Food Lit Book Group Begins at Wilton Library on April 11

Foodies who love to read will love the Wilton Library’s new book: It's devoted to food literature!

For its first meeting on April 11, the group has selected Gabrielle Hamilton’s “Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef,” winner of the 2012 James Beard Foundation Award for Writing & Literature. Nutritional health coach, avid reader, and food lit lover Pamela Lillis will moderate the free and open to the public discussion, which begins at 11 a.m. Attendees are encouraged to register.

About the book: Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent 20 fierce, hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Above all she sought family, particularly the thrill and the magnificence of the one from her childhood that, in her adult years, eluded her. Hamilton’s ease and comfort in a kitchen were instilled in her at an early age when her parents hosted grand parties, often for more than one hundred friends and neighbors. The smells of spit-roasted lamb, apple wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade became as necessary to her as her own skin.

“Blood, Bones & Butter” follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; the soulless catering factories that helped pay the rent; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a difficult and prickly marriage that nonetheless yields rich and lasting dividends.

The Wilton Library is located at 137 Old Ridgefield Rd. in Wilton, Conn. Click here to register, or call (203) 762-3950, x213 for more information.