No one is more in love with cookbooks than I am, so I jumped at the chance to participate in this panel, along with other area food writers, cookbook authors, and chefs, which will take place at the Princeton Public Library on Wednesday, Dec. 2 at 7 p.m.
The idea is the brainchild of local food columnist and restaurant critic Faith Bahadurian, who blogs at NJ Spice. She, too, will be a panelist, along with Lambertville’s Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, authors and publishers of the Canal House Cooking series of cookbooks (and whose blog is Canal House Cooks Lunch); Alex Levine, longtime chef at the Whole Earth Center, and yours truly.
The discussion and question-and-answer session will be moderated by culinary educator Rachel Weston of Neptune (www.racheljweston.com), whose book, New Jersey Fresh: Four Seasons from Farm to Table, was published in May. We’ll be discussing what constitutes a good cookbook and revealing our personal favorite and most influential tomes. (Spoiler alert: amongst my most beloved is my very first acquisition. It took me a while, but for weeks I saved up my tween allowance, collected box tops, and sent away for…wait for it…the Joys of Jell-O Cookbook.)
The event is free and will be followed by the participating authors’ book sale and signing. Attendees are encouraged to bring along their own personal favorite cookbook because there will be a photo booth set up where they can be photographed with it in tow.
The resulting photos will be promoted by the library on social media, which is no small potatoes, since the library boasts more than 7,000 followers on Twitter and has more than 5,000 likes on Facebook. princetonlibrary.org.
Walk the ‘Cookie Walk’ at St. Nicholas Bazaar
As they have for decades now, the volunteer parishioners at Trinity Church on Mercer Street are mounting their traditional holiday bazaar for children and adults. Edible offerings by the Trinity elves are to include one-of-a-kind, handmade, decorated gingerbread houses and a holiday bake sale of cakes, pies, brownies, and the like.
But the most unique feature is, without a doubt, the cookie walk. For a modest fee, visitors receive a standard-issue brown paper lunch bag, which they can fill to brimming with the home-baked cookie assortment of their choice. My stash last year included gingerbread men, sugar cookie stars, chocolate chip, thumbprints with either Hershey kisses or candied cherries, snickerdoodles, and many more. Kids, especially, enjoy the choose-your-own aspect. (Disposable latex gloves are supplied, for hygiene’s sake.)
While there, you can winnow down your holiday list with handmade craft and gift items — jewelry, greeting cards, artwork, ladies’ handbags, holiday ornaments, to name just some — many made by and benefitting nonprofit groups around the world in places like Haiti and Kenya. The bazaar also covers your holiday decorating needs, with festive live boxwood topiaries (again, each one unique and handmade by a church volunteer), evergreen swags, and balsam wreathes. Other attractions include a silent auction, homemade gourmet-to-go fare, children’s activities, holiday books, hand-knit woolens, dog and cat treats, and more.
Trinity Church’s St. Nicholas Bazaar is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 5 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 33 Mercer St., Princeton. Admission is free.
Another chef departs Agricola
In the June issue of the Echo, I profiled Crawford Koeniger, the young chef who stepped into Josh Thomsen’s shoes when that opening chef departed this popular Witherspoon Street eatery for Florida. Now comes word from Agricola’s owner, Jim Nawn, that Koeniger, too, is gone.
Nawn is searching for a new executive chef, whom he hopes to have in place by the new year. “Meantime,” he says, “Agricola is in the hands of my sous-chef team, who have been with me from the outset.”
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