What happens when Brooklyn Homesteader, Domestic Construction and Brooklyn Grange join forces?  The result is Hayseed’s Big City Farm Supply, a pop-up store in Brooklyn that will be open through the end of June.  I found out about this in the early spring when I contacted Brooklyn Homesteader, Meg Paska, about setting up an indoor mushroom workshop for some friends, having taken her class at 3rd Ward the year before.  We were going to hold the workshop in my building, but she suggested having it in their space, so a field trip was in order.

Located at 218 India Street in Greenpoint, Hayseed’s operates out of a former garage in an industrial neighborhood and takes some getting to.  But once there, you feel like you’ve found a little gem.  The front of the house sells various supplies for endeavors ranging from container gardening, to rainwater harvesting, to beekeeping, and the back of the house is a space dedicated to events and workshops.  The gals at Domestic Construction have done an amazing job of making the garage a community space you would want to hang out all the time.

We all gathered there last month to learn how to cultivate oyster mushroom mycelium indoors using coffee grounds and logs.  I will elaborate on that venture in a future post, but if you are in the vicinity I urge you to pay Hayseed’s a visit before the end of June.  You just might leave there wearing overalls.

We have a bit of a Bollywood obsession going on in our house at the moment.  The source of it is our 8-year old daughter who -  after seeing the dance numbers from the film Om Shanti Om – has decided that nothing is better than saris and bindis.  For someone who already loved fancy, the Indian spectacle took it to another level and lately she can be found in her own improvised version of a sari, striking dramatic dance poses and planning the details of her upcoming Bollywood birthday party.  Hungry for more, we next watched Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, an epic drama which is still running in theaters in India since it’s premier in 1995, starring the dreamy Shahrukh Khan and Kajol, .  We are now on a family quest to watch every SRK movie (appropriate for kids – which, admittedly, might be very few), and the latest was Chak De! India, a Hindi film about a girls field hockey team that has no dance numbers.  I wasn’t sure the girls would sit through a film of that description, and frankly, I wasn’t sure I could either – having no interest in field hockey. But, it was completely and utterly riveting!  I cannot recommend this film highly enough – if you have girls, they should see it.

Our near constant Bollywood soundtrack – provided by  Saavn (the Desi Spotify) – has been putting us in the mood for Indian food and so I set out the other day to try making one of my favorite dishes: Matar Paneer – that delicious combination of peas and cheese.  Paneer is the first cheese I ever made  and I love it because its simplicity so perfectly illustrates the most basic elements of cheesemaking: the separation of the curds and whey.  Plus, it doesn’t take any fancy starters or equipment. All you need is some milk, lemon juice, a clean pot and a thermometer.

• Heat 1 Q. of milk to 176° and turn off heat.
• Add 4T lemon juice very slowly to the milk while stirring.
• The milk will start to separate into curds and whey.
• Keep stirring!

• Once the curds cool to the point they can be easily handled (about 1/2 hour) pour them into a cheesecloth lined strainer.
• Squeeze the curds to expel as much of the whey as possible. Save the whey!
• Wrap tightly and set a weight on top to create a dense cheese.  The longer you leave it under the weight, the denser it will be. I left mine for about 1 hour.

Once you have achieved your desired density, soak the cheese in cold water for 2-3 hours prior to use.  I made my cheese one afternoon and stashed it in the fridge until I could cook with it the next day.  I found a delicious recipe for Matar Paneer from the Indian cooking and garden blog Mahanandi, which I love both for its recipes as well as the photos.  With the paneer already made, the dish took almost no time and was a total success! I have to say I was surprised, as most of my attempts at Indian cooking are a bit off the mark.

So the question remains, what to do with all that whey?  Save it in a jar – it will keep in your fridge for up to 6 months and you can use it in a variety of ways. Many people like to add it to breads and pizza doughs.  Some drink it straight for its healing properties, and others feed it to their plants.  I’m learning all about whey these days and hope to have more to say on the subject soon.  For now, mine is in a jar, awaiting the perfect dough.

So, are you inspired to whip up your own batch of paneer?  I thought so! Before getting started, you should prepare your mind with a little Bollywood dance number – from our house to yours:

We have a problem in our house and it goes something like this:

Child: Can I have some  (juice, kefir, water, milk, moonshine)?

