Vegetarian blogger to appear at Aspen Drive Library June 5
Michael Natkin, software engineer, long-time vegetarian, creator of a wildly popular food blog and now cookbook author, will be presenting his recently released vegetarian cookbook "Herbivoracious" at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 5 at the Aspen Drive Library in Vernon Hills.
Some of the most creative minds in the kitchen and the most exhilarating new voices in food writing come from the world of blogs.
Michael Natkin, creator of the wildly popular Herbivoracious.com is no exception. Except for the fact that at the same time, he was also a software engineer who at one time programmed a Tyrannosaurus Rex for Steven Spielberg!
Natkin's journey as a cook began when he only 18 years old. His mother was dying from breast cancer and was trying a macrobiotic diet to see if it would help. He learned how to cook meals for his family and quickly discovered his passion for cooking. Over the years he worked in a beautiful Zen Buddhist farm kitchen in California and traveled the world, but gradually settled into a career as a software engineer, making dinosaurs for "Jurassic Park" and animation software for Adobe. Yet he still found time to cook, travel and intern at restaurants.
As a way to fulfill his love of cooking, Natkin started his food blog, Herbivoracious.com in 2007 and quickly gained a huge following with a current count of over 100,000 visitors a month.
The blog, which combines Natkin's passion of bringing bold flavors and good culinary technique to vegetarian dishes, has been featured on Saveur Magazine's "Sites We Love" list, appeared numerous times in the New York Times "Diner's Journal" blog and has been recommended by Gourmet Live, Apartment Therapy and many other lifestyle and food blogs. All that positive publicity prompted Harvard Common Press to approach Natkin about turning his innovative recipes into a cookbook and "Herbivoracious: A Vegetarian Cookbook for People Who Love to Eat" was born. This 368-page, beauty-of-a-book is filled with 150 original recipes and 80 stunning photos that will bring out the cook in all of us. Each recipe contains extra ingredients for meal planning tips, the history and background of dishes, clear and easy-to-follow instructions, serving guidance and feedback from "Herbivoracious" blog readers.
Michael Natkin lives in Seattle, Wash., with his wife and two daughters. As of March 2012, Natkin has left the world of software to become fully committed to food and plans on developing a small, innovative restaurant in the future.
This free event is open to the public but registration is required. To register, call (847) 362-2330 or visit webres.cooklib.org. Cookbooks for signing will be available for purchase courtesy of Lake Forest Bookstore.