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F ³: Beach Read


One of the books I took to the beach this year was this one. Old Line Plate: Readers’ Collection, by Kara Mae Harris.
 

It’s a collection of pieces originally published on her blog of the same name. Harris writes about food with Maryland origins and digs into the history of how it came to be. Imagine an engaging mix of storytelling, history, with the recipes to back it all up. 

Because it’s a collection of shorter pieces, it’s easy to dip into for a taste of this and that as you sit by the pool or under a beach umbrella. You don’t need to read the whole thing in one go. So far I’ve enjoyed stories about a prize-winning recipe called Broiled Chicken Deluxe, the History of Crab Cakes, the origins of snowball flavorings, and the lineage of something called a Hard Jelly Cake. 

What I like most about Ms. Harris work is that she describes herself as a learner rather than an expert.

Old Line Plate:

Exploring the foodways and cooking traditions of Maryland. Old Line Plate is NOT about romanticizing the past. I'm still learning about history and about cooking and this blog is essentially a documentation of that process.

Corrections are welcome.

And she doesn’t just do the research, she tries the recipes, too - - reporting to the reader what worked and what didn’t, and what she’d change if she made it again.

From the bio on her website:

I grew up in PG County. In 2000, at 18, I moved to Baltimore, where I soon took up residence at the Pratt Library's Maryland Department. I started Old Line Plate in 2011 but took a hiatus from the blog to build my Maryland Recipe Database. In 2015 | re-launched the Old Line Plate blog and... here I am! In 2022 | self-published my first book "Old Line Plate: Stories & Recipes from Maryland," followed by "Festive Maryland Recipes: Holiday Traditions from the Old Line State" in 2023.

You can find Harris/Old Line Plate on Twitter @old_line_plate and on Instagram at old_line_plate. You can purchase the Reader’s Collection through her blog or on Amazon, as well as her previous books. 

Whats your favorite summer read so far this year?

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