Review of Ed Mitchell's Barbeque Cookbook

This cookbook has been actively used in my kitchen this summer. It is Ed Mitchell's Barbeque--a compilation of recipes written in collaboration with his son, Ryan Mitchell, and Zella Palmer.  I won the cookbook in a giveaway on The Book Club Cookbook website.  Ed Mitchell is one of the most famous pitmasters in the nation, dedicated to authentic Southern, whole hog pit cooking which has led him to rise from a local legend to a national sensation. 

I was attracted to this cookbook after reading the story within the cookbook of how Ed began his pitmaster career. Ed, the grandson of a small farmer, had the privilege of growing up surrounded by delicious and wholesome food. He cherishes fond memories of those flavors and moments from his childhood. However, for many years, his education, military service, and employment with the Ford Motor Company kept him away from Wilson, North Carolina. It wasn't until 1990, when his father fell ill, that Ed returned to lend a hand to his mother.  When his father died he went to the local Piggly Wiggly to buy a thirty-five-pound pig, which is considered a small one, and fired up the coals. As smoke filled the air and the pork skin started to crackle, the few customers at the family restaurant started to inquire about lunch and what smelled so good. By chance, Ed discovered a talent for barbecuing, which quickly became a habit and brought him success.

This story reminded me of one my Italian-born husband always recalled about a tradition in his hometown in Calabria that was held every January called "Maialata," where each family would gather and help each other render a pig they raised. They butchered and cooked the meat from head to tail-- nothing went to waste. They preserved every bit to eat during the winter months ahead.

I also remember my father, who grew up in a coal mine town in eastern Pennsylvania, telling me how his family would make pickled pig feet and "head cheese" from a pig. He sometimes bought vinegar pickled pig feet in a jar that he found in the grocery and I even learned to enjoy them. Sure enough, Ed's cookbook includes a recipe for pickled pig feet and "North Carolina Souse Meat," also known as Hog's Head Cheese. This shows how different cultures have very similar food traditions and recipes that are cherished and handed down from one generation to the next.

The cookbook is full of delightful stories about the family history behind Ed's recipes.  

 "Ed's Mouthwatering Baby Back Ribs" on page 56 recounts how his rib recipe is the one he used to defeat Bobby Flay on the Food Network television show "Throwdown with Bobby Flay." 

I prepared the ribs the night before with a rub of his special blend of herbs and spices, such as paprika, black pepper, dry mustard, coriander, cumin, and salt.

The next day I had intended to grill the ribs as the recipe instructs but as luck would have it we had a very thunderstorm rainy day, so instead they cooked low and slow in my oven for two hours. Toward the end of cooking time, they get brushed with Ed's Eastern North Carolina Vinegar BBQ Sauce which he gives the recipe for on page 74 of his cookbook. 

They were delicious, moist, fall off bone, ribs!  

 

To accompany the ribs I made "Ed's Shing Slaw" on page 98 of his cookbook.

I was happy to find Duke's Mayonaise locally and also a pre-shredded mixture of cabbage and carrots which made preparing this coleslaw a snap!

So crunchy and good!

The coolness of the coleslaw was the perfect offset to the spicy heat of the ribs! I served it for dinner with a saute of vegetables.

My garden is full of ripening tomatoes so I was excited to prepare the "Hellwig Raleigh Country Club Tomato Pie" recipe on page 160. Ed says tomato pie is a country boy's lasagna and it is on the menu in his restaurant--John Hellwig is his sous chef--and it is a customer favorite. 

My only change in Ed's recipe was not using a prepared pie crust.  I have been eating low carb since May --see why on this post-- and so I baked the tomato pie in a springform pan with parchment paper on the bottom and instead of using bread crumbs I used ground pork rinds. Ed's mixture of cheddar cheese and gouda with the addition of his cayenne pepper hot sauce and brown sugar, along with fresh herbs from my garden made this pie taste fabulous!

The Tomato Pie was so good!

I have many bookmarks in Ed Mitchell's Barbeque for other recipes I want to try-- there are many for appetizers, biscuits and cornbread, salads and slaw, beef and pork, poultry, seafood, and even tofu, rice, grits and mac' n' cheese, vegetables, beans desserts, libations and instructions for building an authentic barbeque pit. He tells many interesting stories about his life, along with meeting with chef Anthony Bourdain, becoming a celebrity pitmaster in competitions in the Big Apple--NYC, and what he believes is the future of barbeque.

I hope I have enticed you to look for Ed Mitchell's Barbecue Cookbook to try some of his outstanding recipes.

 

Thank you, again, to The Book Club Cookbook for this wonderful cookbook!