Adult:  Why, of course! pulls out cup, fills it halfway with desired liquid.

Child:  Thanks! proceeds to drink 1/2 – 2/3rd of liquid, leaving the rest and runs off.

Adult:  Sigh…

The truth is, my family doesn’t belong to the clean plate club.  And given the strange feeding habits of the very young, my girls often pick at their plates, decide they’re not hungry, only to return – totally famished – sometime later.  Thus, I was looking for a way to keep food and drink fresh for exactly these occasions, while avoiding plastic wrap – which is not only wasteful, but annoying to use. The collective wisdom of the Internet has a number of tutorials, all variations on this project, and they looked easy enough to try.  My first instinct was to go with oilcloth, since I love all those cheerful Mexican designs, but unfortunately oilcloth isn’t food safe (and its phthalate level makes it unsafe for use around children in general).  However, a good substitute is laminated cotton (which is laminated with polyurethane, not PVC).  Now, I will be the first to admit that I’m not exactly sure how “green” laminated cotton is – but it’s reusability make it a step up from plastic wrap.  Plus, there are a lot of beautiful laminated cotton designs to choose from.  My favorites are from Michael Miller, Amy Butler, and Heather Bailey.  I ordered enough to create a tablecloth and then cut off the rest to make various bowl covers.

The first step was to pull out the glasses and bowls we use most to see how many I could make:

This was also a chance to unearth my sewing machine – a 1970′s Singer that I inherited from my dear grandmother.  I’m not a very good seamstress, but I have kept this machine throughout my travels out of a mixture of nostalgia and optimism.

Aside from the cotton laminate, you need a few other supplies:

1. A good pair of scissors
2. A pencil
3. 1/4″ wide elastic
4. The compass and ruler are handy, but actually not essential (unless you are a perfectionist).

Step 1:  Take your cup or bowl and trace around it.  You will then want to cut the fabric at a circumference roughly 1-2 inches larger than the rim of your dish.  You can either use the compass or eyeball it. I chose the latter.

Step 2:  Set your sewing machine to a zigzag stitch and adjust it so that the stitch is short and fairly wide. You will want to sew your elastic in the area between the circle you drew and the edge of your fabric. Make sure to back-stitch at the beginning to hold the elastic in place.  The trick is to stretch the elastic while sewing in a circle – which, frankly, isn’t that easy.  Mine looks like I started this project by tossing back several mojitos in quick succession (I didn’t), but they are functional despite the somewhat inebriated nature of the stitching.

When you are finished, your circle will be gathered like a little shower cap and should stretch right over the dish you started with.

I will admit to a bit of a learning curve to the first couple, but once I got the hang of the sewing I was able to make a dozen of these in a little over an hour.  Now, each morning when my daughters inevitably fail to finish whatever they are drinking, we put a little hat on their glass and save it for when they get home from school.  Problem solved!

Image: From Scratch Club, 2012

When was the last time you read a book that made you hyperventilate?  One where you had to stop every few pages just to catch your breath and contain your excitement?  I just went through a week of that very feeling while reading – no, devouring – Tamar E. Adler’s book, An Everlasting Meal: cooking with economy and grace.

Structured as an homage to M.F.K. Fisher’s 1942 book, How to Cook a Wolf, each chapter focuses on the beauty of the most basic elements of cooking: the boiling of water, the roasting of vegetables.  Adler is the champion of the odds and ends of foods (and the liquid in which they are cooked), those disregarded cuts of meat, and of coaxing the best out of what you have. The book will make you walk into the kitchen and apologize to that parsnip that has been languishing there – the one you had in mind to compost, but will now roast and appreciate.  Her writing is a beautiful parallel to her philosophy of cooking: accessible, but perfectly crafted, with sentences that elevate the mundane.  At its most essential, this book is about finding the sublime in the practice of frugality.

Each chapter is written like an essay, but deceptively full of practical information.  In her chapter, “How to Teach an Egg to Fly”, she considers the mystery of the egg and then inspires you to re-think how you cook it.  Once you have,  you will need to take a break to find your best egg and treat it right.  Will you boil it until the yolk is a most perfect consistency? Or will you attempt to poach?  Or use it to elevate yesterdays leftovers?

