Talking with Her Mouth Full

When was the last time you had a really good piece of toast? Not that greasy white bread they throw next to your hash browns at the diner, but the hot, crunchy sink-your-teeth-into-it stuff that evokes cold mornings and warm childhood kitchens? In Talking with My Mouth Full: Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories, local food writer Bonny Wolf presents an ode to toast that will have you standing over your toaster, mouth watering, waiting for the familiar smell of “eau de toast” to come wafting out. She even includes a recipe.

A food commentator for NPR’s Weekend Edition, Wolf can turn even seemingly mundane subjects into amusing and fact-filled journeys. Author Scott Turow, who wrote the foreword to Talking with My Mouth Full, calls her essays “sneaky-serious.” She can start with a bland bowlful of Jell-O and suddenly she’s riffing on Ellis Island, bell-bottoms, and funeral molds.

Wolf says that she’s always been fascinated by food and its place in the world. “It’s a great window through which to look at cultural, economic, political and social change,” she says. “I can’t think of an area of life food doesn’t touch.”  Imagine a wedding — or a funeral or a holiday — without food. “It’s how we celebrate AND mourn,” she notes. “Whether it’s with latkes for Hanukkah or a yule log at Christmas, it’s the way we make connections.”

Wolf deftly explores those connections—with warmth, humor, and a wealth of knowledge—in her new collection of essays and recipes. She examines disappearing trends, such as food flambé and family dinners (“June Cleaver has left the building,” she wryly observes). She reveals the history of shad in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and the science that makes a popover pop. She discourses on the sociological implications of aprons. “I may be one of the few women to still have a kitchen drawer dedicated solely to aprons,” she confesses.

The recipe that accompanies her apron essay reveals why she needs such a big supply. It’s for the fried chicken that her friend Stephanie serves up “for just about anyone who walks past her house on his or her way to watch the fireworks at the US Capitol.” According to Wolf, the preparation “takes the better part of a day, several aprons, and a shampoo.”

The Fourth of July feast is just one of many Capitol Hill references in the book. A 21-year-resident, Wolf maintains that she “would live nowhere else in the city. The Hill seems like a small town with the Eastern Market as the town square. I love living in a place where I know the merchants, they know my son, my neighbors are my friends, and I rarely have to get in a car to get where I’m going.” She is, in fact, on such close terms with the vendors at Eastern Market—many of whom are mentioned in the book—that several attended her publication party.

Wolf grew up in Minnesota, has lived in Texas, loves Mexico, revels in Baltimore, and seizes any opportunity to visit Amish country. These and other locales — as well as their distinctive cuisines — figure in her essays. But, as a recent book tour revealed, home is where you stir your soup. “The Midwest was particularly nice for me because it’s where many of my food memories come from,” she says, but “these stories seem to touch a nerve without geographical boundaries.”

Maybe that’s why she always comes back to Capitol Hill. More than just the fresh poultry at Eastern Market, it’s about the people. She and her husband, Michael Levy, recently co-hosted a Literary Feast dinner with Stephanie and David Deutsch—one of many meals she has shared with friends and neighbors on the Hill. “After September 11, as the Pentagon still smoldered, a group of us ate together every night for a week,” she writes. “It seemed the natural thing to do.”

Wolf also appreciates the generosity that seems to come so naturally here. She reports that, within days of its opening, the new Marvelous Market had set aside a shelf for Mothers on the Hill and the Capitol Hill Group Ministry to solicit Thanksgiving baskets for families in need. “It was already piled with donations,” she says, providing yet “another reason I stay on the Hill.”

Signed copies of Talking with My Mouth Full are available at Riverby Books and the Trover Shop.

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DC PUBLIC LIBRARIES
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Capitol Hill Mystery Book Club
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PEN/Faulkner
PEN/Malamud Award Memorial Reading
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Dec. 8, 8 p.m.
Folger Poetry
Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute Reading
Carolyn Forché
Dec. 11, 7:30 p.m.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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Books & Beyond
Charles W. Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic: The Republican Party and the Southern Question, 1869-1900
Dec. 11, noon
Poetry Readings
“Florida Poets Arrive!”: Roselyn Y. Cole, Kay Day and Dorothy K. Fletcher
Dec. 5, noon
Henri Cole, Liam Rector and Judith Harris
Dec. 7, 6:45 p.m.

CAPITOL HILL BOOKS
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Second Saturday: discounts on books; wine & cheese 4-7 p.m.
December’s Dead Author Program (extra 20 percent off) features Ayn Rand

RIVERBY BOOKS
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202-543-4342
‘A Space Inside’ Reading Series
Mary Ann Larkin and Patric Pepper (poetry)
Dec. 27, 7 p.m.
Book Signing: Jean Nordhaus, Innocence
Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m.