A Place Here, Vol. 3

“I live in the South, where we never show up empty handed, even when you ask, ‘What can I bring?’ and they say “Just yourself!’”

When I say I was so excited to hear this come out, I mean it! I had been lamenting my poor fate when I realized I wouldn’t be able to make it to Greenville for any of the launch events when I got that sweet sweet DM in my inbox. I purchased A Place Here, Vol. 2 on a whim earlier this year and absolutely fell in love with Ables’s writing, and Vol. 3 lived up to every expectation.

I think this volume, whose theme is “Thoughts and Recipes for Nurturing Community,” reached me at exactly the right time. The essays in this volume follow along the theme of Ables losing her father and the ways that food and the people we love come together as “Before and After people.” Just a little over a month ago, one of my good friends from college passed away very unexpectedly, so Ables’s essays on nurturing yourself and others through grieving really stuck with me (I even teared up reading “On Meal Trains”). Ables’s prose is so beautiful and well-thought-out; it’s such a treat to read something by her (I am once again asking her to write a full book pls).

All the writing part out of the way, I am the MOST excited to make from this cookbook the Shaved Brussels Salad, Tomato Pie, Best of All Worlds Apple Pie, and After Show Bourbon Punch! Please stay tuned for those over the coming weeks, because I will definitely be sharing them! I have been saying for years that shaved Brussels sprouts make the best salads, and everyone has been saying I’m crazy. But Beth Brown Ables has sanctioned them and now I have a cookbook to point to!!!!