On vegetables, she counters the conventional wisdom that dictates the under-cooking of most of them, espousing the virtues of roasting.  One of my favorite passages outlines a method of preparing a week’s worth of vegetables in the direct aftermath of a trip to the farmer’s market.  It’s the kind of thing that will revolutionize your possibly fraught relationship with your CSA, just in time for the season to begin. While you’re waiting to get your hands on a copy of the book, the pendant website has a number of lovely videos illustrating the various chapters, such as How to Stride Ahead: Part 2.

You will be tempted to read this book in one sitting – which I couldn’t help.  But don’t!  The way to approach it is to stretch it out over time.  Take one chapter per week.  Savor it and let it move you to boil a chicken, make a transcendent omelette, or consider new uses for an olive.

As for me, I’m planning to start it again with the virtual book group organized by one of my favorite blogs,  From Scratch Club,  through their Facebook Page.  Since I can’t manage to participate in the kind of book club where you actually meet at a location, bring the book, and talk to each other – this is perfect for me!  And maybe for you, too!

As you know, this is the time of year to celebrate the edible book. German design firm Korefe takes it to the highest level with their edible cookbook entitled, Das Echte und Einzige Kochbuch (The Real Cookbook), created as a special edition for the Gerstenberg publishing house.  Made out of sheets of fresh pasta, the recipe for lasagna is printed on the pages of the book.  Follow the recipe page by page – adding the ingredients as you go – and by the end, you will have a delicious (looking) lasagna.  Click on the photo above for a slide show of the process.

File under Edible Books inspiration for next year.  Enjoy!

© Jihyun Ryou

Awhile back, I posted some alternatives to food gathering.  In researching that post, I was pleasantly surprised to find so many alternative sources for finding groceries.  But no matter where your provisions originate, the question persists: what is the best way to store it once you are home?  Last year, we managed to successfully reorganize our dry foods storage, but the fridge can be a black hole.  So much so that there are times I open mine with trepidation over what is going to fall out onto the floor.

Artist Jihyun Ryou addresses this issue with her brilliant design project, Shaping Traditional Oral Knowledge, where she created five beautiful storage solutions for various foods that take into account the history of how they were stored before refrigeration was ubiquitous. It is a perfect blending of the oral history of food storage (i.e. the habits of your grandmother) with modern design.  In one example, she stores apples and potatoes in a symbiotic container: the potatoes in a dark box (as they like it), with a perforated top for apple storage.  Apples – like many other fruits – give off ethylene gas that hasten the ripening and subsequent over-ripening of certain types of produce.  However, their effect on potatoes is different: instead, they keep potatoes from sprouting.  Thus, Ryou’s solution is to store apples and potatoes together, but away from other foods:

© Jihyun Ryou

Another interesting food storage issue she addresses is that of the egg.  How do you store an egg? Most would say inside the refrigerator and, indeed, many doors come with a space made just them, but current wisdom dictates that eggs should be stored in the carton inside the fridge, not in the door.  Ryou, counters that eggs can and should be stored at room temperature and created a solution that includes a freshness tester based on the time-tested method of seeing if it will sink or float.  A bad egg will float, and a fresh one will sink :

© Jihyun Ryou

Unlike in Europe, where Ryou lives and works, the U.S. mandates that eggs be washed before being sold, which strips them of their protective coating and makes room temperature storage less reliable.  So, unless you are lucky enough to get your eggs straight from your own hens, this method might not be so viable here.  Still, I love the way it looks.

The point of this project is to get people to re-examine their assumptions about how we treat food and Ryou also keeps a Tumblr site where she invites people to post their anecdotal wisdom on how to store food – some intriguing (store a chili pepper in your rice to prevent bugs), some questionable (cover your eggs with vaseline to block the pores), but all fascinating. Her work asks you to consider the way each type of food wants to be treated, but also succeeds in conveying the visual beauty of food.  By displaying it on the wall, you can see what you have and are more likely to use it.  If these were for sale, I would be first in line.

