Here is an epicurean indulgence that is completely calorie-free.

It is Seattle writer Erica Bauermeister’s first novel about life, love and the magic of food.

“The School of Essential Ingredients” follows the lives of eight students who gather in Lillian’s Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen.

Bauermeister will read from her book at several island locations as part of the Sno-Isle Library’s “Whidbey Reads” program this month.

Bauermeister’s love of slow food and the slow life was deepened by her two years living in northern Italy with her husband and children. The characters in her novel experience the same kind of epiphany that the author experienced in Italy. One by one the cooking students are transformed by the aromas, flavors and textures of Lillian’s food, including a white-on-white cake that prompts wistful reflections on the sweet fragility of love, and a peppery heirloom tomato sauce that seems to spark one romance, but end another. Brought together by the power of food and companionship, the lives of the characters mingle and intertwine, united by the revealing nature of what can be created in the kitchen.

Students include Claire, a young mother struggling with the demands of her family; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer learning to adapt to life in America; and Tom, a widower mourning the loss of his wife to breast cancer. Chef Lillian, a woman whose connection with food is both soulful and exacting, helps them to create dishes whose flavor and techniques expand beyond the restaurant and into the secret corners of her students’ lives.

After she and her family returned to Seattle, Bauermeister found that she missed the food and being around people who celebrated even the most simple meals.

“So, I took a cooking class,” the author said.

“And then I started thinking about all the different characters you could have in a class, and started wondering which foods would affect each one — revive a memory, create an epiphany, change the direction of a life — and that’s where the book came from,” she added.

In the end, Bauermeister said, what she hopes that people take away from her book is that cooking can be a sensual experience that slows down time, and that cooking is also about considering the people that surround you.

“When we really cook for other people, we are seeing them — who they are, what will make them happy, excite or comfort them,” she said. “And when we eat something that has been prepared beautifully and especially for us, we feel loved, taken care of, seen.”

Whidbey Reads is an annual community reading program designed to bring Whidbey Island residents together to talk about books, and to meet authors.

Bauermeister will speak at the Coupeville Library at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, March 8; at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Whidbey Island in Freeland at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 8; and at the Oak Harbor Library at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 9.

Books will be available at all events for purchase and signing.

The author will also meet with students at South Whidbey High School. Whidbey Reads 2011 is a collaborative effort between Sno-Isle Libraries, the Friends of the Libraries groups, Humanities Washington, Walmart, Skagit Valley College Oak Harbor campus, South Whidbey High School, the All Island Book Group and Best Western Harbor Plaza.

Visit one of the island branches or the Sno-Isle Libraries website at www.sno-isle.org for more info.