Appetite for Consumption

Delicious things happen when more than a handful of women get together on the regular to talk all things food and fiction. A native Canadian, film industry veteran Alison Vukojevic arrived in 2008 from Toronto with her oil-industry husband and soon replicated, with her neighbors in Baton Rouge, the monthly book club she had enjoyed up north.

But when the book club bloomed to 10 members, their monthly meetings turned into ever-more-elaborate dinners—at first inspired by that month’s book, then branching off into Southern classics like De Soto exploring the endless oxbows of the Mighty Mississippi.

After a year of the book club, Vukojevic solicited recipes from each member to publish A Southern Appetite for Reading, a breezy cookbook that reads like a yearbook for each recipe the group tried in 2010.

“We just kept coming back to Southern dishes,” Vukojevic says. “Lots of seafood.”

Many are familiar classics. You have your cheese grits and brisket, your cornbread and your shrimp & crab bisque. But adventurous fare like upside-down tamale pie, roasted tomato tarts and a cinnamon, banana and pineapple-studded hummingbird cake make the plate, too.

“It’s been a great way for me to meet people and also to learn about the South, which we love,” Vukojevic says. “Down here you quickly forget the cold and snow and learn to embrace the heat.”

A Southern Appetite for Reading is available for purchase at booksmart.com.