When Books Come to Life (and other related musings)

No, this isn’t a post about Populated. I mean, well, it is. But it’s not.

A couple of years ago, a group of ten women met at one of our houses, intending to start a cookbook club. We were masked, we were mostly strangers to each other. I was new enough to our parent organization to think this would be a good way to meet people. And food was involved. How could it go wrong?

Well, sometimes the recipes we cook go sideways.

And sometimes, life works out in a way that would make Delia Ford, whose story is told in Populated, proud.

A year ago, the woman who’d organized us and opened her house to us for that first meeting — and many times thereafter — found a cookbook author who was new to most of us. And so we did what we usually do: we each picked a recipe and made it.

But then, our fearless (and highly creative) leader discovered more in the cookbook that made it unique. And much fun was had. As we always do, we came together at a dining room table, over food.

And THEN, our leader said, “Why don’t we host the author for a weekend?”

Yesterday was the culmination of a year’s plans.

It was a lot of work for the seven of us, but when I was sitting with author Jennifer Abadi and handling the in-person cookbook sales for her, I asked her how it felt. I’d noticed her taking pictures of all the tables, but hadn’t thought too much about it.

“You brought my book to life!” she told me in a hushed, exultant, wondering voice that was so full of emotion that I didn’t just get it, I thought this is something Delia Ford would do.

And that made me even prouder. That wasn’t something we’d set out to do, per se. We’d wanted to showcase some of the recipes Jennifer has archived, from countries around the world. We’d wanted to make it fun, so we’d mined the interviews she’d included. And we’d wanted to have some fun.

But we gave Jennifer a gift, a greater gift than I think any of us had expected.

Like Delia in her book (although, series spoiler: we do see her again in future books), I woke up Sunday morning and realized many things about the women in my cookbook club — and many of the women not in the club but who I’ve gotten to know over the years.

Like Delia, my world has become strangely populated with people who value me, who respect me, who enjoy my presence, who I like to be around.

So here’s to Jennifer Abadi, who so graciously came to my city and cooked and ate and sold cookbooks and met me and my friends and hopefully loved the hospitality Pittsburgh is actually famous for. Here’s to my cookbook club, who wound up giving Jennifer a gift, bringing her book to life.

And here’s to my friends, who are helping bring my own book to life in such very very different way.