FREEPORT – You can have your book and eat it, too – things will be that whimsical at the first Edible Books Festival, Wednesday, April 16, at the Freeport Community Library.
Both children and adults will take part, and organizers are hoping for a big turnout as Freeport makes its initial foray into an event that combines reading and culinary “disciplines.” From 10 a.m.-5:45 p.m., the large meeting room of the library will be open for contestants to bring in their entries. The public is invited from 6-7:30 p.m. to vote for a winner.
“After the people vote, we eat the entries,” said organizer Suanne Williams-Lindgren of Freeport, who has taken part in similar festivals at the Portland Public Library. “Anybody who shows up can dig in.”
All those attending the festival will have the opportunity to cast their votes for the best entry in the five categories: Wittiest, Most Creative, Most Literary, Most Appealing and Best in Show.
Williams-Lundgren said she has lived in Freeport for many years, and wanted people in town to get in on this fun. She spoke with Belinda Stewart and Beth Edmonds at the library.
“We met several months ago to start playing with the idea,” Williams-Lindgren said. “You think of your favorite book or poem and you create an edible piece that most represents your book or the poem you’re interested in.”
Last year, Williams-Lindgren created an edible likeness of “Life of Pi,” by Yann
Martel. Martel’s novel is about an Indian boy who survives 227 days stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
Williams-Lindgren’s “Life of Pi” was about apple pie, and she conceptualized the pie in its glorious cycles. The first showed a pie plate in with a lump of dough. The second showed an unbaked apple pie, the third showed a baked pie, the fourth a pie with a big wedge missing and the fifth was just crumbs.
“Then I took the pie dough and I wrote, ‘Life of Pi,’” she said. “What immediately comes to mind is the life cycle of a pie.”
Children at last year’s Edible Books Festival in Portland used Twinkies to make “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.”
This year, Williams-Lindgren will overflow a bowl with Chinese chicken wings, referencing the Sue Monk Kidd novel, “The Inventions of Wings.”
“We’re getting a lot of people interested,” Williams-Lindgren said. “We have some verbal commitments, and some registrations. The response is just wonderful.”
Stephen Farrand of Freeport is putting his artistic talents to work in his Edible Books entry. Farrand, who teaches Latin at Chewonki School in Wiscasset, is creating Greek spanakopita that looks like an ancient book.
“I’ll roll the ends of the filo so it looks like an ancient scroll,” he said.
Farrand said he became interested in the festival while browsing on the library website.
“I will admit, I like to play with my food,” he said. “I’ve been interested in cooking since I was a kid, and I have a big collection of cook books. It occurred to me that books are a storehouse, or repository, of culture, and food is the same thing.”
A COSER LOOK
The Edible Books Festival is Wednesday, April 16, from 6-7:30 p.m., at the Freeport Community Library. Participants are invited to submit a prepared dish, based on a book or a poem, to be judged. There will be separate voting for kids and adult creations. For more information or to register, email Bartolediblebooks@gmail.com. For ideas, see www.books2eat.com.
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