In reconsidering food storage, there are number of issues to take into account beyond refrigeration:  Do you wash your produce when you buy it or wait until you use it? Do you use plastic or not?  Do you treat your herbs like flowers? Or wrap them in damp paper towels?  A quick trip around the internet will give you multiple answers to these questions, but here are a few sources I think are helpful:

• Food52 recently ran a couple of useful posts on food storage, organized by counter, pantry and refrigerator.  It’s a good outline on what to store where, but relies heavily on plastic containers and bags.
• The Berkeley Farmer’s Market was the first to eliminate plastic bags as part of their Zero Waste initiative back in 2009. They have published this handy guide for plastic-free food storage Berkeley Farmers Market Tips for Storing Produce .
• Last but not least, the Zero Waste Home, has a lot of great advice on waste-free food storage, my favorite being freezing bread in pillowcases!
• And if you are wondering how long something keeps, check out Still Tasty!

I am inspired to spend the next few weeks rummaging through the fridge to re-think what we are keeping in there. For full disclosure, here is how it looks today:

So let the excavation begin! For more fridge-related voyeurism, check out artist Mark Menjivar’s portrait series on people’s refrigerators entitled, You Are What You Eat.  It speaks volumes.

So, my Windowfarm has been growing for 3 months, with middling success and it’s time to make some decisions.  What to harvest?  What to start for the next round?  With such small amounts, harvesting the kale and arugula will decimate the farm and the yield is so miniscule, it would seem appropriate to cook it up on the toy kitchen in my daughters’ room.  Lesson number one:  start your next round of seeds earlier, so they are ready to transplant at the time of harvest.

Having just figured that out, I couldn’t wait for my next round of seeds because I needed to harvest my parsley for our seder plate – you see, I like to source my bitter herbs locally.  I chopped off the whole lot and we passed them around and ate them dipped in saltwater.  Delicious!  Parsley is definitely going into the second round of the Windowfarm.

Lesson number two:  unless you have a gigantic Windowfarm, you are better off growing herbs that you can clip a little at a time when needed. One thing I regret not growing the first time around is basil – who wouldn’t love some fresh basil in the wintertime?  So, basil seeds are on the list.  We only have six slots, so we have to choose carefully.  My tomato plant grew wildly out of control trying desperately to get enough light.  It made me feel bad: all that straining and no flowers.  My plan with tomatoes is to transplant them into traditional window boxes in our sunny stairwell and see how they fare, leaving the more delicate herbs for the Windowfarm. That is, except for our biggest success so far:  Shishito Peppers!

Shishito peppers seem to love the Windowfarm environment, and perhaps I should just make it all about them, but I am inclined to diversify.  Last night, I started a new round of seeds: Basil, Parsely, Cilantro, and Shishitos.  We’ll see what transpires.

In the meantime, I have been reading Harriet Fasenfest’s delightful book, The Householder’s Guide to the Universe. It is an almanac for the city farmer – at least for the city farmer with a yard – starting with January and guiding you through the seasons.  The beginning through March is all about seed selection and garden planning, then it moves on to the actual gardening, harvesting and food preserving through the rest of the year.  There is a lot to ponder in this book and I have been trying to adapt it to my own landless version of householding, by planning my indoor garden.  Here is what I have so far:

Windowfarm (6 hydroponic slots): herbs and shisitos

In window pots  :  tomatoes, mint, scallions and pea shoots.

Under the bed:  shiitake and oyster mushrooms

If I’m feeling particularly adventurous: ginger, quinoa and maybe I’ll throw in a rice paddy!

It’s planting season! What are you growing this year? Indoors or out!

For this year’s seder, we decided to take our eggs up a notch.  It was a last-minute decision, actually.  Late Thursday night, we realized we had  used up all the eggs for the cheesecake and didn’t have enough to bake overnight (oops!).  I was looking around for other options and stumbled across a shorter, stove top recipe on The Kitchn, solving our problem of time and had the added feature of these gorgeous stenciled decorations.

Friday morning, armed with a dozen eggs, herbs harvested from our Windowfarm, some cheesecloth and string, we set to work.  This was the perfect project to keep the girls occupied on a frenzied morning of seder preparations.  Here’s how we did it:

1. Start by dipping your egg in water, which will help the leaf stick to the surface.  Apply leaf of choice. We used parsley and cilantro.
2. You are supposed to then put the eggs into some pantyhose as the elasticity will hold the leaf in place.  We didn’t have any, so we used cheesecloth and tied it with a string.
3. Make sure the cheesecloth is tight, not loose like in this photo
4. Voila! The finished product.

