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Book Signing: Placer County Real Food

Presented by Once Upon A Shelf Used Books at Once Upon A Shelf Used Books

June 18, 2011

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It is 6pm when four guests arrive for dinner at Joanne Neft’s hillside home near Auburn, California. The brick walk descends through an old olive grove high above the American River. Neft’s garden is alive with flowering jasmine, hollyhocks, dwarf citrus trees, thunderhead pine, Japanese maple, chrysanthemums, and dahlias. But the guests aren’t noticing these; they are noticing the mix of food fragrances that seep from open windows. There are bass notes of roast chicken, mid-range perfumes of polenta and prosciutto, and—hovering brightly above the rest—the sweet-spicy tang of fig. The guests can’t name these aromas. They know only this: The 73-year-old Neft has launched a cookbook project to promote the fruits, vegetables, and meats grown in all seasons by the family farmers of the Sierra Nevada foothills. And they know this night will be one of a kind. The cookbook is called Placer County Real Food Cookbook: Recipes & Menus for Every Week of the Year.

Most people in Placer County who had an inkling about Neft’s activities in 2009 knew that Monday night at her house was Real Food Cookbook night. The project provided four to six guests per week a sampling of the book’s recipes. The idea for the dinner-party taste-tests emerged in early January when, recipe development having only begun, Neft wondered how to ignite a marketing buzz around the new book. While tasting the first batch of recipes with her co-writer and chef Laura Kenny, she realized she had right around her the tools for a great marketing campaign. The next day she emailed 220 friends and acquaintances announcing that for 51 weeks she’d be testing cookbook recipes in her dining room. Everyone was invited for dinner—though only four to six at a time. A week later, reservation list already full, the first guests sat down to the second Real Food Cookbook meal of 2009.

The book culminates Neft’s lifelong dedication to eating locally. “A friend of mine once told me she loves going to the farmers market but doesn’t know how to cook everything she finds there,” she says. “This book is my answer to her. Incorporating only a few ingredients each, the recipes are very simple and yet full of flavor. My hope is that if more people know how to enjoy the food grown right here on our doorsteps, we’ll all be eating healthier, tastier foods, and the farmers will continue farming as they have here in the Sierra Nevada foothills for the past 100 years.”

Come meet have your copy of the book signed at this special event!