Rebecca DeLatin represents one of the silver linings of the fire that destroyed our home last August.
When we ended up in a rental, we never dreamed of the impact our new neighbors would have on our lives. The DeLatins have been the perfect combination of fun, smarts, kindness and humor during this strange temporary time and place of our lives. They’re the kind of neighbors who make life better. I suspect that they will be a part of our lives for years to come.
On Sunday afternoon, with her children spending the week with their grandparents in Acadiana, DeLatin told me she was looking forward to an afternoon of cooking and going to her Cookbook Club that evening. I told her that I’ve been wanting to be a part of a cookbook club, and within minutes, I was invited to join.
Since DeLatin was taking three dishes, I had a feeling there would be a gracious plenty — and I was not wrong. Darian Graivshark and Kos Kovtun hosted the event. The cookbook for the night was Molly Baz’s “Cook This Book.” Adrian Owen Jones recommended the book. As a vegetarian, she says Baz’s dishes are usually greater than the sum of their parts.
Molly Baz’s “Cook This Book” was the inspiration cookbook for the Baton Rouge-based “Cookbook Club” to host their July 19, 2026 meal.
“It’s so hard to find vegetable dishes that aren’t boring,” she said.
If nonboring vegetable dishes are the goal, she hit the jackpot Sunday night. The seven of us enjoyed 12 dishes. It was a feast.
Baz also has a knack for naming dishes: Piri-ish chicken, Pimento-ish cheese, One-pot chicken with schmalzy rice, Gingery squash and lentils, Smooshed and crispy potatoes with salt-and-vinegar sour cream.
Five women started this cookbook club in the spring. They meet every other month, choose a book, cook from it and eat what they made together.
I went expecting that DeLatin would be the only person I knew and was delighted that Owen Jones was there, along with Jamee Blink, whom I had also met briefly at one of my husband’s art shows.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how adults make new friends, inspired by watching my 20-something daughters build lives in new cities. I suspect the best friendships happen sideways. Follow a genuine interest, and you’ll find people who share it.
Maybe that works because it requires the time, energy and honesty to figure out what each of us is passionate about.
Even though I had just met the majority of people there, I felt comfortable enough to share my question of the day for everyone to answer. The question was simple. What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
The 12 dishes for The Cookbook Club’s July 19, 2026 meal in Baton Rouge were from Molly Baz’s “Cook This Book.” Dishes included: Piri-ish chicken, Pimento-ish cheese, One-pot chicken with schmalzy rice, Gingery squash and lentils, Farro and charred corn salad with salted almonds and queso fresco, Peach and tomato salad with sizzled halloumi, Smooshed and crispy potatoes with salt-and-vinegar sour cream and Blueberry cornflake crisp with vanilla ice cream.
We went around the table and learned something more about each person there. Sharing a meal sets the table, so to speak, for that kind of magic.
One person said the best advice she ever got came in the form of a question: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective?”
Another shared a grandfather’s advice: “The right thing is usually the hard thing, not the easy one.”
A parent said hers comes from somewhere in the parenting-advice ether: “They’re not giving you a hard time. They’re having a hard time.” Sometimes people are doing the best they can with whatever they’ve got in that moment.
Another shared the phrase she now lives by: “It’s a privilege to pay life taxes.” Missed flights, rude emails, a stranger who cuts in line — all of it filed under the tax owed for getting to live a full life in the first place.
I shared the best advice I ever got, which goes back to Reno, Nevada, where I lived in my 20s. One night, in a tiny apartment with an even tinier television that I almost never turned on, I caught the end of a comedian’s bit.
I wish I knew the comedian’s name, but I don’t. He told a story about a man in San Francisco who found a parking ticket on his Jeep Cherokee. The man stood on the sidewalk ranting, raving, yelling and cursing, flailing his arms with the ticket in hand. A skateboarder was coming down the hill toward him. As the skateboarder rolled past, he said, “Acknowledge, man, and move on,” and kept going.
I was 26, and that one sentence rearranged something in me.
Adrian Owen Jones, Janelle O’Dell and Jamee Blink, members of The Cookbook Club, finish preparations and take photos of their July 19, 2026 meal in Baton Rouge.
Why stew in yucky things? I’m going to get over them eventually anyway. Why not now?
We lost a lot of things in a house fire last year — that story is its own column, for another day. What we didn’t lose was any of this: friends made by accident, advice traded over a table crowded with good food and the reminder that most people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got.
Acknowledge it. Move on. Pass the potatoes.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com ’
