Emma of Miss Print and Nicole at The Book Bandit have started a new weekly feature called Monday Memories. To participate, all you have to do is take a photo of one of your books (or a library book that means a lot to you) and talk a bit about why it made an impression. Today I'm going to talk about The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book: Uncommon Recipes from the Celebrated Brooklyn Pie Shop by Emily Elsen and Melissa Elsen.
On Saturday I went to the Baltimore Book Festival for the first time. It was a gorgeous, sunny day on the Inner Harbor, with dozens of tents set up all around the waterfront to host author talks, panel discussions, signings and book sales. I took the train up with Sajda and Ashley from my DC Forever Young Adult book club, and we went to several panels together. I was most excited for the 4pm feature at the 'Food for Thought' stage.
The Elsen sisters founded a pie shop in Brooklyn (I've never been there, but I follow on Instagram), and a cookbook soon followed. I first heard about their cookbook through... blogging! In the past few years I've become the pie master (not an official title) at Thanksgiving, and I tend to perk up whenever I see a pie recipe or crust variation. Every year I live in genuine fear that my crust will turn out wrong, so anything that could help the cause is always of interest.
So, I was excited to see the Elsens in person. AND IT WAS AWESOME! They held a pie crust clinic right in front of us, took questions from the audience, and had a lovely volunteer named Laura (she's on the left side in that photo above) join them on the stage. I drank in the whole experience. During the presentation they served samples of their Bourbon Pear Crumble, and it was kind of unbelievably delicious.
Afterwards I had to have my newly-purchased copy of their cookbook signed (obviously!). Emily and Melissa are/were super sweet, and talked a bit with me about pie (again, obviously). I'm really looking forward to reading this cookbook cover-to-cover and trying out the recipes for myself. The day was a huge success, and this book signing and cooking demo were a huge part of it.
If you'd like to see more Monday Memories posts, head over to this week's link list.
