Cookbook Club featuring Chef Camille Becerra's Bright Cooking: Sustainable Eating from Farm to Kitchen
Celebrate Spring by connecting with the earth and local food experts for an evening focused on sustainable, seasonal, local eating featuring Chef Camille Becerra. Learn food sourcing and cooking tips from farmers, chefs, and sustainability experts. After a panel talk, we'll mingle over light, farm-fresh bites from Chef Becerra's book, Bright Cooking. Put what you learned into action by volunteering to lead or planning to attend a community Farmer’s Market Field Trip.
Our Letters from the Table cookbook club is a growing community of folks who love to cook and gather. If food is your love language, this is the place for you.
What to Expect:
This month, we’ll be cooking and sharing dishes from Camille Becerra’s cookbook, Bright Cooking. We’re honored to have Chef Becerra joining us for the evening to share her expertise and ethos for creating flavorful, beautiful, sustainable plant-based meals!
Our sustainable food panel will feature:
Camille Bercerra, Chef and Author, Bright Cooking
Claire Matern, Founder of JONI
Anina von Haeften, Co-founder of Farm to People
Jess Vetterli, Founder of Simply Sustainable
Moderator: Sonia Ketkar, Co-Founder of CoSee
If you want to join a Farmers' Market Field Trip, we'll have a list of NYC farmers’ markets available so you can find the one that works best for you. Make a plan to meet up with other attendees or friends. Use it as an opportunity to shop together, sharing tips and building relationships with the farmers and local food producers at your neighborhood market.
Rough Agenda:
6:00pm: Gather. Grab a JONI Verjus Mocktail or N/A wine from Third Place Bar to Sip.
6:30pm: Learn from the Experts in our Sustainable Food Panel.
7:15pm: Learn Fresh Techniques for Seasonal Cooking in a Cooking Demo with Recipes from Bright Cooking.
7:45pm: Share a Potluck Meal of Fresh Bites from Bright Cooking with Produce from Farm to People. Mingle.
8:30pm: Make a Local, Seasonal Food Shopping Plan. Find a Friend for a Farmer’s Market Field Trip Before You Leave.
How to Prepare:
Sign up to attend
Select a recipe from the featured cookbook: Bright Cooking
Check out a copy from your local library, buy a copy, or find one of the recipes from the book online.
If you aren't able to get the cookbook and cook ahead of time, bring something that would make a nice addition to a charcuterie/crudité board.
Add the Element or Dish you plan to bring to the recipe sign up sheet along with any dietary notes. Dishes are listed in the 2nd tab. Our goal will be to create a giant crudite board/grazing table so that we can explore the flavors of Chef Becerra's Elements alongside Farm to People produce.
Bring the sauce or dish you created ready to share with serving utensils. A microwave is available for reheating your dish if needed.
We'll have plates, cups, and silverware on hand.
Meet Our Featured Guests & Partners:
Chef Camille Becerra
[bio coming soon]
Anina von Haeften, Farm to People
Anina is Co-Founder and Creative Director of Farm To People. Farm To People delivers the farmer’s market straight to your doorstep in NYC. Their mission is to make it easier to eat well at home by curating farm shares and a marketplace with the best seasonal, local produce, sustainable meat and fish, and ethical grocery staples. Experience Farm to People by placing your order from their website or visiting their beautiful restaurant and event space in Bushwick.
Jess Vetterli, Simply Sustainable
Jess is the founder of Simply Sustainable, an education platform and community on sustainable living. Her love of the environment came from her upbringing in California where she spent a lot of time outside and in nature. After studying climate change in college, she became committed to life-long involvement in climate action. Her career in climate includes being a sustainable seafood educator at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, management consulting for environmental orgs, business development for a SaaS climate startup, and founding a zero-waste CPG business. She started Simply Sustainable to provide the tools, resources and community that she wishes she had when she started her journey. It's built on the belief that individuals have the power to change the world for the better. Jess will also be pursuing a Masters in Climate and Society at Columbia this fall.
Claire Matern, JONI
JONI celebrates verjus. Verjus is pronounced vair-joo. Think "vert jus" in French. And it means just that. Verjus translates to green juice. It's the juice of the grapes that are picked before harvest. Vines are culled about 6 weeks before a wine harvest to make some elbow room for the grapes that will be wine to stretch out, plump up, and get those sugars activated. The pre-harvest grapes traditionally have been pressed and enjoyed as a drink and used in cooking.
Claire grew up in the food industry in New York City. Her family owned a cheese and specialty food store for 20 years and her mission has always been to take the “overwhelm” out of cooking, take food and ingredients off a pedestal, and make cooking inspiring and something you celebrate getting to do rather than feeling like it’s something you have to do.
