Rachel Fields, left, and her mother Susan Fields enjoy the spread at Shaler North Hills Library’s monthly “Food for Thought” gathering on Feb. 12. Eager to make friends and try new things when she moved back to Pittsburgh after retiring 19 years ago, Jan Haltigan turned to what’s always […]
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Eager to make friends and try new things when she moved back to Pittsburgh after retiring 19 years ago, Jan Haltigan turned to what’s always been a welcoming space to connect: her local library.
Growing up in Bloomfield, she spent countless hours reading books at the Carnegie Library on Fifth Street. So she was pretty sure when she walked through the doors of Shaler North Hills Library on Mt. Royal Boulevard, she’d find some kind of fun.
It turned out to be Food for Thought, the cookbook club that adult services librarian Marie Jackson started to bring together home cooks to swap recipes and share cooking experiences. Haltigan grew up cooking for her family and Jackson, despite not being much of a cook herself, could talk anyone into anything.
“So right from the get-go, it just felt right,” Haltigan says of the group, which since 2006 has met on the second Wednesday of the month to explore food, cooking and cookbooks. She even convinced her sister, Judy Enz, who lives in Shaler, to become a member, too.
Nearly 20 years later, both women are still at it, trying their hands at cooking unfamiliar foods and celebrity recipes each month for a potluck lunch that’s followed by a discussion on what they learned making the various recipes.
“It’s just a fun thing,” says Enz.
It’s also a great way to add a little variety to your weekly menu if you get tired of eating the same thing several days in a row.
“And you really fall in love with everyone,” she says with a smile. “It’s the highlight of my month.”
One tasty mashup
Book clubs have been around for decades and so has the tradition of the modern potluck dinner, which rose in popularity during the Great Depression to help struggling families pool resources. The cookbook club combines the two, allowing members to enjoy a meal together while also introducing them to new cuisines, techniques and flavors.
They can be held at libraries — there are more than a dozen active clubs in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh system — but they’re also popping up in bookstores. And some cookbook clubs meet in members’ homes.
Every group does it a little different. Some choose a theme while others pick a particular cookbook, favorite chef or region of the country or world. The goal is always the same: to learn something new about food, nosh on a dish you might not otherwise try and above all, have some fun and great conversation.
(Gretchen McKay/Post-Gazette)
Here’s how it generally works in Shaler and at many other libraries:
Participants arrive with whatever dish they’ve made and set it out on a communal table. If it’s from a cookbook, they bring that along, too.
After the potluck meal (often a buffet) and some socializing, attendees get down to the nuts and bolts of what they learned — where to find that one weird ingredient, how long a dish took to make, how many pots and pans ended up in the sink and perhaps most important: Would they ever make it again?
At Castle Shannon Public Library, for example, members generally cook from a title chosen by circulation desk manager Donelle Mayausky, often based on suggestions. Their choices have embraced a wide variety of cuisines, culinary traditions and famous cookbook authors.
Since they started five years ago, members have cooked from Snoop Dogg's “From Crook to Cook,” Chrissy Teigen’s “Cravings” and food blogger/social media influencer Tieghan Gerard’s “Half Bake Harvest” cookbooks. Last month’s choice was Valerie Bertinelli’s “Indudge.” Next month they’ll explore “Goon With A Spoon’ by Snoop Dogg and Earl "E40" Stevens.
To make it easier to join in, Mayausky typically reserves cookbooks from the library’s catalog to have on hand. Participation has grown from just a handful of attendees in the beginning to upwards of 25 participants at the potluck dinners, depending on the topic.
Members of the 2½-year-old Cooks and Books group at Cooper-Siegel Community Library in Fox Chapel, which meets on the second Thursday of each month, also often cook out of a selected cookbook. They tackled “Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over” by Alison Roman in January and will explore “Ever-green Vietnamese” by Andrea Quynhgiao in March. Attendees might also get to experiment with recipes from a particular cuisine, chef or seasonal ingredient.
Information services department head Kelley Beeson started the group in 2022 after enjoying great success with a similar group at Western Allegheny Community Library in Oakdale. The Fox Chapel club draws between 15 and 20 people every month — everyone from professional chefs to people simply cooking for their families.
“It’s such a great way to bring people in,” Beeson says.
Libraries, she notes, provide a great way for communities to connect. But cookbook clubs are extra special.
In Fox Chapel, as in other libraries, “it has grown to mean a lot to the people who come, with the friendships that have formed.”
Make new friends
The opportunity to meet new people is what drew musicians/performers Andres Zara and Audrey Pernell, who moved from Philadelphia to Bloomfield in August, to the 2-year-old Squirrel Hill Cookbook Club at Riverstone Books.
“We love to cook and trying new recipes,” says Zara, who is originally from Chile. “And we love to eat.”
Which they did plenty of at the bookstore’s Valentine’s-themed event on Feb. 5. (It’s free, but bookseller Abby Sewell likes to know how many will attend).
Asked to bring recipes they love, the cooks proved pretty creative. Garrett Lee, who lives in the South Side and works in accounting, brought ribs, while Tishanna Lewison of Rankin shared a sweet bread she grew up eating in Trinidad. The potluck also include crab palmiers, mango sticky rice, apple cake and roasted red pepper pasta.
Lewison’s dish was a favorite of her late maternal aunt Cynthia, from what she calls the “bible” of Trinidadian food — “Naparima Girls’ High School Cookbook,” which was was first published in 1988 and reissued in 2002. Filled with dried fruits and grated coconut, the recipe fit the theme perfectly, she says, because “there’s a lot of love in this dish.”
Lewison, who works in healthcare, says she stumbled upon the group online in January while searching for ways to reconnect with her culture. “And what better way to do that than with food?”
