Amigos and friends,
Today’s the day! I am looking forward to my new culinary memoir, Sobremesa: A Memoir of Food & Love in Thirteen Courses, making its way to the table and hearing what all of you think. I’m also looking forward to seeing some of you on my upcoming socially distant Reader meet Writer event with the SIBA, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, this Thursday, May 6th from 7 to 8 pm eastern time (details and ticket information can be found here). I am so grateful to be able to support—not to mention for the support of—independent book sellers during these challenging times. If you plan to purchase the book and are local to Pittsburgh, PA or Charleston, SC please consider ordering through the following: Blue Bicycle Books, Itinerant Literate Books, or Splurge in Fox Chapel, PA.
If you can’t make it this Thursday, I hope you'll tune in online for my Kitchen Counter Podcast with Roger Anderson or mi charla en Español con Gabriel Huertas on her podcast, Mujeres y Dinero, next week. I’m also looking forward to teaming up with the fabulously talented women of Farmer x Baker at Aspinwall Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh on the evening of Friday, July 9th to celebrate Argentina’s Independence Day—along with the release of Sobremesa and a sampling of the delicious dishes you can read within its pages. We are also planning a sobremesa-inspired farm dinner in Charleston this summer. Stay tuned for more information.
Sobremesa is set in between las pampas and the prairie—between my birthplace, Argentina, and hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both have been constant sources of inspiration for me. Another inspiration is my current adopted home of Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve always joked that I’m an Argentine girl who speaks Pittsburghese but thinks she’s Carolinian. Slowly and surely, my family and I are becoming locals. (Although I already felt as if I was.) My husband, Gastón and our kids have made me promise I am not going to start talking with a Southern drawl. I told them I’d do my best! For now.
Now has taken on a whole new meaning for all of us. If coronavirus has taught us anything, it’s that the time is now to make a change—to slowdown and stop putting off the important things and people until tomorrow—because as we've all been abruptly reminded, it’s not promised. The time is now to find our way back to making genuine connections, ones that start tableside, stomachs full, that transcend language, and at the heart of it all seek nothing more than to make us feel seen and heard for who we really are.
We could all use a little more sobremesa downtime in our lives. Because we all want to belong. Because food is so much more than sustenance. It’s the feel of a place. It’s the essence of a person. It’s something language can’t get to. It’s memories tucked away deep inside all of us, reminding us who we are and who we are meant to be. The longstanding, post-meal tradition of sobremesa is a reminder that life is meant to be savored and enjoyed daily, not just on special occasions. My wish this year is that we all make it back to the table with the people we love, and those we are meant to love—even if we don’t yet know it.
It’s an honor for me to share my coming-of-age, tableside gastronomic meditation with each and every one of you. And while it’s my story—I hope a part of it is yours too. I wrote Sobremesa for anyone who, like me, reads cookbooks like novels. For fans of arm-chair travel who’ve always dreamed of seeing and tasting their way through Argentina. For the women who, also like me, drank the Kool Aid that tells us it’s too late, even selfish, to change the course of our lives after the age of thirty-five. I wrote Sobremesa for the strong women in my family who have gone before me and helped make me the person I am today. Because I believe in the power of storytelling. I find courage and healing in other women's journeys. I hope mine will help you find the brave deep within yourself, or at least inspire you to roll up your sleeves and get back in the kitchen.
I look forward to connecting with you—online, in person or whatever way it will be in the coming weeks. In the meantime, be safe and well. And remember, the dishes can always wait.
¡Buen provecho! All my best,
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Josephine Caminos Oria
P.S. If curiosity got the best of you, here's Sobremesa's book trailer:
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“As a young girl, I enjoyed Josephine. But even more, I have loved meeting Josefina. I found myself transported to extraordinary middle places: Argentina and the United States, the ghostly limbos between life and death, youth and adulthood. Sobremesa reads like a cross between magical realism and the food section of the New York Times. Delicioso!”
“Sobremesa takes us inside Josephine’s kitchen where we get the chance to explore her unique culinary journey and her beloved Argentina. Josephine’s story tells us about a side of Argentine cuisine and eating culture that isn’t usually written about: the importance that family, friendship, delicious food, and vino have at the table. A delight to read that will warm your corazón.”
—ALLIE LAZAR, Argentina-Based Freelance Eater and Writer, Creator of Pick Up the Fork Food Blog
The memoir Sobremesa is a reminder of a slower time, an exuberant, passionate place, and love as vast as the Argentine pampas.
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In her upcoming culinary memoir, Sobremesa: A Memoir of Food & Love in Thirteen Courses (Scribe Publishing Company, May 4, 2021), Josephine Caminos Oría returns to relay a whole new revealing and illuminating chapter of her unconventional journey as a bicultural foodpreneur, mom and author who left behind a fifteen-year, C-level career to make dulce-de-leche—among
other dishes that, like Caminos Oría, are neither from here nor there but a blending of her dual, and sometimes dueling, nationalities. Sobremesa delves into the backstory of Caminos Oría’s deep-rooted, multi-generational love story and bicultural sense of otherness that she briefly
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