ll hear music from Kathryn Scheldt, and the featured artist is Opal Smith.

Expect a lively weekend of literary offerings featuring readings, signings, and an award-winning production of To Kill a Mockingbird. Of course, there will be delicious food galore.

This is a celebration of our literary heritage with some of the state’s most talented writers! For more info, go to www.writerssymposium.org

Whole Lot of Love for Libraries

Thursday, April 5 is another 5% Day at Whole Foods Market, and this time our Jefferson County Libraries will benefit! On Thursday, 5 percent of that day's net sales will be donated to our local public libries.

Eat well. Read well. Feel good about it all.

On Fox 6 in April

A timely family story, fiction from a familiar name, local literature and maybe the most useful cookbook ever! Here's what I'm talking about on Fox 6's Good Day Alabama on Tuesday, April 4 and Saturday, April 7. 

A Rare Titanic Family:  The Caldwells’ Story of Survival (NewSouth Books) by Julie Hedgepeth Williams

This book is as timely as it is fascinating. April 15 marks the 100^th anniversary of this tragic event that continues to capture our attention and our imaginations. Williams grew up hearing family stories about how her great uncle Albert Caldwell; his wife, Sylvia, and their young son escaped the Titanic. They were among the very small number of families that came out of that disaster alive and together. But there’s more to this story:  The Caldwells had been Presbyterian missionaries in Siam (now Thailand), but they left when Sylvia got sick. They ended up in England, via the Far East, the Middle East and Europe. But fellow missionaries believed the couple made up Sylvia’s illness and that they planned to renege on their contract with the church that had sponsored them. So, it turns out that being involved in the most famous shipwreck in history was only one of this family’s problems! Williams relied on Albert’s firsthand account of the disaster as well as family stories, newspaper articles, journals and church documents to tell her family’s extraordinary story.

 

A Wedding in Haiti (Algonquin, publication date April 24) by Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez’s books are internationally acclaimed. Many, like How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of Butterflies, are taught in high school and college curriculums. In A Wedding in Haiti, we follow Alvarez on her own journey into a new country and culture. It’s a narrative that spans both pre- and post-earthquake Haiti and includes Alvarez’s parents; her husband; and a young Haitian boy named Piti, whom Alvarez first met in 2001. The author, over the years, has come to view Piti as a son; she even promised to be at his wedding one day. As Alvarez explains, “… devastation happens around the world and at home. But those tragedies are too huge to absorb. We understand them best in the small, human-sized portion a story serves up. This is a journey of the heart to a Haiti that often gets missed. In a far-off hut, an hour’s hike from where a dirt road ends, Piti is getting married. I invite you to enter this story and see what happens when we keep a promise.”

 

PMS 11 Poem Memoir Story (University of Alabama at Birmingham) edited by Kerry Madden

This newest edition of PMS, a journal of women’s poetry, memoir and short fiction, opens with an interview by Lauren Slaughter with internationally esteemed poet Mary Jo Bang, and it’s followed immediately with Bang’s beautiful Canto XXVI. From there, the pages cover a variety of subjects (the isolation of a nursing home, the terrifying world of drug addiction, the angry teenage daughter of a racist, a revelation in a Hallmark store). “ … a theme of displacement can be seen in the fractured settings of so many of poems, memoirs, and stories,” writes editor Kerry Madden. “Displacement is in the air these days with families being uprooted and broken, often to the running soundtrack of our age of information overload.” Sit down with this spring issue; slow down with this spring issue. Understand something new.

 

Birmingham Poetry Review (University of Alabama at Birmingham) edited by Adam Vines

Award-winning poet David Bottoms, the poet laureate of Georgia, opens this Spring 2012 edition with My Old Man Loves Fried Okra, and his simple, straightforward, relevant poem paints a picture that is both lovely and heartbreaking and, quite possibly, very familiar. Other poems that stay with the reader include Michelle Penaloza’s Reverie:  Nightfishing

“The silver fish sidle inshore, opaque lines, nets

of the mind – words before they leave the tongue.

The torches their lures, the old men fall silent and watch

the clamor of fish climb the branches of their swaying nets.”

And Travis Wayne Denton’s Local Men

“They’re the ones you read about in the papers,

Never good news. For Example:  Local Man, Found Face Down

In His Teriyaki at Bill’s Lucky Buddha, Foul Play Suspected.

Look around, gaggles of local men,

Just waiting to be picked off – thrown in the back

Of a rusted-out Buick (said car last seen speeding

Away from the Circle K).”

 

How to Cook Everything:  The Basics (Wiley) by Mark Bittman

“Cooking, at its heart,” says Mark Bittman, “is simple and straightforward.” It’s also satisfying, economical, time well spent, and it results in truly nutritious food. It also leads to family meals. This book, with its 1,000 informative and encouraging photos, starts by showing you how to set up your pantry. Then there’s a visual guide to basic prep like rinsing and chopping and cooking techniques from boiling water (yes, really) to braising. The recipes here progress from easiest to most challenging, so you can build skills with each dish. Recipes include Quick Pickle Spears, Garlicky White Bean Soup, Paella with Chicken and Sausage and Chili from Scratch. How to Cook Everything:  The Basics is perfect for the novice cook (think wedding presents and graduation gifts here), but accomplished cooks will learn a thing or two, also.