November 2025: Culinary Traditions
This month's Year in Reading challenge is all about the food. What food reminds you of being little? Of being home? What food brightens your day? We've got cookbooks to inspire you and stories to delight.
Be sure to check out our Beanstack challenge to earn virtual badges for your reading!
Gather grateful
Author(s):
Litwin, Megan
Finkeldey, Alexandra,
Description:
"Lyrical prose and luminous illustrations welcome the arrival of fall in a season of community and thanksgiving. As colors in nature start to change, animals begin gathering items--squirrels their acorns, crows their treasures, raccoons the bits and pieces needed to fortify their homes. Animals of all species prepare to gather with each other too, for warmth, for affection, for sharing food or stories."--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Lit
Food : a cultural culinary history
Author(s):
Description:
"This course explores the history of how humans have produced, cooked, and consumed food--from the earliest hunting-and-gathering societies to the present. This course examines how civilizations and their foodways have been shaped by geography, native flora and fauna, and technological innovations."--Page 1 of guidebook.
Format:
Kit
Call Number:
KIT 641.3 Alb
In the blink of a pie
Author(s):
Description:
"It's Thanksgiving in Sugar Ridge, Vermont, and Leila Khoury, manager of Sappy Endings Farm, is ready to usher in the holiday season by hosting a pie-baking contest. But when a neighbor drops dead from sampling a poisoned pumpkin pie, it's not just Leila's perfect day that's in jeopardy--her livelihood is now at stake. And after yet another near-fatal incident, she realizes an even more terrifying truth: the killer wasn't targeting her neighbor but someone even closer to home!"--
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Bru
The Japanese table : small plates for simple meals
Author(s):
Description:
Sofia Hellsten celebrates her love of Japan with the simple recipes that are the backbone of Japanese home cooking. Based on the ichijuu-sansai tradition--which literally means 'one soup, three dishes'--uncomplicated, delicious small plates are served with steamed rice, and can be enjoyed any time of day. Each ingredient is treated like royalty. With suggestions on how to build the perfect meal, as well as easy-to-find ingredients and quick methods, The Japanese Table will inspire you to make Japanese food your everyday staple.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5952 Hel
Korean home cooking : 100 authentic everyday recipes, from bulgogi to bibimbap
Author(s):
Description:
For lovers of all things Korean comes the ideal step-by-step entry point to recreating your favorite dishes at home. Here, the food isn't complicated but there is an art and tradition in its arrangement. Combining several small dishes allows for a constant flow of people at the table, and a bright array of colors and flavors. Start with traditional, simple and tasty family recipes, and stay for the opportunity to learn new skills, like fermenting your own pickles, and creating classic stews, soups and your own Korean barbecue. Enjoy this rich resource of authentic family recipes to help you create delicious Korean meals at home.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5951 Jun
Why we eat fried peanuts
Author(s):
Zha, Mengyi,
James, Sian,
Description:
Celebrate Lunar New Year through a story of ancestral bravery while learning about Chinese history, language and food. Join Meng, a Chinese American girl, as she prepares for the Lunar New Year festivities with her family and discovers the significance of ancestral stories and the history behind the Mandarin language and traditional foods eaten during the holiday. Meng's father shares with her the family story of tai nai nai, Meng's great-grandmother and a very important ancestor for the family. Tai nai nai's brave act of courage many years ago inspired generations after and teaches valuable lessons that every child can learn from today. Along the way, see how food plays an important role in the festivities and why one food - peanuts - is an important snack. The simple recipe for fried peanuts at the end of the story provides a fun, easy way to include the Lunar New Year in your annually celebrated holidays.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Zha
Gursha : timeless recipes for modern kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and beyond
Author(s):
Barhany, Beejhy,
Yilma, Eden,
Description:
In Gursha, chef Beejhy Barhany, an Ethiopian Jew, shares the rich culinary heritage of the Beta Israel community, combining traditional dishes and her own creations. Born in Ethiopia, Barhany fled to Sudan before eventually settling in Harlem, where she became the chef and owner of Tsion Caf̌. The cookbook features over 100 recipes, ranging from traditional Ethiopian dishes like doro wot and shakshuka to innovative creations reflecting her journey, such as Injera Fish Tacos and Queen of Sheba Chocolate Cake. Along with the recipes, Barhany offers insights into Ethiopian Jewish rituals, holidays, and milestones, introducing readers to one of the world's great yet lesser-known culinary cultures. Gursha is the first major cookbook to bring Beta Israel cuisine to home cooks everywhere.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5963 Bar
Saturday night at the Lakeside Supper Club : a novel
Author(s):
Description:
Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she’s been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed. Ned is also an heir--to a chain of home-style diners--and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation?
