Join East End House and Kate Brown on Friday, October 16 to explore how gardens can boost health, connect neighbors, and create stronger communities together.
Discover how small green spaces can make a big difference—for our health, our neighborhoods, and our planet. Join author and gardener Kate Brown for a book talk and community conversation about the power of gardens to build stronger, more connected communities.
James Beard Award-winning chef Eric Ripert returns to CitySpace on October 23 at 6:30 to discuss his new cookbook, Mindful Cooking with Morning Edition host Tiziana Dearing. In this inspiring exploration of food, health and gratitude, Ripert shares how cooking can become an act of mindfulness and connection by drawing on his travels to Buddhist monasteries across Japan and Korea, as well as his own culinary traditions. Signed copies of the book will be available to purchase and guests will enjoy a bite from the book after the conversation. Buy tickets through Eventbrite here
Join Madhushree Ghosh as she discusses her book, Safar: Finding Home, History, and Culture through Punjabi Food in the American West. This event is sponsored by Boston University’s Food Studies Programs and is part of the Pépin Lecture Series. The date is October 21 from 6 – 7 at 808 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Room 124.
Madhushree Ghosh (Phd in biochemistry) is also the author of Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory and Family . She is the creative founder of KhabaarCo, a global literary salon and supper club. As a TEDx Speaker, Madhushree interrogates cultural, culinary and immigration issues using food as a social justice tool.
Published in June of this year, Safar blends memoir and history to explore the role of Punjabi food in fostering community and identity among South Asian refugees and immigrants.
Safar follows the journey of South Asian refugees, immigrants, and their children-in particular, Sikhs, Jats, and Muslims-who moved to the southwestern states of America over centuries as farmers, truck drivers, restaurant owners, and dhaba/diner stall cooks. An expedition in search of the asli-or real Punjabi food-Madhushree Ghosh explores how their food traveled from pre-partition British India to now, while weaving in her own immigrant journey as a graduate student to America in 1993, her quest to find home through the food of her Bengali refugee parents, and the physical journey she embarked on to visit the Punjabi communities in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Focusing on four Punjabi women, each a part of a different immigration wave of South Asia to the American West, Ghosh highlights the food and recipes they brought with them that connect them to their pasts. Safar shares stories of displacement, discrimination, community, and hope, while shedding light on immigrant journeys and the true meaning of home, comfort food, and what constitutes a “true Punjabi” meal. Featuring essential recipes, this is a poignant reflection on what it means to find home and identity through food and culture as an immigrant to the United States. Reserve your free space HERE.
Join Mark A. Johnson on October 7 at 6 pm at the Boston University Food Studies Building, 808 Commonwealth Avenue Room 124, as he delves into the four century history of a gastronomic phenomenon in the United States!
Mark A. Johnson earned a Ph.D. in History from the University of Alabama. He specializes in the history of the United States and, specifically, the U.S. South and African American History. In 2017, he published An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue: From Wood Pit to White Sauce. In 2021, he published Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932. His most recent book, American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon was published in April of this year.
His newest book explores the four-century history of a gastronomic phenomenon in the United States. In American Bacon, Mark A. Johnson asks (and answers) a seemingly simple question: How has bacon overcome centuries of religious prohibition, cultural contempt, and dietary advice to become a twenty-first-century culinary and cultural powerhouse?
Starting in early modern Britain and tracing the story of bacon through the colonial era, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, modern fad diets, and the emerging craft bacon industry, Johnson provides a new perspective on some familiar American narratives. More than a story of production, marketing, and consumption, Johnson argues, this cultural history connects bacon to race, class, and gender while also illuminating major historical forces, such as migration, warfare, urbanization and suburbanization, reform movements, cultural trends, and globalization. For Johnson, bacon’s story from “most dangerous food in the supermarket” to pop culture and gastronomic phenomenon reflects the cultural values of a nation.
The event takes place at Weatherlow Farms in Westport, Massachusetts. Tickets are on a Sliding Scale: $45 – $125. Click HERE.
We are hosting this event in partnership with @dnrt_ and Westport Land Conservation Trust and all proceeds will go to support stronger, more resilient local food systems.
Mrs. Trillium’s Book Garden: Signature Series invites you to an evening with Alex Snodgrass. The event takes place on August 27 from 6 – 9 at Trillium Fort Point in Boston. From $55.20. Register at Eventbrite HERE.