Recipes for Sephardic eggs vary and none are precise, so we basically applied our oven recipe to the stove top with a few additions:

INGREDIENTS

8 c. onion skins

3 T coffee grounds (before brewing)

1 T black peppercorns

2 T. white vinegar

4 T. Olive oil

Before starting on your eggs, take the onion skins and put them in a large soup pot.  Cover with water and put on stove. While it is coming to a boil, you can wrap your eggs.  Once the water is boiling, turn it down to a simmer and add the coffee grounds, peppercorns and vinegar.  Then, using a tongs, slowly lower your wrapped eggs into the simmering water.  Once all the eggs are in the water, pour about 4T of olive oil over the top.  Cover and simmer.  After about one hour, we turned the heat off and let the eggs steep for another couple of hours.  That is probably more than enough time.  The key is to make sure the eggs get a nice, deep color and flavor, but without completely decimating the yolk (still experimenting with this ratio).

When you are ready to unwrap them, set a small bowl in the sink.  Take two or three eggs at a time and run them under cold water until you can easily handle them.  Use scissors to cut away the cheesecloth or hosiery and underneath the mess, you should have a dozen gorgeous eggs!

It was almost a shame to peel and eat them that night, but they were delicious (as good as the oven variety). We don’t do Easter eggs in our family, but this has the same appeal and will definitely become part of our tradition.  Think of all the design possibilities!

We eat soft and hard boiled eggs year-round, but only at Passover do we go Sephardic.  The results are so beautiful and delicious, that I always wonder why we don’t bake our eggs in onion skins and coffee grounds on a regular basis, especially since they are so easy to make.  But then I forget until the next year, and so it goes.  I first found the recipe in Mollie Katzen’s “Sundays at the Moosewood Restaurant” and tried them on a whim.  When you peel them, they have a bit of a “brown eggs and ham” look about them, but the whites (now browns) have a rich but subtle flavor.  Add some salt and you are in egg heaven.  With the first seder just days away, I thought I would share the recipe with you.  You start them at night and they are finished by morning:

Huevos Hamidados (Sepharidic Eggs)

Heat oven to 200º

Line a casserole dish with dried onion skins

Place up to 1 dozen eggs in the dish.

Sprinkle 2-3 T. ground coffee over the eggs.

Add 1 T. olive oil and 1 t. kosher salt.

Pour water over the eggs until they are just covered.

Cover the dish, place in the oven for 6-8 hours.

Go to sleep.  Wake up to the delicious smell of eggs, coffee and onions.

Happy Pesach!

Janis Ekdahl. Ceci n'est pas un livre.
BGC Edible Book Festival. 2012

April 1st marks (among other things, of course) the birthday of Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and is the day we celebrate the intersection of books and food in the form of International Edible Book Day.  This year, I put out the call at my library for students, faculty and staff to create and submit their own edible books for a celebration last Tuesday.  Late spring is a busy time of year for the academic and I had some trepidation Monday evening as I worked on my entry in the wee hours.  What if no one has the time? Am I throwing a party no one will come to?

I don’t know what I was worried about.  If nothing else, the Bard Graduate Center is replete with people who appreciate the material culture of the book and have all kinds of talent to render that appreciation in culinary form.  Over the course of two hours that morning, the display room started to fill up with entries until we had 16!  By 11:00 a.m., everything was in place and people started to come through to enjoy a cup of coffee and vote on their favorites.

We had three categories in which you could win: Best Play on Words, Most Appetizing, and Best in Show.  But the truth was, all of the entries were not only amazing creations but extremely clever interpretations on a theme.  Here are a few highlights:

TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA

David Applegate. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
BGC Edible Book Festival, 2012

Using a dried squid from Chinatown, a Francophile submarine sandwich (baguette, ham and cheese, of course!), nori, and some underwater creatures made of candy, this underwater tableau is something Jules Verne would surely be proud of.

COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE

Erin Eisenbarth. Lady Tea Sandwich, Country Life's latest debutante.
BGC Edible Book Festival, 2012

For those of you who may be unfamiliar, Country Life is a weekly British magazine started in 1897 that covers the world of the landed gentry.  In between advertisements for country estates, are articles on architecture, gardening, hunting and things equestrian.  Our library holds the entire run and each week, when it arrives in the library office, the first thing we do is check out the frontispiece: a full-page photo featuring the debutante of the week with a caption describing her lineage, field of study, and either who she is engaged to or what she will be doing for her gap year.  It’s great fun and so I was delighted when Erin Eisenbarth created her own debutante, the Lady Tea Sandwich, complete with the jewelry and impressive pedigree.