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Review of Italy On A Plate

"In her debut cookbook, Susan Gravely celebrates 40 years as Founder and Creative Director of VIETRI, a lifestyle brand offering handcrafted Italian tabletop and home and garden accessories." 

So begins the description of this beautiful cookbook, Italy On A Plate,  that I won as a giveaway from my favorite website The Book Club Cookbook. 

Information from the VIETRI website: 

"When Susan, Frances, and their mother, Lee Gravely, took their first trip to Italy in 1983, they fell in love with the Italian culture. During their stay at the San Pietro Hotel in Positano, they went to lunch and found themselves captivated by the hotel's colorful, handcrafted dinnerware. The next day they arranged to meet the artisans at a nearby factory in the town of Vietri sul Mare. As they watched the artisans paint, glaze, and fire each piece by hand, they were inspired to share the treasure they had discovered. The Gravelys returned home with an array of pieces with mixed patterns all related to nature. The collection would become known as Campagna, VIETRI's flagship dinnerware."

Italy On A Plate is a compilation of Susan Gravely's memories and recipes that she collected in her travels in the various regions of Italy to add to her line of fine dining ceramics and resulting friendships. I love a cookbook such as this that not only is comprised of delicious recipes but also stories of the people behind them.  The photography inside is exquisite, with each completed recipe presented on a piece of her company's dinnerware.

 

There are many recipes I'd like to try but this recipe for "Zucchine Al Gorgonzola--Zucchini With Gorgonzola" on page 38 caught my eye and was the first recipe I made.  Comprised of zucchini, eggs, sour cream, gorgonzola cheese, and spices, this is cooked up with a souffle-like top with a buttery sliced zucchini bottom.  It was delicious and made such a pretty presentation.

I paired the dish with roasted trout and salmon, as well as steamed asparagus and broccoli. The addition of Zucchine Al Gorgonzola provided a luxurious touch to the meal. My son-in-law was so pleased with the dish that he asked if he could take the remaining food home.

The second recipe I tried was "Involtini Di Melanzane--Eggplant Rolls," on page 156.

This is Susan's favorite dish!

I have made Eggplant Rollatini many times in the past--you can see my recipe that I blogged about a long time ago when I lived in Brooklyn, New York, on this link.  If you peek at that post you can see that I used to dip the eggplant slice in egg, then bread crumbs, and then fry them before stuffing them with a ricotta cheese mixture and then baking them.  Susan's recipe was lighter with no breading--the eggplant slices were brushed with olive oil and baked to soften them, and included a slice of prosciutto placed on the inside of each slice before stuffing them and rolling them up. Susan served hers with a hint of sauce on top,  but we like them smothered in sauce with mozzarella cheese on them. We did not miss the breading at all and the prosciutto gave the eggplant rolls an extra layer of flavor.  I'll never make them any other way from now on.

I've saved a lot of recipes that I'm excited to test out, ranging from soups and appetizers to main courses and desserts. 

Italy On A Plate is truly lovely and I plan on always cherishing it as part of my collection.

Thank you to The Book Club Cookbook for such a wonderful giveaway prize!

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Reviews of Books that I've Won In Giveaways

I love to read and share reviews! I read a new book every month as part of a local book club, but I also have been fortunate to win a few books from Goodreads giveaways, from The Book Club Cookbook, and also as a Celadon Reader. This was my recent collection of recently-read books, and more are on my "to be read" pile.  

BirdGirl: Looking to the Skies in Search of a Better Future by Mya-Rose Craig

Author Mya-Rose Craig was raised in Bristol, England, by parents who were involved with the hobby of "twitching"--a new term for me--to describe birdwatching to an almost obsessive level. Craig grew up shuttling across the country, as well as seven continents, to catch sight of rare birds, observing over 5,000 birds by the time she was a teenager. She also chronicles her mother's severe bipolar mental illness in her memoir in a poignant way and her struggles with diagnosis, medications, and treatments. I could feel Mya's joy as she describes the thrill of filling her bird list with exciting sightings of birds such as hummingbirds and eagles, etc, and then the confusion she felt living with a mentally ill mother. Finally, Mya shares in her memoir her resolve to work against the threats of climate change that threaten both bird habitats and our future. If you are a bird lover, a naturalist, or care for our environment, you will enjoy reading "Birdgirl: Looking to the Skies in Search of a Better Future." Thank you to Celadon Books for an advanced reader copy paperback of this book! 