(Gretchen McKay/Post-Gazette)
Carrie Helms was also looking to meet more people when she started a home-based cookbook club in 2017.
While the Munhall resident had friends at Chatham University, where she’s an associate professor of English and chair of the humanities department, she wanted to expand her circle.
Because she writes about food — she has authored two books about cookbooks, including the just-released “Unpalatable: Stories of Pleasure and Pain in Southern Cookbooks” — starting a cookbook group with friends from Facebook made sense.
“I never met anybody before they came to my house,” she remembers with a laugh, “but we had lots of things in common” — and probably wouldn’t have met otherwise.
They generally pick that month’s cookbook at the end of the previous meeting, and people just sort of “claim” different dishes. There’s a baker who always gets dessert, some are the salad people, others always choose a protein. “Then we go in a predetermined direction to create a meal out of what seems to be cohesive, if not intentional,” she says.
Organizing a cookbook club can be a lot of work, Helms admits, but it also creates a invaluable connections. “I got divorced in the middle of it and one person in the group met their partner in the second meeting,” she says. The club also saw members through the pandemic and the loss of parents.
“We’re like a team now,” she says. “We’re a community of people.”
Rather just watch someone cook?
(Lucy Schaly/Post-Gazette)
Not every cooking club requires its members to tie on an apron and turn on the oven.
In 2022, The Friends of the Bridgeville Public Library turned its pre-pandemic cookbook club from from one in which attendees brought homemade dishes into one where they instead enjoy a cooking demonstration. Attendees pay $5 to watch UPMC dietitian Eric Cappozoli prepare two or three health-conscious dishes with help from his mother, Cindy, that’s planned around a theme.
Patrons were gun shy about cooking after the pandemic, so Cindy —who’s The Friend’s president— talked her son into doing the demos for free based on his passion for cooking, and the success he’s had with a YouTube channel cooking show affiliated with UPMC.
“A lot of people don’t want to eat what others make,” she says.
Because he works in nutrition, many of Cappozoli’s recipes are plant-forward, but he has also done spins on pizza, breakfast foods and chili. He also tries to feature what’s seasonal, though some recipes, he says, are “just what I feel like and cross over with my channel at work.”
The library doesn’t have a true kitchen (it’s limited to an air fryer oven, microwave and hot plates) so Cappozoli preps all the food in advance, then demonstrates how to cook or assemble a dish while explaining the nutritional benefits of the ingredients. The banter with his mom while cooking is playful and fun.
On Feb. 11, the pair demonstrated two easy-to-make, classic soups, after which the sell-out crowd of 15 got to sample with pieces of Cappozoli’s homemade sourdough foccacia. The crowd also got to end the evening with a sweet vegetarian dessert: chocolate mousse made with silken tofu.
While attendees like Lori Furchi of Bridgeville appreciate being able to add Cappozoli’s healthy dishes to their recipe collections, not everyone has plans to make them, ever.
At age 88, Pat Krocker says she no longer cooks. “But I enjoy the camaraderie,” the Bridgeville resident says.
Leek and Potato Soup with Chicken and Vegetables
(Gretchen McKay/Post-Gazette)
PG tested
This soup is easy to pull together and really hits the spot on a chilly winter evening. I cooked the chicken breast in the soup, then shredded it.
Be sure to rinse the leeks extremely well after slicing them — sand and dirt gathers in their layers.
2 leeks, washed well and sliced into half moons (2 cups)
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups peeled and diced Russet potatoes (2 medium)
1 to 1½ cups peeled and diced carrots
1 to 1½ cups diced celery
¼ teaspoon Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper
4 cups chicken broth
1 pound cooked chicken, shredded
1½ cups half-and-half
⅓ cup all-purpose flour, potato starch or corn starch
1 lemon, quartered, optional
In large stockpot over medium heat, sweat sliced leeks and garlic in butter until translucent.
Add potatoes, carrots and celery, and stir to combine.
Add Italian seasoning, and season with salt and pepper. Add chicken broth.
Stir to combine and bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until vegetables are soft.
Add shredded chicken and stir to combine.
In separate container (a jar to shake), mix half-and-half and flour. Once blended, bring soup back to boil and add mixture to the pot while stirring.
If it seems too thick, add more half-and-half or broth. Then, squeeze a little fresh lemon on top, and serve.
Serves 6-8.
— Eric Capozzoli, UPMC dietitian
Trinidad Sweet Bread
(Gretchen McKay/Post-Gazette)
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup margarine
2-2½ cups grated coconut
1 cup sugar
1 cup raisins
½ cup cherries
½ cup currants
½ cup mixed fruit peel (orange, lemon, grapefruit)
1 teaspoon mixed spice (allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg)
¾ cup milk or water
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
Sift flour and baking powder together in a large bowl.
Add margarine, coconut, sugar, raisins, cherries, currants, fruit peel and mixed spice and stir to combine well.
In separate bowl, combine milk or water, egg and vanilla.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix well. (But do not knead.)
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Grease 2 loaf pans well. You also can line the pans with parchment paper instead.
Divide batter between the pans and bake for 50-60 minutes.
Remove from oven and glaze with a mixture of 1 tablespoon sugar dissolved in 1 tablespoon water.
Bake for an additional 3-4 minutes, then remove and allow to cool.
Makes 2 loaves.
— Tishanna Lewison, Rankin
First Published: February 18, 2025, 2:30 a.m.
Updated: February 18, 2025, 10:08 a.m.
Gretchen McKay is an award-winning features reporter who joined the Post-Gazette in 1998. She has been testing recipes and writing for the Post-Gazette's food section since 2009 and became food editor in 2021.
gmckay@post-gazette.com
@gtmckay
@gtmckay.bsky.social
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