Online Event

Salt + Spine Cookbook Club

Dinner Party with Abra Berens

Wed | Mar 02, 2022 | 5:30–7P PT

Featured Author Abra Berens

Guest Host Brian Hogan Stewart

The Salt + Spine Cookbook Club returns! We invite you to join Abra Berens in celebration of her newest cookbook, Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes. Join Abra, Brian Hogan Stewart of Salt+Spine, Monique Llamas of Hardcover Cook, and other club participants for a virtual Dinner Party. Cook along with Abra (or just watch), enjoy the opportunity to ask questions, and connect with other cookbook lovers.
Please note: The Salt+Spine Cookbook Club Dinner Party is not a formal cooking class. It is a cooking-optional event meant for gathering, interacting with the author and other club participants, and celebrating an exceptional book and writer.
The Salt & Spine Cookbook Club is like a regular book club…but with a special twist. Each season, we focus on one book—reading, cooking and connecting on social media (see “Participate” below). The bonus: we get together live with the author for a Dinner Party sponsored by Hardcover Cook, the subscription box and ingredient shop for cookbook lovers. The Dinner Party is currently virtual (via Zoom); we look forward to the day when the club can meet in person at The Civic Kitchen.

Menu | Recipes

Coming Soon


Ingredient/Equipment Prep

Click the button below to see the ingredients, equipment and prep lists for this experience. If you have questions, please email us .

View the list


Participate

There’s no charge to take part in other Cookbook Club activities:

LISTEN

Start the month by tuning in to Abra Berens's chat with Salt + Spine host Brian Hogan Stewart about her new book, and more. Already listened? Take a moment to re-visit the episode.

Abra Berens on Salt + Spine

COOK

Grab your copy of Grist and pick some recipes you’d like to make this month. Click here for a featured recipe from Abra's visit with Salt + Spine to get you started.
Don’t have a copy of Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes yet? You can purchase one, along with a thoughtfully curated box of ingredients for making Abra's recipes, from Dinner Party sponsor Hardcover Cook. Or buy from our friends at Omnivore Books, or support Abra's go-to shops Semicolon Bookstore and Gallery or White Whale Bookstore. Or check local libraries for hard copies or digital versions.

SHARE & ENGAGE

Show off what you’re cooking from Grist! Snap a pic and use the hashtag #TalkCookbooks when sharing. And check out what others are making, too!
Plus, learn from Abra as she shares cooking tips, recipes, behind-the-scenes content, and more—exclusively on our social media pages.

This salt + spine cookbook club dinner party is live and interactive.

The Dinner Party is held via Zoom, and you only need to purchase one spot per household. After registering, you will receive instructions for logging into the event. If applicable, cook-along recipes will be available 48 hours prior to the start of the event.

New to Zoom? Click here to download the Zoom software. To learn more about how to use Zoom, here’s their Quick Start guide for new users.

Featured Author

Abra Berens

Abra Berens is a chef, former farmer, and writer. She believes that the meals we eat should change with the seasons and that their ingredients should come from nearby. She strives to make simple, delicious meals that champion the region.
She started cooking at the storied Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, MI, then trained in the garden-focused kitchen at Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork, Ireland. She co-founded Bare Knuckle Farm in Northport, MI, where she farmed and cooked for 8 years before returning to the kitchen full time at Local Foods in Chicago, IL before landing at Granor Farm in Three Oaks, MI, where she creates one-of-a-kind dinners celebrating the best of South West Michigan’s diverse agriculture. Her dinners there made her a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Chef: Great Lakes.
Ruffage, her first cookbook, focused on vegetables. It was a Michigan Notable Book winner and James Beard Award nominee.
Grist, her second book, builds upon the ideas of Ruffage to provide creative, easy, and endlessly riff-able meals from grains, beans, seeds, and legumes.
More about Abra

Guest Host

Brian Hogan Stewart

BRIAN HOGAN STEWART is the host and creator of Salt + Spine. He is a once-budding chef who passed on a culinary school degree to pursue journalism. He’s not a professional cook nor a cookbook author—but an avid home cook and an enthusiastic cookbook collector, with a collection now in the hundreds. (That may seem like a lot to some, but he envies Diana Henry’s 4,000-book library almost daily!)
Brian has worked extensively in journalism and new media, including leading a media company featuring a daily newspaper with circulation of 50,000+, a nightly newscast, and multiple digital properties. He has conducted hundreds (and hundreds…) of interviews throughout his career, including time spent covering food culture and personalities in the midwest.
Brian is a native of Iowa and graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in journalism, English, and American studies.

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