About

Cook Blub is a book club in Lincoln, Nebraska that's been continuously meeting since June 2014. Most meetings are hosted at the home of one of the members, typically the person who chose the book. A few Blubs have been held in restaurants, and starting in 2020 and continuing during the frigid Great Plains winters since, some have been held online using video conferencing software.

It started with the theme "books that blew your mind when you were in high school." After that round, the theme became "books written by non-old dead white male authors." Over a decade and almost a complete turnover in membership later, we don't have much of a theme anymore, but we always manage to come up with a new and interesting book to read!

However, one thing has never changed about Cook Blub: we like to eat tasty food! At times, the food even matches up with the book.

The food

Finding food to match the book is easier when you pick a cook book! I'm not sure we will ever match the grand Blub we held for Samin Nosrat's book Salt Fat Acid Heat. And there was a memorable summer evening when we enjoyed dishes from Spirit of the Harvest in Kena's mostly edible backyard. The Hundred-Year Walk by Dawn Anahid MacKeen was a great opportunity to try our hand at Armenian dishes.

Not all our dishes are so extravagant, however. We remember fondly the time that Misha served us buttered toast, the food that George Orwell dreamed about from the trenches in Homage to Catalonia. Elizabeth creatively handed us avocado door prizes for The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy. Not that many people were impressed with the mushy peas that made an appearance for The Rivers of London, although topically it was spot on. Similarly, John J acting as a tea monk for Becky Chambers's A Psalm for the Wild-Built brought the book to life.

Strangely, nobody really wanted to eat the food when Jess hosted The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum...

The guests

We have been privileged enough on several occasions to have a VIP attend Cook Blub. Notably, after Cassey mentioned reading her book on social media, author Dawn Anahid MacKeen called in to tell us about what it was like writing The Hundred-Year Walk and about how the situation in Syria had evolved since its publication. It was an amazing experience and we're very grateful to her.

We were also joined by the director of the Willa Cather Archive, Andy Jewell, who anwered all of our questions about Cather's The Professor's House. Unfortunately, he was unable to tell us what Cather's favorite color was. Seems like it ought to have come up in one of her thousands of letters the Cather Archive is transcribing, but alas!

There is no guest more special in our hearts, though, than when one of our far flung Cook Blub members returns to Lincoln for a visit! <3