Live! from the Library: Adventures in Produce: The Rewards of Growing and Cooking Weird Fruit and Veggies

REGISTER> With spring planting season around the corner, Live! from the Library offers inspiration — and audience samples — designed to inspire you to be a more adventurous gardener and cook. Emily Murphy loves to grow purslane and Thai basil in her Marin County garden. Laura McLively loves to create recipes for sea beans and fiddleheads. These two nationally respected experts explain why the Bay Area is one of the best places in the world to grow and cook with unusual fruits and veggies. In addition to sharing their passion, they’ll share tips, secrets, recipes and some hilarious stories about their walk on the wild side of the produce aisle. REGISTER>

Emily Murphy: The author describes “Grow What you Love: 12 Food Plant Families to Change your Life,” as “a love story disguised as a book.” The Mill Valley botanist, organic gardener and teacher learned to love growing and “food-making” at the side of her Italian grandmother, whose family homesteaded in the Sonoma Hills. She strives for simplicity and believes that almost anything can serve as a planter. She has made numerous appearances at gardening programs and demonstrated her philosophy recently on “The Today Show.

Laura McLively, RD: When Laura was a freshman at UC Berkeley she discovered the Berkeley Bowl grocery store and became a fan for life. After graduating with a degree in nutrition, she started the “My Berkeley Bowl” blog creating recipes for the store’s vast inventory. A local publisher was so impressed they approached her about a cookbook. “The Berkeley Bowl Cookbook” was published in 2018. She recently demonstrated her recipe for “Lemongrass Coconut Ice Cream” at the Google kitchen.

Live! from the Library, produced by the Walnut Creek Library Foundation, features free public lectures, literary events, and cultural programs at the Walnut Creek and Ygnacio Valley libraries. Program sponsors are the East Bay Times, Friends of the Walnut Creek Library, and MinutemanPress Lafayette. For more information about this and other Walnut Creek Library Foundation programs, please visit www.wclibrary.org or call 925.935.5395.