Our Fermented Lives book club

The first installment is here!

Some of my books along with my now sold out Burlap & Barrel collab blend. You can still get tons of other great spices from Burlap & Barrel, though!

We’re starting the new year in this newsletter with a program I’ve been asked to offer again and again, and so at long last here it is: A deep dive-y virtual book club, filled with my first drafts and notes, lots of room for questions, and a live Q&A at the end.

I adore doing this kind of deep exploration in community: It reminds me of some of my favorite moments teaching and taking various college courses, but in particular I love that this format lets us all view a work from our own perspectives and experiences, and the group gets to benefit from the connections you or I draw between ideas that others might not.

I plan to host book clubs like this with other food- and history-focused books, and I would love your recommendations if there’s one you really want to dive into (hopefully we can even get the author in for a talk). Since the community we’ve cultivated here is one that loves exploring the connections between things, is driven by curiosity and a love of food, I’ve decided to call this the Book Club for the Culinarily Curious.

Please let me know your dream book club book in the comments!

If you don’t have a copy of Our Fermented Lives yet, you can snag one from your favorite local bookseller or from Bookshop.

In the meantime, here are the details of this book club:

• This newsletter book club is for paid subscribers only

• In each installment, I send you some of my notes and thoughts on the chapter, plus never-before-shared early drafts of book sections subscribers have asked to see over the years.

• Each installment also includes discussion questions for us to explore in the paid subscriber chat in Substack and in the comments.

• At the end, we have a live Q&A where I answer your questions about the book, about research and writing, etc. You can submit questions ahead of time, if you can’t make it, and it’ll be recorded.

Ready? Keep reading for our first installment, all about ferments for life (and save this email, because it has our Zoom link and schedule for our live book club chat).