"Maybe Next Time" by Cesca Major

Emma is a busy London literary agent, wife, and mother, but overly engrossed with her phone, reading and answering (or disgustedly ignoring) countless text and "WhatsApp" messages, much to the detriment of her family. Her husband Dan feels neglected, as do her children who are enduring a pre-teen crisis because of their own involvement in social media. It all begins to change when the unthinkable happens and Emma is caught in a revolving repetition of re-living a tragic day. Can she change? Can she control fate? Will she find a way to be the person she finds she needs to be?
I enjoyed this fast-paced contemporary novel by Cesa Major. Aren't we all a little preoccupied with life's demands and the constant notification "pinging" on our phones alerting and distracting us all day? Do we forget what is really important? You will dislike Emma at times, and then cheer her on. She will make you wonder how you would react to a never-ending "Groundhog Day" and then how we might wish we all had that chance to change fate.
I won an ARC copy of this novel in a Goodreads giveaway. Thanks to author Cesca Major for the opportunity to review it!

Last Dance on the  Starlight Pier" by Sarah Bird

Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's "Last Dance on the Starlight Pier" is a novel about one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes.
July 3, 1932, shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She'd come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied—a family, a purpose, even love—waits for her there in the place she dreads most: the spotlight.
Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn't anything this country can't do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.

I won this novel through a The Book Club Cookbook e-mail contest! I really enjoy this website, reviews, and book club recipe ideas.

"A Woman of Intelligence" by Karen Tanabe

Karen Tanabe's "A Woman of Intelligence" is an exhilarating classic spy thriller of post-war New York City, and one remarkable woman’s journey from the United Nations, to the cloistered drawing rooms of Manhattan society, to the secretive ranks of the FBI.   

With a Fifth Avenue address, parties at the Plaza, two healthy sons, and the ideal husband, what looks like a perfect life for Katharina Edgeworth is anything but. It’s 1954, and the post-war American dream has become a nightmare. A born and bred New Yorker, Katharina is the daughter of immigrants, Ivy-League-educated, and speaks four languages. As a single girl in 1940s Manhattan, she is a translator at the newly formed United Nations, devoting her days to her work and the promise of world peace—and her nights to cocktails and the promise of a good time. Now she is the wife of a beloved pediatric surgeon Katharina is trapped in a gilded cage, desperate to escape the constraints of domesticity. So when she is approached by the FBI and asked to join their ranks as an informant, Katharina seizes the opportunity and begins a harrowing assignment.

Thank you to Goodreads and to the author Karen Tanabe.  I won this book in a giveaway.

"Maame" by Jessica George

When I first began reading Maame,"" I thought it would be a simple tale of a young girl's first romance, but I was in for a surprise as it was so much more! Protagonist Maddie, a 25-year-old British Ghanaian woman, had to function as an adult, a "Maame" for most of her life, and because of all her responsibilities, she was deprived of the natural ebbs and flows of growing up. Isolated by caring for a father with debilitating Parkinson's disease, and with a mostly absent mother and older brother, Maddie's only avenue for advice was querying the Google search engine for answers to her problems. She knows much is expected of her but she inwardly desires a life of freedom, friends, romance, and fulfillment in her job. When her mother arrives from Ghana, Maddie finally begins to seek out all those desires independently, but then her father suddenly dies and Maddie is faced with guilt. She faces a new reality that she is unable to find joy in those desires any longer. Her struggles are poignant, and as you read on you will want to help and enlighten her to find the life she deserves.
Thank you author Jessica George, Read With Jenna, and The Book Club Cookbook for a copy of Maame to review. I truly enjoyed reading it!

"The Christie Affair" by Nina deGramont

Why would the world's most famous mystery writer disappear for eleven days? What makes a woman desperate enough to destroy another woman's marriage? How deeply can a person crave revenge?. This intriguing novel answers these questions in this fast-paced spellbinder. The story takes place in 1925 London, in the socialite world of the Christies. Miss Nan O’Dea became Agatha's husband Archie's mistress, luring him away from his devoted and well-known wife, Nan O'Dea's plot began decades before, in Ireland when Nan was a young girl. She and the man she loved were a star-crossed couple who were destined to be together, until the Great War, a pandemic, and shameful secrets tore them apart. Then acts of unspeakable cruelty kept them separated. It is a tale of two very different women who want the very same things in life. The greatest mystery wasn't Agatha Christie's disappearance in those eleven infamous days, it's what she discovered.

This was another wonderful win by The Book Club Cookbook giveaway contest! Check out their website for wonderful reviews and delicious recipes from authors for book club menu ideas in their "Novel Noshes" section.

"Life is like a book. Every day is a new page, every month is a new chapter, and every year is a new series." 

I hope you might find a few books from my reviews that sound interesting to you, dear reader. Please let me know a book that you have recently enjoyed.  

Happy Reading!

