Last Bites!

Thank you for everyone who participated in the school library Cookbook Challenge and our remote learning focused on reading and eating this month!  I loved all the pictures you sent me...recipes you made, menus you designed, cooking in action!  Here are a few final bites for our foodie book lovers:

Bring Me Some Apples, I'll Make You a Pie: A Story About Edna Lewis by Robbin Gourle, a wonderful, homey biography of a preeminent farm-to-table chef that includes five recipes and a healthy sprinkling of foodie folk rhymes and wisdom.  Read it here!  And by the same author, check out First Garden,  the fascinating history of the White House kitchen garden established by Michelle Obama to promote healthy eating and the history of other gardens on the grounds. Read it here!

Dumpling Dreams:  How Joyce Chen Brought the Dumpling from Beijing to Cambridge by Carrie Clickard and illustrated by Katy Wu will be available through the Chicago Public Library when they reopen in the next couple of weeks, along with Paul Yee and Judy Chan's Chinese Fairy Tale Feasts illustrated by Shaoli Wang, a terrific combination of storytelling and recipes!  (P.S., when you visit the public library, please don't forget to wear your mask!  Keep you and your public librarians safe.)

Ooo la la, here we have Bon Appetit!  The Delicious Life of Julia Child by Jessie Hartland., a picture book biography of the groundbreaking French television chef who inspired so many home cooks.  Read it here!

Julia Child makes me think of another important chef written about in Ann Arnold's The Adventurous Chef:  Alexis Soyer, the inventive head chef in 1800's London who pretty much designed the modern kitchen. This title is hard to find in ebook form but I wanted at least to share this fascinating double-paged illustration from the book!

And no self-respecting Chicagoan should be unschooled in the history of the hot dog, described in Hot Diggity Dog!  The History of the Hot Dog By Adrienne Silver.  Read it here!

This title doesn't have quite enough for MY taste specifically about the Chicago-style hot dog, the most important and delicious hot dog in the world, but, as we learned in library, sometimes more research and more sources are needed than one single book, and sometimes your librarian has bias.

awesomehotdogs.com, Anatomy of a Hot Dog Poster by Rich Anderseon

And let's finish up with a fictional picture book classic, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Ron and Judi Barrett.  Read it here!  There's also a matching cookbook, not available on free ebook but it will be waiting for you in the school library whenever we return.  Looking forward to checking it out to you!

Hope these whet your appetite for more research, taste tests and more and more and MORE reading! History, biography, cookbooks, picture books, how-to...there's a book on the menu for everyone. Go to the library (or ebook collections) and fill your plate!