Category: A book you didn’t get to read from last year’s challenge
Book Choice: The Thread Collectors by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman 📚
Recipe: Greek Roasted Potatoes 🥔
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hey hey welcome back to another episode of Flavor and Fiction the segment where I read a book for my 2025 reading challenge i give you a short review and I make a recipe related to the book so you get your flavor and your fiction this time the category was a book from last year’s challenge that I didn’t get to read and I chose The Thread Collectors by Shauna J edwards and Allison Richmond and the food one of the foods mentioned in the book was red pepper so I decided to make Greek roasted potatoes with red peppers so at the end of this video you’ll get to see how I made it and you’ll get to see of course my coworker Kevin give his uh trusted taste test but first let’s get into the book so the story takes place in 1863 New Orleans we have a young Creole woman named Stella and she’s been helping enslaved men uh go free and join the Union Army by embroidering the escape route in their clothing and one of the people she helped escape is her husband or lover uh William and they have a plan for him to come back and get her and for them to run off together but while he’s gone the man who had them both enslaved he has decided to keep Stella as a lover and um she notices that after you know every time he comes around um he will cuz he’s in the Confederate army and he will let things slip about the army’s location and their plans cuz he doesn’t consider her to be a threat he doesn’t think she can read or write so he doesn’t you know watch himself around her so she uses that information to help the Union Army a short time later she realizes that she is pregnant and it was so soon after William left she doesn’t know if he’s the father or if her enslaver is the father and she knows that if the baby comes out darker than her he will know that she has been with someone else and most likely kill her and the child so while all this is going down simultaneously there’s a Jewish woman in New York named Lily and she’s helping the Union Army by rolling bandages and she also makes quilts for the Union soldiers including her husband Jacob um she and her husband are very close and so when he doesn’t write to her in months she gets nervous and she decides to journey down south to find him against everyone’s wishes so what Stella and Lily both don’t know is that their husbands are actually in the uh army band together william is like a brilliant musician and Jacob wrote a song for Lily that he has turned into like the union rallying cry um and so we end up with two couples in three different locations all trying to find their way back to each other so both Stella and Lily have dangerous missions ahead while fighting for freedom and love and I would say that the main theme is um the strength of women to overcome diversity because while the men are out fighting the literal war they’re the ones at home having to um suffer and endure pain and tragedy and and family suffering and venture into dangerous territory in order to uh help the men that they love so this was an interesting read it was heavy of course given the subject matter um for me there were some ways that the story connected that weren’t always quite believable a little too convenient but overall it was a very good read and I do recommend it i listened to the audio book and um it helped kind of bring it to life so I do recommend that so now that I’ve told you a little about the book uh let me show you how I made these Greek potatoes and then you will hear Kevin giving his review you want to wash peel and chop 2 lb potatoes cut up one red pepper and put that in and then you’re going to add in your salt your olive oil and 1/4 of a lemon give it a good mix and then you want to put that on a baking sheet some olive oil do not put aluminum foil like I did and then while that’s in the oven for 25 minutes you want to mix up your paprika your garlic powder your black pepper onion powder ground cinnamon and oregano and a little spice mix like that mix it on up when it comes out the oven just pour this over it give it a good mix and then put it back in the oven for 10 minutes and it will come out looking like this and that’s where you want to put on your um your feta i put this in a container to take to work and more lemon and here is my finished product okay so here they are dang it it looks scrumptious i can tell it’s already good but I love some potatoes i’m going to put it in here cuz Oh that looks good i want that bite right there wait right there right there right there a little bit of pepper there we go that’s what I’m talking about taste the lemon you know what stands out the most the cinnamon oh
mhm um
I don’t know how I feel about that no it’s different it makes it different because I was expecting a regular potato with you know some um bit of cheese but to stand out but it’s the cinnamon um which is good i never had cinnamon and potatoes before but I’m going to give this 8.2 okay
you’re back but
we’re going to come back even stronger i feel it in my bones but this is 8.2 it’s very good very good
thank you Kevin
and now I’m going to dig in
so there you have it it is Kevin approved and I tried it after he did and you know what like the cinnamon is weird in it but it works like everyone had a second helping of these potatoes we’re all like “hm I do taste cinnamon.” I think it could have done with a little more lemon and I accidentally left out the parsley but other than that these came out pretty good like I may make this again so there you have it you get your flavor and your fiction uh be sure to subscribe and uh until next time happy reading and happy eating