November Book Club

** Registration will open 9/1/24.

Join Ginger and the team for a lively discussion on this month’s food themed book, Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes, by Chantha Nguon.

Food and drink will be available for purchase during the event and a complimentary snack from the book will be served.

Book Club is a free event. No ticket is necessary but RSVPs are required.

Visit Old Firehouse Books in Old Town to purchase your book – Book Club books purchased at Old Firehouse the month before or month of book club receive a 20% discount for being a part of the Ginger and Baker Book Club!

More about Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes, by Chantha Nguon:

In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodia refugee who lost everything and everyone—her house, her country, her parents, her siblings, her friends—everything but the memories of her mother’s kitchen, the tastes and aromas of the foods her mother made before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart in the 1970s, killing millions of her compatriots. Nguon’s irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this emotional and poignant but also lyrical and magical memoir that includes over 20 recipes for Khmer dishes like chicken lime soup, banh sung noodles, pâté de foie, curries, spring rolls, and stir-fries. For Nguon, recreating these dishes becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother.

From her idyllic early years in Battambang to hiding as a young girl in Phnom Penh as the country purges ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family, from her escape to Saigon to the deaths of mother and sister there, from the poverty and devastation she experiences in a war-ravaged Vietnam to her decision to flee the country. We follow Chantha on a harrowing river crossing into Thailand—part of the exodus that gave rise to the name “boat people”—and her decades in a refugee camp there, until finally, denied passage to the West, she returns to a forever changed Cambodia. Nguon survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture-nurse treating refugees abused by Thai authorities, and weaving silk. Through it all, Nguon relies on her mother’s “slow noodles” approach to healing and to cooking, one that prioritizes time and care over expediency. Haunting and evocative, Slow Noodles is a testament to the power of culinary heritage to spark the rebirth of a young woman’s hopes for a beautiful life.

If you are looking to dive into next month’s delicious read, in December we will be reading, Ammu: Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul, by Asma Khan.

Ammu is a collection of recipes from Asma Khan’s childhood, her Indian family kitchen. It is a celebration of where she comes from, of home cooking, and the inextricable link between food and love. It is also a chance for Asma to honor her ammu—mother—and to share with us the recipes that made her and rooted her to home.

This book is a joyful celebration of memories of food, and its power to heal, restore, and comfort. It includes her ammu’s comfort food from childhood, the recipes with which she was taught to cook, celebratory food for special occasions, and slow-cooked recipes passed through the generations of her family.

The recipes and the memories she shares all possess something that is universal: food is a way for us to have this conversation about how similar we all are—how it connects us and unites us beyond differing appearances, accents, races and backgrounds.