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My Goal for 2023 and Three Books That Inspired Me

"For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning."

—T.S. Eliot

Do you make resolutions, set goals, or pick a word to follow in the new year?   I usually don't do any beyond the usual random thoughts of "I should exercise more," "I should eat more vegetables," or "I'd like to begin traveling again."   This year, however, I am approaching a new decade birthday and I am determined to keep a goal I've set for myself to begin writing my life story.  

In 2022 my husband and I went through all our old-time photo albums and scanned and uploaded each photo to a cloud service to preserve them all as a project after local Colorado wildfires made us realize how all our photos could be lost forever.  Looking at each photo we felt as if we were reliving our life and all the memories of happy occasions we experienced as we scanned photo after photo. 

It made me realize that every person has an important story to tell, worth passing on along with their photo memories and ancestry records. Someday, perhaps when my grandchildren are approaching my decade of life, they may be interested in reading more about the grandmother and grandfather they remember.  I know I wish I knew more about the details of my grandparents' lives beyond the memories I have of them.

Amazingly, I recently received three books to review from The Book Club Cookbook at the end of last year which helped me formalize this goal. The Book Club Cook Book is a meeting place on the web and social media for publishers, authors, book club members, and readers to connect and share books, book club menu ideas, as well as menus and recipes from favorite authors. I have learned about many wonderful books through them and won many in their giveaways.

The first book I received was Living and Leaving My Legacy- vol 1 by Merle R Saferstein.  A prolific personal journal writer, Ms. Saferstein wrote 380 journals full of her life events over 48 years! She kept her journals locked away from her family, for her eyes only.  As she got older she realized that she ultimately wanted to share many of her thoughts and experiences with her family and friends as part of her legacy and began a project of what will ultimately be a two-volume collection of her journals, covering approximately 70 topics. While her memoir is a somewhat sanitized story of her life, she also gives many ideas and journal prompts in her book that is meant to inspire readers and deepen their life journey. If you are also a lifelong journal keeper this may be a book you would like to read to see how she was able to accomplish the task of condensing the good and bad, the lessons learned, the conversations, encounters, memories, dreams, travel adventures, challenges and breakthroughs of life. 

While I was never a journal keeper I still benefited from reading Ms. Saferstein's book as an example of how to begin writing a record of my life. Her end-of-chapter journal prompts helped make me form an outline for what I want to write and in what order. 

The next book I read was Cobblestones, Conversations, and Corks: A Son's Discovery of His Italian Heritage by Giovanni Ruscitti.  Giovanni Ruscitti is a husband, father, son, and brother. He is also the managing partner of Berg Hill Greenleaf Ruscitti LLP.   A few weeks before his father's passing he asked Giovanni to tell the Ruscitti story, and Giovanni became an author.

The synopsis from the book release:

"In this memoir, Ruscitti visits Cansano, Italy,  for the first time with his family, including parents Emiliano and Maria. As he walks Cansano’s cobblestones, his father’s stories and life are illuminated by the town piazza, the steep valley, and the surrounding mountains. He relives the tales of his parents’ struggles during World War II, their extreme post-war misery and poverty, their budding romance after, and their decision to immigrate to the US in search of the American Dream."

This book was a wonderful gift, as my husband immigrated as a seven-year-old with his parents from a small town in Southern Italy in the 1950s, and many of Mr. Ruscitti's conversations with his parents and journeys back to Italy that he recorded in this memoir were very reminiscent of my husband's life. experiences. It made my husband and me more aware of the value of recording parts of our life in our own voice and perhaps even anticipating the questions our descendants would want to know about us, as we wrote our own life stories.  

So many Americans are many generations removed from their immigrant ancestors and many might not even know facts about how and why they immigrated and the struggles they faced as new arrivals in a foreign country that was now to become home for them and their future generations.  This could be the story of a first-generation son or daughter from any nationality.   I smiled often as I read this book as I recognized my father-in-law in many of the descriptions that Mr. Ruscitti shared about his father.  His story also made me realize the sorrow and sacrifice many felt to leave their family and friends, town and country, language and culture to make a better life for their family in a new land.  Their story needs to be told!

