Thanks to all who attended our 2020 virtual event on Friday, October 23
Beverage Recommendations Videos | Honorary Host Local Author Recommendations | Book Recommendations | Sponsors & Donors
In lieu of the usual Wine Tasting in late September, the Friends of Forbes are hosting a virtual event. Stay safe at home – read a good book, sip a favorite beverage, and engage with us online.
- Relax with a good book and beverage.
- Check out book and drink favorites from our local Honorary Host Authors.
- Browse wine, beer and cider recommendations from local vendors.
- Discover new wine and beer-themed books from our reading list.
- Log your reading in Beanstack to earn cool badges.
- Connect with us on social media by tagging #FriendsOfForbesVirtualToast and we might share your post.
Beverage Recommendation Videos
- Artifact Cider Project
- Black Birch Vineyard
- Cooper’s Corner
- Mineral Hills Winery
- New City Brewery
- Progression Brewing Co.
- Provisions
- State Street
Honorary Host Authors
The book on my mind right now is Paisley Rekdal’s Nightingale, and my go-to, post-work drink is an old fashioned. And here’s one of my poems about books.
The Whale Remained, for Rebecca
Of course they took your iPod,
those fabulously large sunglasses,
and the $20 bill you hid in the owner’s manual.
Even your box of mints didn’t escape their sweep,
but they left Moby Dick.
You curse their thievery, their taste,
but this blessing remains:
They spared you from annotating a new copy,
from underlining again all those references
to sex, death, and ambergris.
Favorite book: her newest, Master of Poisons
I do love sparkling cider (alcohol free). I am an Afro-futurist keeping company with Indigenous Futurists. I try to get African and Indigenous ancestors talking to the future. Characters, particularly women, who got left out of the action, raid my mind. Master of Poisons is about denial and the empire of lies we’re willing to believe. It’s about tricksters who sing, dance, and clown to decolonize the mind and celebrate our spirits. I wanted to write myself out of the hopelessness we feel facing devastation. Master of Poisons is about the stories we tell and the communities we make to do the impossible.
For years, I’ve loved the poems of Louise Glück, so when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, I pulled The Wild Iris out of my bookshelf. To me, it is a perfect poetry book. As to my favorite recreational drink, I commend most highly “Run Wild,” a non-alcoholic IPA by Athletic Brewery in Stratford, Connecticut—founded and managed by athletes! I fondly hope that it will induce me to start running again, wildly.
I’ve just moved from Patchwork Farm Retreat in Westhampton to a sweet apartment right next door to the Forbes Library, and on every day’s walk, I wander the edges of that beautiful, Gothic building with its giant oak trees. It’s a treasure, that library, and an expensive one to care for. Which is why this fundraiser is so important. It’s also fun. I fell in love with libraries as a little girl in Austin TX, and a child could spend as long as her mother allowed, sitting on the floor, reading whatever book called to her. Fifty years ago, Forbes Library was that for my children–and for book lovers of all ages throughout this county, it still is—even virtually.
My favorite memory as a child was getting locked in the library near my country home. The librarian forgot I was there, sitting on a pillow in the children’s book section. I just kept reading.
Natalie Babbitt’s classic books capture me and charm my children and their children. In Tuck Everlasting we love the magical and mysterious journey to find Tuck who is “everlasting!” In Devil’s Story Book who wouldn’t be captivated by Natalie’s words: “On a day when things were dull in Hell the Devil fished around in his bag of disguises, dressed himself as a fairy godmother, and came up in the World to bother.” The language is lush, beautiful, entertaining, and ironic for adults and children.
I toast books. I toast readers and writers.
And I toast getting locked in the wonderful Forbes library!
I’m rereading Solar Storms, by Chicksaw novelist Linda Hogan, and if I could still drink wine, which I can’t, I’d be sipping a glass of Chateau Julien Merlot. This is my third or fourth read of this novel, published in 1997, about a troubled young Native American woman who returns to her family’s homeland in the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada. As she discovers her family roots, Angela becomes involved with an effort to stop an hydroelectric dam project that threatens the environment and people. It’s beautifully written and so relevant to our fraught and broken world today.