Sonia Ketkar, CoSee
Sonia is a data product consultant who leads the development of tech-driven solutions for corporate clients. She also writes a newsletter and hosts a podcast, both titled 'Where Data meets Business'. Personally, she has a passion for sustainability and deep interest in the role of food supply chains in climate and health. Previously, she launched a platform for helping consumers make local and green food choices from buying and storing food to disposing it. Currently, she is Co-Founder of CoSee, a soon to be launched space for sustainable and responsible food and other products.
Third Place Bar
Third Place Bar NYC is a series of alcohol-free pop-up bar events in New York City founded by Sam Bail in late 2022. The goal of Third Place Bar is to provide an environment for people to socialize and connect without feeling the pressure to drink - whether they’re just not drinking for the night, taking some time off, or are on a longer alcohol-free journey.
Meet Your Hosts:
Letters from the Table
Letters from the Table is a collection of love letters to people, places & times that changed us. It is a place where sensory memories are expressed through recipes. Most importantly, it is an invitation to the table — to experience intensely personal perspectives expressed through food and to share your own.Sign up for the newsletter to receive periodic letters, recipes, and atmospheric content.
We host our cookbook club events as members of the Cookbook Club NY community, which Stephh Lau started to spread the joy of hosting cookbook clubs. Join her Discord group to learn about other Cookbook Club chapters and events!
Joni Goldbach
Joni, the creator of Letters from the Table, is a fractional Product leader supporting business leaders and teams in reaching their goals and creating meaningful experiences for their customers. She is passionate about finding and creating moments of connection in her work and through passion projects like Letters from the Table.
Johnny Kamal
Johnny is a Lebanese data engineer who immigrated to the US thirteen years ago and grew up in a food-forward household, so cooking was his best way to stay in touch with his culture. He is determined to bring happiness to as many people as possible one bake at a time, and is determined to bring people from different cultures and backgrounds together through our one common language: Food.
Fabrik
Welcome to Fabrik! We are on a mission to uplift communities and foster serendipitous connections in real life.
Fabrik is a home for communities where everyone has a place to belong. With spaces designed to feel more like your living room than your office, Fabrik’s third spaces are vibrant hubs where people can come together in real life, explore interests, forge meaningful connections, and build a sense of community.
If you'd like to come early and work for the day, day passes are available for $29 here. And if you'd like to become a member, use Referral Code FROMTHETABLE at check-out to save $49 on your 1st month of Fabrik membership.
Event FAQ
Do I have to cook and bring a dish to share?
This is a potluck event designed for folks who love to cook and explore the perspectives, cultures and history shared through cookbooks, but we get it. Schedules get busy, and it's not always possible to cook something for a weekday event. In a pinch, pick up something to share that fits the theme. As Ina Garten says, "store-bought is fine"!
How do you handle allergies and food safety?
Cookbook Club events are potlucks where we share a meal of home-cooked dishes together. We expect attendees to use common sense food handling and storage when preparing for the event. We have a microwave and refrigerator on site for reheating or keeping food cool, but if you are worried about food safety or storage in transit, opt for bringing a dish that is safe to store and serve at room temperature.
We do everything that we reasonably can to make sure that all who come to our events have enough to eat and don’t leave hungry. Please reach out to us ahead of time if you have food allergies or dietary restrictions we should be aware of. On our recipe signup list, we ask that folks list allergens so that other attendees can plan ahead.
Can I receive a refund for my ticket?
We use RSVPs to plan for the number of attendees and ticket pricing to cover our costs in hosting. Unfortunately, we cannot grant refunds, but you are welcome to pass your ticket on to someone else.
Is there an age restriction?
Our events are 21+. We will have a selection of non-alcoholic and potentially lightly alcoholic beverages (think wine and beer) on hand to accompany our shared meals and enhance the experience. The goal is social lubrication, not inebriation. We aim to provide a safe and comfortable space where folks can connect. We wiill check IDs as needed, and folks who are displaying unwelcome behavior will be asked to leave.
The artwork in the event image is amazing! Who is the artist?
That's Still-life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber by Juan Sánchez Cotán (c. 1600) at the San Diego Museum of Art. Gorgeous, right?! The artist is known for establishing the bodegón style of still life exemplified here. If you're interested in learning more about the artist and trying a recipe inspired by his work, read this article from art historian Dr. Megan Fizell.
Where can I find more events like this?
Feeling the love? There are lots of other events coming up to keep those good vibes going.
Keep an eye on the Fabrik calendar for more upcoming gatherings in Tribeca and Dumbo. If you are free on Saturday, May 17th, join the Fabrik community in DUMBO for a Special Saturday Adventure.
Follow Letters from the Table on substack and on Instagram to be the first to know about our future events.
And… to find more Cookbook Club Chapters in the local NY/NJ community and beyond, sign up for Stephh’s Cookbook Club Community Discord! We’re just one of many fantastic local groups.
Please note: By signing up for this event you agree to receive email communication from us and from Fabrik related to this gathering and future offerings. You can unsubscribe at any time. Photos will be taken during the event for promotional purposes. By attending, you consent to your image being used in future marketing materials. If you have any concerns, please let us know.