Table Talk: Food, Family, Love, a Cookbook

Carol McManus owns a popular cafe on the Island of Martha's Vineyard, yet she urges you to cook at home -- and get your family to the table. She believes -- and scientific studies show, along with her own experience raising five children -- that family meals produce healthy, happy children and families that work. This is a beautifully illustrated cookbook featuring summertime scenes and food pictures. The food is locally grown, and the recipes are simple enough to entice even the non-cook.

Carol McManus is the owner of Espresso Love Cafe on Martha's Vineyard. She started the business 16 years ago in the corner of a Vineyard hotel. It is now a full-sized garden cafe with a relaxed atmosphere and innovative menu and is consistently honored as one of the Best of the Cape and Islands in food listings. As the mother of five -- who was also a single parent during much of their upbringing -- she constantly balanced her job outside the home with her responsibilities to her family. Writing in her book's introduction, she acknowledges, "It might seem intimidating, even overwhelming, to plan a meal, do the shopping, cook the food, and get everyone seated at the same time." Since she did it herself for so many years -- and since she continues serving family meals to her now-grown children, who have their own children -- she recognizes the lure of fast food. "But," she points out, "it's much more costly, and in more ways than one." Carol has hosted a cable television cooking program and been a regular guest on a Norwalk, Conneticut, television affiliate. She serves on the board of Vineyard House, a residential facility for newly-sober men and women, and gives cooking classes for children at a local elementary school. Her co-author, Brenda L. Horrigan, is a freelance writer and editor who has published works on a variety of subjects, from international politics to architecture. She and Carol collaborated for almost 5 years before writing Table Talk. Like Carol, she loves to cook: She won a blue ribbon for her baguettes at the very competitive Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Fair.