Did you ever read a book so delicious you couldn’t put it down? A book that propelled you to the market for ingredients to make some exotic dish that was so eloquently described that your mouth watered? Or a book that found you leafing through your recipe cards for Grandma’s cobbler instructions — cobbler you hadn’t thought about in years?

I love books where food is a star player in the story. They expose us to different cultures, new ingredients and flavors, diverse lifestyles and customs, all in a manner that is universally relatable: we all eat.

I’ve had many hopes and ideas for this EATS Together blog. Among these was the thought that it might be a springboard for a community of people to share their traditions, cultures and individuality through recipes and food. I have shared a lot of what my family does, but I have been searching for ways to make the conversation, well, more a conversation and less a one-way dialogue.

Then, one day a group of friends and colleagues started talking about some of the “delicious” books we’ve read. The conversation quickened and became quite animated as we remembered scenes from various books: 

…“In The Last Chinese Chef…when he cooks that chicken for her because her husband died? And the herbs he uses, how they are symbolic for healing grief in the Chinese culture?”

…“And in Under the Tuscan Sun, when she cooks for the men working on her villa because she has to relate to them and she doesn’t speak Italian and they don’t speak English?”

… “Or in Chocolat when the priest loses all composure eating the chocolates he’s forbidden and they find him passed out from chocolate in the sweetshop display window on Easter Sunday morning!?”

I could go on and on. But I am hoping we all will, instead! That’s why I have created EATS Reads — a section of this blog dedicated to discussing delicious books (and heck, lets talk about the movies they make of them, too). I have set up a discussion board and started some topics on several delicious books that I particularly like: The Last Chinese Chef, Chocolat, The Hundred Foot Journey and Under the Tuscan Sun. 

Please join the conversation! (Click here to go to the discussion board) Feel free to add new topics and books! 

Here are my top ten picks –  I’ll add some articles to help get our conversations going soon! Happy reading!