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Literary Bites (free online; in-person requires ticket)

"Like Wafers in Honey" by Leah Eskin

Join us, either online (free) or in person (ticketed) at No Thyme to Cook, to discuss and digest a culinary book. This month, we're reading "Like Wafers in Honey" by Leah Eskin. Register to attend virtually at no cost. In-person attendance at No Thyme to Cook in Solomons requires a paid ticket and includes dinner that is based on the book!

*Registration for the virtual program is free; you will receive an email the week of November 16, 2026, with login information.*

**In-person attendance at No Thyme to Cook in Solomons includes dinner that complements the theme of the book and requires a paid ticket registration. 
To register & pay for in-person attendance, please click on the link:

https://www.simpletix.com/e/november-literary-bites-like-wafers-in-hon-tickets-294652

The story opens in the town of Pitigliano, Italy, once called Little Jerusalem for its vibrant, centuries-old Jewish community. But in 1943 Mussolini has enacted anti-Jewish laws across Italy, and  Stella Fortuna's struggles to maintain any sense of their former life. Then one night a neighbor comes to their door and tells them “You must leave now. You’re in grave danger.” The Nazis have arrived to help the Fascists of Italy enact their own Final Solution.

Stella Fortuna escapes into the woods below Pitigliano with her two older brothers and younger sister.. What follows is a desperate months-long flight. Stella finds temporary and precarious shelter with sympathetic, but fearful families in the countryside, dodging the ever-closer Fascists in pursuit. Meanwhile, she dreams of romance, the comforts of home, and the food that was not just her mother’s love, but the delicious expression of an entire culture in danger.

In a separate timeline, Edda Servi Machlin is a housewife in 1960s Westchester trying to make sense of a new culture, as well as the “spaghetti and meatballs” food that passes for Italian cuisine. With caustic wit, we see twentieth-century America through an immigrant’s eyes, someone who can never return to her former home because it no longer exists. Someone who comes to understand that it might be up to her to preserve the indelible flavors of an Italian-Jewish way of life that is in danger of extinction, as her family once was.

In between these two remarkable stories are more than forty recipes updated for today's cooks.

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