Eight women discussed “Cook Like a Pro” by Ina Garten at the Cookbook Club’s inaugural meeting in the Sydney Wright Room at North Road Library on May 22. Each member will choose a recipe from the selected book as their cookbook for the potluck party. The cookbook to be featured at the June meeting is “Pioneer Woman Cooks: A New Frontier” by Ree Drummond.
Mysterious, thrilling, romantic and mythical are all adjectives that have been used to describe local book club themes over the years.
But North Road Library’s newest club may be the first that can truly be described as “appetising”.
The Page to Plate Club, dedicated to cookbooks, met for the first time at the Sydney Wright Room on May 22. The club’s meetings will have a unique element of a potluck meal prepared by members.
Community Services Librarian Emma McIntyre founded the club after drawing inspiration from other cookbook clubs in Rhode Island, including North Kingstown, Tiverton, Westerly and South Kingstown.
“I think it’s a really great concept and a great way to bring the community together,” she said. “The library has quite a few cookbooks and they’re very popular, so I thought it would be great to generate some interest in a cookbook club.”
Meeting on the fourth Wednesday of each month, club members bring their own tableware as the library provides dishes, tables and beverages, and each reader chooses a recipe from that month’s cookbook to prepare for the meeting.
Chipotle Parmesan Sweet Corn, made by librarian Emma McIntyre;
To avoid duplication, members are asked to email McIntyre their recipe choices in advance so she can publish a list of recipe submissions on the event’s webpage. For example, the book chosen for the June meeting is “The Pioneer Woman Cooks: The New Frontier” by Ree Drummond, but someone has already submitted a tomato, watermelon and feta salad.
The first cookbook selected in May was “Cook Like a Pro” by Aina Garten. McIntyre said she chose the title because Garten is a celebrity chef and the book is readily available through Ocean State Library’s lending program. Only one copy was available in Jamestown, but McIntyre was able to order 10 more through the interlibrary loan program.
Garten is a three-time Emmy nominee who is known for hosting the Food Network cooking show “Barefoot Contessa” from 2002 to 2021. Garten published a New York Times bestseller, “Cook Like a Pro,” in 2018. McIntyre said the book features a wide range of recipes, from snacks to desserts, “so there’s at least one recipe that’s diverse enough to suit every subscriber’s taste.”
“One of the things that really excites me about this club is that there’s a lot of freedom for people to experiment and try something new,” she said. “Whatever catches their eye, they should sign up for it.”
Jamestown resident Marie Schappert attended the first meeting with eight other women from the neighborhood, including McIntyre, and Ms. Schappert cooked Garten’s spinach and zucchini bake.
“I love zucchini and I love spinach, and I love this combination,” she said. “It’s like a casserole with eggs. It’s almost like a quiche.”
McIntrye created Chipotle Parmesan Sweet Corn.
“I chose this recipe because it seemed like the perfect light, tasty side dish for an upcoming summer barbecue,” she says. “Everyone tried making something new. Many of the group members said they wanted to make their own recipes again and try other dishes from the book.”
Though it wasn’t planned, the first meeting had a “good mix” of food, including appetizers, main courses, casseroles and desserts, Schappert said.
“We weren’t led in that direction, but that’s how it happened,” she said.
Rather than requiring members to read each cookbook in its entirety, McIntyre encourages them to skim the book to understand its structure. In addition to the potluck, each meeting includes a discussion of that month’s cookbook, and McIntyre prepares questions about the difficulty of following the recipes and what dishes they’d like to try outside of the potluck dishes.
“We hope that most of the discussion will flow naturally as we enjoy each other’s company and good food,” McIntyre said.
McIntyre said the second meeting would provide more opportunity for discussion — for example, comparing Garten’s and Drummond’s cookbooks and discussing the similarities and differences between their recipes.
“The discussion and structure options remain open,” she said. “We hope to get feedback from participants after this initial meeting to best understand what they want going forward,” McIntyre said.
McIntrye calls the club a “welcoming connecting spot for the Jamestown community” and hopes members will be able to forge new friendships through the club.
“I believe food nourishes the whole person,” she says, “and I want this club to be a meaningful space where people can come together for casual conversation and share their love of cooking and having fun.”
