Description: A Wine Dinner Book Event Featuring
Amy Goldman:
"The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table"Consider the supermarket tomato: cheap, perfectly shaped, and travels from Sonora to Saratoga with nary a blemish. But while impressive as a feat of agricultural engineering, that dull red orb is often barren, flavorless, and devoid of both poetry and personality.
There's no comparison between these factory fruit and the vibrant specimens depicted in The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table, a splendid new guide to the wondrous variety of real tomatoes.
Just in time for their seasonal peak, Amy Goldman, gifted grower, devoted horticultural preservationist, and author of the acclaimed Melons for the Passionate Grower and The Compleat Squash, visits the National Press Club to present her new book, The Heirloom Tomato, which celebrates the glorious diversity of the "World's Most Beautiful Fruit." Again, she teams up with renowned still-life photographer Victor Schrager to create a compendium that's at once practical, beautiful, and inspiring, with images that harken back to the great tradition of botanical art and illustration, leavened with a cheeky, modern sensibility.
At this special event, Goldman will discuss the tomato's wild origins in South America, and the often quirky labors of love produced by modern heirloom growers. She'll offer hands-on information for handling the fruit from seed to stovetop, including expert gardening tips, such as using only lukewarm water on seeds and seedlings; the Club's Fourth Estate Restaurant will prepare a selection of Goldman's mouthwatering recipes from the book, utilizing organic produce provided by the local Tuscarora Organic Grower's Cooperative.
Amy Goldman has won numerous prestigious awards for her heirloom vegetables, and has been profiled in The New York Times, House and Garden, Martha Stewart Living, Good Housekeeping, and Organic Gardening. Every summer she grows hundreds of different varieties of heirloom vegetables at her home in New York's Hudson Valley, opening her garden to the public each year, and sharing the fruits of her labor in NYC's Union Square Greenmarket.
The event begins at 6:30 PM and includes a discussion, Q&A and a five-course dinner with five complementing wines and a book signing. As a fundraiser for the nonprofit Eric Friedheim Library at the NPC, no outside books are permitted. Thank you for your cooperation.
Cost: Members $70 Non Member $93
(includes tax and gratuity)
The Fourth Estate Restaurant
at the National Press Club
529 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
Call 202-662-7638 or e-mail fourthestate@press.org for reservations
(Credit card number required.)
Sponsored by:Book and Author Committee
Location: 4th Estate Restaurant
Description: For several decades, there has been a movement within the Roman Catholic Church seeking the ordination of women into the priesthood. Canon law continues to exclude women from church leadership, a position that Popes Paul VI and John Paul II reinforced in numerous encyclicals. Buried in the present debate is the fact that, for over a decade in the seventeenth century, a woman unofficially but openly ran the Vatican. Now, Eleanor Herman, author of Sex with the Queen, tells the story of this woman, Olimpia Maidalchini, sister-in-law and reputed mistress of the indecisive Pope Innocent X. Beginning in 1644 and for eleven years after, Maidalchini directed Vatican business, appointed cardinals, negotiated with foreign ambassadors, and helped herself to a heaping portion of the treasury of the Papal States. Knowing of Pope Innocent's absolute dependence on his sister-in-law, Cardinal Alessandro Bichi angrily declared on the day of his election, "We have just elected a female pope." Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino bewailed the "monstrous power of a woman in the Vatican."
This event is open to the press and the public and free of charge, however space is limited and reservations are required. "Mistress of the Vatican" will be available for purchase and signing by the author at the event. As a fundraiser for the Eric Friedheim National Journalism Library, outside books are not permitted. RSVP at opus@press.org.
Sponsored by:Eric Friedheim National Journalism Library at the NPC
Location: Ballroom
