Do you love great books and fabulous food? Then you’ll want to join us, along with our friends from Calvert Library, as, each month, we read, discuss, and digest one of our favorite culinary novels. This month with love in the air, we’re reading Angelina’s Bachelors, where sometimes the shortest distance between two people is the length of a kitchen table....
Far too young to be a widow, Angelina D’Angelo suddenly finds herself facing a life without her beloved husband, Frank. Late one night shortly after the funeral, she makes her way down to the kitchen and pours all of her grief and anger into the only outlet she has left - her passion for cooking. In a frenzy of concentration and swift precision, she builds layer upon layer of thick, rich lasagna, braids loaves of yeasty bread, roasts plump herb-rubbed chicken; she makes so much food that she winds up delivering the spoils to the neighbors in her tight-knit Italian community in South Philadelphia.
Retiree Basil Cupertino, who has just moved in with his kindly sister across the street, is positively smitten with Angelina’s food. In a stroke of good fortune, Basil offers Angelina (not only husbandless but unemployed) a job cooking for him - two meals a day, six days a week, in exchange for a handsome salary. Soon, word of her irresistible culinary prowess spreads and she finds herself cooking for seven bachelors - and in the process discovers the magical power of food to heal, to bring people together... and maybe even to provide a second chance at love.
Filled to the brim with homemade warmth, Angelina’s Bachelors is a sweet tale of overcoming grief, redefining family, and following your heart - through food.
6-8 pm
Free: Virtual log-in
$65: in-person (join the conversation and enjoy food from the book prepared for the class)
$99: VIP in-person (arrive up to one hour before the start of the class to enjoy a complimentary drink with an artisan cheese board on our second floor balcony; then join the conversation and enjoy food from the book prepared for the class)