10:30am Doors Open
11am Book Talk
12pm Tasting & Tour
(bite-size tastings & drinks included in ticket)

Barrett presents the convivial and delicious Cook & Celebrate. Barrett takes readers from the Commonwealth of Virginia, down to the Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, over to Mobile Bay, and on jaunts in between to showcase the favorite dishes (and the stories behind them) that Southerners use to fete the holidays, and one another. Memories abound with Hoppin’ John and collards at New Year’s, fried chicken and potato salad on Independence Day, sweet, cloud-like coconut cakes at Easter, and the veritable Tom Turkey and cornbread dressing which crown dining tables at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Barrett shares these recipes, along with 100+ more, while introducing in each chapter friends and loved ones along the way. And besides their enthusiasm for the holidays, Southerners, with their ingrained sense of graciousness, are also known for toasting life and one another with a variety of appetizing affairs. Barrett relates herein with a sampling of delightful soirees and dinners, some as casual as a fish-fry to others with four courses and your grandmother’s silver and china. Cook & Celebrate is a wonderful, delectable, and nostalgic read that will invoke warm, festive memories and inspire you to celebrate life in the kitchen.

If you were to look at the road map of my life, the starting point was in the small town of Perry, Georgia almost 60 years ago.  Life was simple, but for the most part sweet: I was raised on farm-to-table food, fishing and hunting were year-round sports, and my family – though filled with its quirks and sometimes Southern gothic eccentricities – a loving one.  My father, the baby of his family, married my mother late in life, and I didn’t come along until fifteen years after that union – so a great deal of my life was spent around older adults.  My first cousins on Daddy’s side were well into their thirties when I was born; I referred to them all as my ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ growing up because, being a polite Southerner, there was no way I could call them by their first names.

That exposure, along with being a seventh-generation Georgian, gave me a sincere appreciation of tradition, and a real sense of place – which comes across in each of my three books.  In those pages, stories and recipes are shared that comprise a six-decade culinary journey with friends and family.  As you read through them, you will hopefully get a number of good laughs – I can make a great deal of fun of myself – and I wish as well, in the rather reflective passages where a bit of sorrow is shared, that your memories are sparked about the blessings you have had in life.

Besides writing, professionally I am a CPA, and have worked as a nonprofit executive for the past three decades.  These days I have the honor of serving as the Executive Director of Development for the State Botanical Garden at the University of Georgia in Athens. Married for almost ten years to my husband Tom, we have been together for 33 turns around the sun.  Home is a brick, stone, and stucco cottage on three acres in rural Winterville, Georgia – along with our best friend, Max, a twenty-pound schnauzer I found wandering in traffic back in 2014.