THE PENGUIN CLASSICS

Laura Grey, The Penguin Classics
BGC Edible Book Festival, 2012

Who doesn’t love penguins made out of olives?  Our art director took this to the next level using olives, cream cheese, vegetables and cloves to create open-face sandwiches of three of her favorite Penguin Classics.

THE GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT

Heather Topcik, The Grammar of Ornament
BGC Edible Books, 2012

I racked my brain hoping to come up with some kind of brilliant metaphor of a design history classic, but in the end I went literal with a recreation of Owen Jones‘ 19th-century compendium of ornamental styles rendered both sweet (front cover) and savory (back cover).  The front was a simple tart crust, covered in sweetened cream cheese and decorated with fresh fruit.  The back cover was made out of crackers, olive tapenade, cream cheese and vegetables. The hardest part was piping the words, so don’t look too close.

MOBY DICK

Ben Tuttle, Moby Dick Fruit Roll-Up
BGC Edible Books, 2012

One of the most gorgeous pieces on the table, our design intern made a homemade, oven-dried fruit roll up version of Moby Dick.  Using Rockwell Kent’s woodcut images for inspiration, he distills the whole story into a few silhouettes.

THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE

Janis Ekdahl. The House in Good Taste
BGC Edible Books 2012

Elsie de Wolf’s classic, The House In Good Taste, published in 1914, gives you all the information you need to know to properly decorate your house.  Here, our acquisitions librarian rendered the floor plan in cake and mints.

& FORK

Karyn Hinkle. & FORK
BGC Edible Books, 2012

This delicious cake is a lovely interpretation of Phaidon’s beautiful product design book, & Fork.  Made by our reader services librarian, Karyn Hinkle, who gets extra points for participating in this project while on maternity leave (as evidenced by the baby fork!).

JOAN BROSSA’S PLUJA

Sara Rubinow.
BGC Edible Books, 2012

This book is technically edible, although you wouldn’t want to eat it because it is an incredible work of art in and of itself.  Our intern, Sara Rubinow, decided to interpret one of her favorite artist’s books, Pluja, by Joan Brossa, in edible materials.  The original books is composed of sheets of paper that had been left out in the rain.  To recreate this, Sara wet sheets of vermicelli paper and hung them over string in her bathroom.  Achieving the incredible color was done by soaking red cabbage and combining the colored water with a bit of baking soda which turned the red liquid into a beautiful blue-green.  I love everything about this!

AND THE WINNERS….

BEST PLAY ON WORDS:  THE PIE-ONEERS OF MODERN DESIGN

Collin Fanning & Sarah Rogers. The Pioneers of Modern Design
BGC Edible Books 2012

Two of our students joined forces to re-interpret Nikolaus Pevsner’s classic book, The Pioneers of Modern Design, in the form of…. a strawberry-rhubarb pie supporting portraits of the major 19th and 20th century designers.  They even went so far as to recreate the cover of this iconic book.

MOST APPETIZING: MISS HAVISHAM’S BRIDE CAKE FROM GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Aislinn Hyde. Miss Havisham's Bride Cake from Great Expectations (using wedding cake recipes from the 1860's).
BGC Edible Books, 2012

Despite the cake’s somewhat creepy connotations, this was voted most appetizing because, well, wouldn’t you want to eat it? Plus, the student who made it is both a master baker and wrote her thesis on the history of wedding cakes in the United States.  Using three recipes from the 19th century, each layer was a different type of cake and it was, indeed, delicious.

BEST IN SHOW: THE BOOK AND ITS MATERIALITY

Mei-ling Israel. The Book and its Materiality: The Lindau Gospel and Google Books.
BGC Edible Books, 2012

An overwhelming favorite, this entry spanned the history of the book from the heavy materiality of the Lindau Gospel (rendered in cake) to the ephemeral nature of Google Books (rendered in custard).

Needless to say, this year’s festival was an overwhelming success and I was amazed by the how thoughtful and creative all the entries were.  We are already planning next year’s event and I encourage you to do the same.  You don’t have to be a librarian to love edible books!