The third book Hereafter -- The Telling of Ellen O'Hara by Vona Groarke brought tears to my eyes and touched my heart. It is a uniquely written record of a great-granddaughter's searching for the immigrant story of her great-grandmother who came to New York City in 1882 to earn wages as a live-in servant girl to send money home to her struggling parents and siblings in Ireland.
Ms. Groake's struggle to tell her great-grandmother's story could also be my story, as I have searched many records trying to find the story of my Irish ancestors, although I had very little information about them, to begin with.  Author Groarke at least had the name of her great-grandmother, while I did not even have that to help in my search for the first of my Irish ancestors who came to America. I have searched online records, censuses, ancestry DNA, cemetery grounds, etc., all hoping to find more of my ancestors' stories. In reading Groake's poignant story about her great-grandmother Ellen O'Hara, I could imagine what I would write if I did find traces of my first American ancestors. If I could imagine and honor their lives by telling their stories the best I could, as Groarke did. I often feel that, sadly, Americans do not know the struggles and prejudices their first American ancestors endured to begin their life here. Their struggles and dreams led to the opportunities their descendants would have one day. Reading the imagined story of Ellen O'Hara, which was presented on one page, along with researched source facts about the life of early Irish immigrant servants and boarding house owners on the opposing page of Groarke's book, helped me understand how the mere fragment of a name could be developed into a life story of one of the many that came to America during the years of the Irish diaspora. This may not be a book everyone would appreciate, but for those struggling to find more about past ancestors, it is an encouragement to keep searching, learning, and imagining.

Books are also a part of our life experiences and I feel so grateful that I had the opportunity to read the three books above that arrived at a time when I was contemplating this goal for the new year.  They were each unique in their format, and messengers of encouragement to me that this was something I need to accomplish.  A verification that however I told my story it would be cherished by my descendants.

I hope you too, dear reader, will write your story and share it with your family! Please let me know what books have encouraged you to do so.

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100 Things I Love about Grandma Book Review

This is a new journal book I received as an advanced reader's copy for an honest review-- A Love Journal:100 Things I Love About Grandma, by Lisa Carpenter, which will be on sale December 7th, 2021. This delightful book provides a variety of 100 prompts to help a grandchild recount important milestones, funny moments, and all the special things they love about grandma. An older child can fill it in by themselves and a younger child can answer the questions with the help of a parent. Either way, it is a gift all grandmothers would cherish receiving.

When I first began to blog, back in 2007, I first "met" Lisa Carpenter and her blog "Grandma's Briefs."  Back then blogging was rather new and blogs were simple and brief, yet right away I knew Lisa had a flair for writing and shared my joy of becoming a new grandmother.  She asked me to participate in a feature she has on her blog called "Grilled Grandmas" where she sent us a list of questions about being a grandmother to answer and asked us to send a few photos of our grandchild(ren). It is a fun feature and a nice way to find other blogs written by grandmothers.

My oldest grandson as a baby

I only had one grandson at the time and lived in New York City--quite a distance from Denver where my son and family lived. Lisa was also a long-distance grandmother at the time and we commiserated over living far from a grandchild. You can read my 2007 Grilled Grandma Q&A on this link. 

My sweet cheeked little baby grandboy from 2007 is soon to become a teenager! He now has a younger brother and sister, and, along with my daughter's little girl, I have four grandchildren now whom I adore and love with all my heart!  Happily, nine years ago my husband and I were able to retire and move to Colorado to live close to both of our children and all our grandchildren.  We have been so happy and blessed to have been able to spend lots of quality time with them all.

This brings me back to this wonderful new journal book by Lisa Carpenter --A Love Journal: 100 Things I Love About Grandma which publishes December 7, 2021.  Not only does each page have an easy-to-answer prompt to be filled in by a grandchild, but it also has spaces for "extra love" on which a child can do a drawing or post a photo, etc.   

Some of the heartwarming prompts are:

 

#13 You encourage me to be better at _______

# 36 I hope I get to _____ the next time I visit your house

#43 We both like ______

# 65 I was thrilled when you surprised me by _____

#98 I know when you were my age you loved to ______

I think you can see how any grandmother would love to read their grandchild's answers to these questions (and more!) and would treasure a completed book like this. It would make a wonderful gift for a grandchild or grandchildren to give to their grandmother!  I look forward to giving it to my grandchildren to fill in. 

If you would like to order a copy of "A Love Journal:100 Things I Love About Grandma" you can order on this link.  I'm so excited and happy for you Lisa Carpenter!

Now for what is new around here...

Photo collage of Denver area foothills and wildfire.

Our area of Colorado has continued to be in extreme drought.  The long-time record for the latest snow in the Denver area has been broken already by weeks.  The weather has also been unusually warm. We broke a high record of 73 degrees this past week. As we feared, the dry conditions and wind brought Red Flag Warnings, and then today a wildfire broke out in the foothills above our community.  The terrain is rough and dangerous up high in the hills and the high winds were preventing helicopter water drops as is the usual way to fight fires like this. All we can hope is that fire breaks can be dug overnight and that the winds will die down. Please keep our community and the firefighters in your thoughts and prayers!

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