MAY FLOWERS

I am a frustrated farmer. I'm blessed with not one, not two, but three places to grow food plants, yet have failed at each. Our garden in Tomales is populated with more gophers than the town is with people, and if they can't dig it up from below, they'll just walk right over to it. Our sunny deck in San Francisco is watched over by a vigilant squirrel, who eats every bulb and food plant within hours of planting. And the constant shade in front of Omnivore is making me and my pepper plants totally depressed. I guess I'm destined to be a shopkeeper - it's my calling.

Luckily, the bookshop has been incredibly successful in cultivating a bounty of great food books and author events, and as the spring crop of new cookbooks comes in, cooking at home gets more and more adventurous. Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills of Cooking brings the cook back to the foodways of the past (yes, lots of butter); Deborah Madison's Seasonal Fruit Desserts finds new uses for common fruits; and David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert finally brings back his long out-of-print recipes. I'm also importing some fabulous new books from England and Australia: Jamie Oliver's Jamie Does Spain, Italy, Sweden... has arrived, while Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty and Nigel Slater's Tender Vol. II: A Cook's Guide to the Fruit Garden are due in next month.

I missed the IACP conference in Portland this month, but am thrilled to see so many deserving cookbooks on the list of award winners. Next year, I'm definitely going - after all, it's in Austin, and I'm a bluegrass junkie.

May's event list is jam-packed with fantastic authors: Kim Severson, Victoria Wise, Grace Young, Laura Werlin, Kim Boyce, and Marion Nestle among them, so take a look and mark your calendars!

Celia Sack, Owner
Omnivore Books on Food
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May Events at Omnivore Books

Thurs. April 29 • Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarborough • 6-7 p.m. • Free

Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter. In their new book Weinstein and Scarborough take readers on a globetrotting tour of the whole wide wonderful world of ham, from the Philippines to Spain, the Caribbean, the American South, and their own home corner of rural Connecticut (where they buy and help raise a hog of their own). Gifted raconteurs and talented cooks, the pair ham it up with a series of hilarious stories and pig out on a hundred mouth-watering recipes. Don’t miss this feast.

Sunday May 2 • Pauli Halstead • 3-4 p.m.

Cuisine for Whole Health: Recipes for a Sustainable Life. Mr. Pauli Halstead presents a straightforward argument for a diet that is gluten-free, refined-free, chemical, antibiotic and hormone-free, and Halstead includes many simple and delicious recipes honed from her years as a world-class chef.

Saturday May 8 • Laura Werlin • 3-4 p.m.

The New American Cheese. Laura Werlin is one of the country's foremost authorities on cheese and is the award-winning author of four books on the subject. Her first book, The New American Cheese, came out ten years ago. To celebrate the anniversary, we'll taste some great American cheeses and talk about what's changed in the ten years since the book was first published.

Sunday May 9 • Carole Bloom • 3-4 p.m.

Bite-Size Desserts: Creating Mini Sweet Treats. Master baker Carole Bloom has collected a wide range of mini desserts here, and you're sure to find one (or two or three) that are perfect for every occasion.

Saturday May 15 • Victoria Wise • 3-4 p.m.

Sausage. Wise, who cooked the first meal served at Chez Panisse and made her chops making charcuterie in Berkeley in the 1970's, here guides us through the making of a vast array of sausages that can either be shaped by hand or stuffed into casings. She's also the author of American Charcuterie.

Sunday May 16 • Andrew Swallow • 3-4 p.m.

Mixt Salads. In his new book, the co-founder and executive chef of San Francisco’s beloved boutique salad joints shares his inventive, flavor-forward creations. This bold collection of more than 60 recipes for voracious omnivores and vivacious salad lovers features unusual and dynamic ingredient pairings that take salads to a whole new level.

Monday May 17 • Kim Severson • 6-7 p.m.

Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life. In this frank confessional memoir, Severson, food writer for the New York Times since 2004, attributes her culinary confidence to the tutelage of eight maternal figures, from the legendary to the not-so-famous.

Tuesday May 18 • Amy Besa • 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Memories of Philippine Kitchens. Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan are the owners and chef at Soho's popular Cendrillon restaurant. In addition to offering more than 100 unique recipes culled from private Filipino kitchens and their own acclaimed menu, Besa and Dorotan vividly document the role of food in Filipino society, both old and new.

Friday May 21 • Sarah Max Feldner • 6-7 p.m.

A Cook's Journey to Japan: Fish Tales and Rice Paddies. Feldner, a food enthusiast and Japanophile, offers an intimate and colorful guide to traditional Japanese home cooking in this unique and attractive collection. Focusing on recipes collected from a wide swath of life, from grandmothers to waitresses to fishermen, she highlights often overlooked techniques and ingredients. Sake will be poured!

Saturday May 22 • Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim • 3-4 p.m.

Feed Your Pet Right: The Authoratative Guide to Feeding Your Dog and Cat. Human nutrition expert and author of the critically acclaimed What to Eat, Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H., has joined forces with Malden C. Nesheim, Ph.D., a Cornell animal nutrition expert, to write Feed Your Pet Right, the first complete, research-based guide to selecting the best, most healthful foods for your cat or dog.

Sunday May 23 • Barbara Passino • 3-4 p.m.

Chocolate for Breakfast. Chocolate connoisseur and chef extraordinaire Barbara Passino is renowned for her sinfully decadent breakfasts, which she serves daily at the luxurious Oak Knoll Inn, situated in the heart of Napa Valley, California. Chocolate for Breakfast is a sumptuous collection of Barbara's passion-filled techniques, philosophies and anecdotes.

Monday May 24 • Kim Boyce • 6-7 p.m.

Good to the Grain. Kim Boyce is a former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile. Boyce truly has reinvented the wheel with this collection of 75 recipes that feature 12 different kinds of whole-grain flours, from amaranth to teff, proving that whole-grain baking is more about incredible flavors and textures than anything else.

Thursday May 27 • Grace Young • 6-7 p.m.

Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Mastery. The virtues of stir-frying, Young writes, are many: it makes bounty out of small amounts of meat and oil; it emphasizes healthful vegetables; and most importantly, it creates 'alchemic flavor out of raw ingredients. Young (The Breath of a Wok), has a scholarly yet impassioned approach, and she fuses personal anecdotes, meticulously researched history, and stir-fry–related arcana to illuminate her subject.