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Str
The Kamogawa food detectives
Author(s):
Kashiwai, Hisashi, 1952-
Kirkwood, Jesse,
Description:
"What's the one dish you'd do anything to taste just one more time? Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason customers stop by. The father-daughter duo are 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person's treasured memories -- dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Kas
What we hunger for : refugee and immigrant stories about food and family
Author(s):
Description:
Food can be a unifier and a healer, bringing people together across generations and cultures. Sharing a meal often leads to sharing stories and deepening our understanding of each other and our respective histories and practices, global and local. Newcomers to Minnesota bring their own culinary traditions and may re-create food memories at home, introduce new friends and neighbors to their favorite dishes, and explore comforting flavors and experiences of hospitality at local restaurants, community gatherings, and spiritual ceremonies. They adapt to different growing seasons and regional selections available at corner stores and farmers markets. And generations may communicate through the language of food in addition to a mix of spoken languages old and new. All of these experiences yield stories worth sharing around Minnesota cook fires, circles, and tables. Fourteen writers from refugee and immigrant families write about their complicated, poignant, funny, difficult, joyful, and ongoing relationships to food, cooking, and eating. --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5089 Wha
We fed an island : the true story of rebuilding Puerto Rico, one meal at a time
Author(s):
Andrés, José, 1969-
Miranda, Luis A.,
Description:
Chef José Andrés arrived in Puerto Rico four days after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island. The economy was destroyed and for most people there was no clean water, no food, no power, no gas, and no way to communicate with the outside world. Andrés addressed the humanitarian crisis the only way he knew how: by feeding people, one hot meal at a time. From serving sancocho with his friend José Enrique at Enrique's ravaged restaurant in San Juan to eventually cooking 100,000 meals a day at more than a dozen kitchens across the island, Andrés and his team fed hundreds of thousands of people, including with massive paellas made to serve thousands of people alone.. At the same time, they also confronted a crisis with deep roots, as well as the broken and wasteful system that helps keep some of the biggest charities and NGOs in business. Based on Andrés's insider's take as well as on meetings, messages, and conversations he had while in Puerto Rico, We Fed an Island movingly describes how a network of community kitchens activated real change and tells an extraordinary story of hope in the face of disasters both natural and man-made, offering suggestions for how to address a crisis like this in the future. Beyond that, a portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the Chef Relief Network of World Central Kitchen for efforts in Puerto Rico and beyond.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
363.3492 And
The family recipe : a novel
Author(s):
Description:
"Duc Tran, the eccentric founder of the Vietnamese sandwich chain Duc's Sandwiches, has decided to retire. No one has heard from his wife, Evelyn, in two decades. She abandoned the family without a trace, and clearly doesn't want anything to do with Duc, the business, or their kids. But the money has to go to someone. With the help of the shady family lawyer, Duc informs his five estranged adult children that to receive their inheritance, his four daughters must revitalize run-down shops in old-school Little Saigon locations across America: Houston, San Jose, New Orleans, and Philadelphia--within a year. But if the first-born (and only) son, Jude, gets married first, everything will go to him. Each daughter is stuck in a new city, battling gentrification, declining ethnic enclaves, and messy love lives, while struggling to modernize their father's American dream. Jude wonders if he wants to marry for love or for money--or neither. As Duc's children scramble to win their inheritance, they begin to learn the real intention behind the inheritance scheme--and the secret their mother kept tucked away in the fireplace, all along" --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Huy
What is queer food? : how we served a revolution
Author(s):
Description:
"A celebrated culinary writer's expansive, audacious excavation of the roots of modern queer identity and food culture. The food on our plates has long been designed, twisted, and elevated by queer hands. Piecing together a dazzling mosaic of queer lives, spaces, and meals, beloved food writer John Birdsall unfolds the complex story of how, through times of fear and persecution, queer people used food to express joy and build community--and ended up changing the shape of the table for everyone. Tracing the evolution of queer food from the early decades of the twentieth century through the LGBTQ civil rights movement of post-Stonewall liberation and the devastation of AIDS, Birdsall fills the gaps between past and present. He channels the twin forces of criticism and cultural history to propel readers into the kitchens, restaurants, swirling party houses, and buzzing interior lives of James Baldwin, Alice B. Toklas, Truman Capote, Esther Eng, and others who left an indelible mark on the culinary world from the margins. Queer food, as Birdsall brilliantly reveals, is quiche and Champagne eleganza at Sunday brunch and joyous lesbian potlucks in the bunker world of Cold War homophobic purges. It's paper chicken for the gender-rebel divas of Chinese opera in San Francisco, Richard Olney's ecstatic salade compoše, and Rainbow Ice-Box Cake from Ernest Matthew Mickler's White Trash Cooking. It's the intention surrounding a meal, the circumstances behind it, the people gathered around the table. With cinematic verve and delicious prose, What Is Queer Food? is a monumental work: a testament to food's essential link to modern queerness that reveals how, like fashion or pop music, cooking and eating have become a crucial language of LGBTQ+ identity. By reframing our understanding of both food and queerness, it opens the door for courageous reckoning and boundless conversation." --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.509 Bir
When southern women cook : history, lore, and 300 recipes with contributions from 70 women writers
Author(s):
Description:
"Shepherded by Toni Tipton-Martin and Cook's Country Executive Editor and TV personality Morgan Bolling, When Southern Women Cook showcases the hard work, hospitality, and creativity of women who have given soul to Southern cooking from the start. Every page amplifies their contributions, from the enslaved cooks making foundational food at Monticello to Mexican Americans accessing sweet memories with colorful conchas today"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5975 Whe
The best cook in the world : tales from my momma's table
Author(s):
Description:
Margaret Bragg does not own a single cookbook. She measures by "dabs" and "smidgens" and "tads" and "you know, hon, just some." Her notion of farm-to-table is a flatbed truck. Many of her recipes, recorded here for the first time, pre-date the Civil War-- handed down skillet by skillet from one generation of Braggs to the next. Here Rick Bragg finally preserves his heritage by telling stories that framed his mother's cooking and education, from childhood into old age. Because a recipe, writes Bragg, is story like anything else.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5975 Bra
Cooked : [a natural history of transformation]
Author(s):
Description:
"In Cooked, Michael Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements-- fire, water, air, and earth-- to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession of culinary masters, Pollan learns how to grill with fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment everything from cheese to beer. In the course of his journey, he discovers that the cook occupies a special place in the world, standing squarely between nature and culture. Both realms are transformed by cooking, and so, in the process, is the cook" -- from publisher's web site.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5 Pol