I’m now reading Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese by Patrick Leigh Fermor. One of the great travel narratives of all time, it’s an antidote for the pandemic and contemporary politics. Set at the stark, little-inhabited tip of the Peloponnese peninsula 40 years ago, it offers escape in both time and geography. Fermor’s language drips with detail like a thickly-painted canvas. His tender, perceptive and often humorous depiction of the rugged inhabitants of the Mani and their Greek lifestyle and history illuminates our common humanity. The edition I have includes a fine introduction by Smith College literary scholar Michael Gorra.
The book should be read alongside a glass of the Greek wine retsina but, since I don’t have any, I’m pairing it with vinho verde, a Portuguese white wine likewise the product of a maritime European nation.
Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale with A Tail takes place during the first night of Passover. Inside, a boy welcomes family and friends to a Seder; outside a homeless kitten sits alone. As the boy and his guests carry out the Passover rituals inside, the kitten does its best to imitate the customs outside. For example, inside, when the boy breaks the middle matzo in half, outside, the kitten snaps a twig in two. When the boy washes his hands inside, the kitten cleans its paws outside. When the boy drinks grape juice and the adults drink wine (in my family, we drank Manischevitz), the kitten laps at a puddle. And when the boy opens the door for Elijah, the Prophet who will one day bring peace to the world, something magical happens that changes the boy’s life and the kitten’s life forever!
I never tire, or underestimate, the joy of nestling into a comfortable chair with a glass of bubbly and a terrific book. I just cracked the cover on Tana French’s newest novel, The Searcher. She is an Irish novelist (my people!) so you’d think I’d imbibe a pint of Guinness for the occasion, and I might before I come to the end of 450 pages. But to start out, I’m sipping a Brut Cava, by Jaume Serra Cristalino.
Forbes Library has been one of my favorite spots to write. I love the nook of the quiet space that overlooks the parking lot, and some of the comfy chairs right in the heart of the library. Even now, when we are unable to be physically together, I write with a Forbes Library group that Tzivia Gover facilitates on Wednesday morning, the Writing Room. This is a jewel of a library.
A book I adore, and feel secure next to, is Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is fittingly described as the secular bible of Latin America. I have read it two dozen times, maybe more, and never tire of the adventures of the rambunctious Buendía family in the mythical town of Macondo, in Colombia’s Atlantic coast. In fact, at this point in life (I’m almost sixty) I feel as if they are more real than many real people I know. Happily, there is not much alcohol in the novel. García Márquez himself wasn’t a drinker and neither am I. Still, when reading it, especially the last chapters, I sometimes enjoy sipping a cold Corona (even in this eponymous pandemic) with lemon. It helps me cope with the colossal end of the story.
Favorite book: Kitchen Gypsy, Recipes and Stories from a Lifelong Romance with Food
I’ve been lucky enough to cook with 3-star Michelin chefs in their homes and restaurant kitchens, on river ships cruising down the Danube and the Rhine Rivers, in grand castles and Italian villas. I’ve joined local women in the kitchens of Marrakech where we rolled couscous grains together by hand that we later dried in the Moroccan sun. I’ve climbed up the tallest ladders to pick the ripest calimyrna figs, shriveled and sweet from drying in the Sonoma sun, racing the dusk before flocks of birds made their evening feast. I’ve kneeled, tweezers in hand, plucking stigmas from crocus sativus, while harvesting saffron in the south of France. And, I’ve watched the famed black Iberian pigs, rooting for acorns with their elegant, long snouts in Southern Spain, only later to eat my weight in the most delectable jamon Iberico.
I’ve written over 20 cookbooks. I didn’t think I had another cookbook in me until I started to think about all the stories that have made up my life and have gotten me to exactly where I stand right now. This is the story of my passion for food and my knowledge of it. This is the story I have always wanted to write and finally ready to recount all the tales of my gypsy-like journey through life’s kitchens.
Joanne provided this Margarita recipe:
THE MARGARITA
2 ounces 100% agave blanco tequila of your choice
1/4 ounce agave nectar
3/4 ounce water
1 ounce lime juice
Lime wheel as a garnish
Place all of the ingredients except the lime wheel in a shaker with plenty of ice. Shake vigorously for 5 seconds. Strain into a highball glass with one large ice cube and serve.
Serves 1 very happy margarita lover
Book Recommendations
Looking for more book recommendations? Check out our full list!
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