Cookbook author and creator of The Defined Dish, Alex Snodgrass returns to Trillium to celebrate the release of her new cookbook, Everyday Eats. Known for her wholesome, flavor-forward recipes and practical approach to home cooking, Alex has built a trusted community of home cooks seeking meals that are both nourishing and crave-worthy. Everyday Eats delivers versatile, weeknight-friendly recipes designed to simplify mealtime without sacrificing flavor.
Join Alex in Fort Point with Trillium Founder & CEO, Esther Tetreault for an evening of conversation, food, and celebration. The event will feature an engaging Q&A, a signed copy of Everyday Eats, a welcome beverage, and bites inspired by her fresh, approachable recipes.
Join The Walden Woods Project for an evening with environmental historian and forester Brian Donahue as he discusses his new book, Slow Wood: Greener Building from Local Forests. Drawing on history, ecology, and his own experience building a timber-frame home from sustainably managed Massachusetts woodlands, Donahue explores a compelling question: Can our homes once again be connected to the forests that surround them?
For centuries, New England homes—including those near Walden Woods—were built and heated with locally harvested wood. As industrial logging transformed the lumber industry, that relationship was largely lost. Slow Wood asks whether a different path is possible—one that supports healthy forests, resilient communities, and more sustainable building practices.
Donahue, Professor Emeritus of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University and author of The Great Meadow, brings decades of research on New England’s environmental history to this timely conversation about conservation, forestry, and the future of housing.
Our love of flowers and desire to be close to them has, across cultures and for millennia, created both landscapes and livelihoods. In her book Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World, Christin Geall covers hot topics such as aesthetics, appropriation, fair trade, floriculture, globalization, indigeneity, modernism, seasonality, and tokenism—to name only a few of the over eighty entries presented here in an accessible A to Z format.
In her inimitable style, Geall shares personal stories and ideas from growers and designers, weaving her narratives between art, ecology, and history to get readers truly thinking about their relationships to plants, gardens, and design. Hear the author at the Boston Athenaeum, 10 1/2 Beacon Street, on July 22 at 6 pm. Register at www.bostonathenaeum.org
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Christin Geall is an acclaimed writer, designer, and photographer whose work focuses on the intersections of nature, culture, and horticulture. She is the author of Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style. Following the success of her first book, she now turns her attention to our global relationships with flowers and plants.
TICKETS & TICKET POLICIES
Tickets are required for this event. Members and their guests are at no cost. Visitor tickets are $20 and include first floor admission. Tickets are refundable if canceled up to 48 hours before the event.
By attending an event at the Boston Athenaeum, you may be photographed or recorded. Your presence indicates consent to the use of your image, voice, and name in any media related to the Boston Athenaeum’s work, including on websites, social media, news, and promotional materials.
Please join the Urban Farming Institute, 487 Norfolk St, Mattapan, on June 28 from 1 – 4 to celebrate the launch of the book, Harnessing our Gardens! The publication features essays, poems, and intimate conversations with Joanne “Mrs. JoJo” Caidor, Laila J. Franklin, Annalise “River” Guidry, Adrienne Hawkins, Sarah “Nnenna Loveth” Nwafor, Isaura Oliveira, Jenny Oliver, Ellice Patterson, Nailah Randall-Bellinger, Lilly Rose Valore, Jessica Roseman, Saturn, Von, Makeda Wallace, Ella Wechsler-Matthaei, Pearl Young, and additional artists whose insights deeply informed this work. For complete information, and to register, visit Eventbrite HERE. $25, book purchasing available at a separate price.
Stephen Orr has written about gardening for most of his decades-long career, and now, in The Gardener’s Mindset, he helps readers to understand not just how to garden but how to think about it. Inspired by the great tradition of twentieth-century garden essay collections by writers such as Vita Sackville-West, Elizabeth Lawrence, and Henry Mitchell, Orr delves into his personal gardening journey, culling from the various gardens he and his husband created over the past decades. He remembers his first garden on a New York City rooftop, where he followed beginner’s instinct to rearrange endlessly pots of old roses, herbs, perennials, and even trees. Later in Iowa, the challenge of anything interesting in his shade-filled backyard led Orr to discover the beautiful patterns and colors of leafy lungworts and epimediums. And he shares how his current garden in Cape Cod is a work in progress and serves as his trial-and-error lab, where he is learning how to cultivate plants that can stay resilient in the face of dry sandy soil, dramatic coastal storms, and climate change. Alongside gorgeous photographs and easy projects that range from cultivating a color scheme to building a wildlife habitat, The Gardener’s Mindset will delight anyone interested in the analog pleasures
The author talk on June 15 will take place at the Wellfleet Public Library, 55 West Main Street. Free, but seating is limited so please plan accordingly, For more information call 508-349-0310.
