If you are any kind of a foodie, it's hard not to like Georgeanne Brennan. Actually, even if you aren't a foodie, Brennan's pretty easy to like because she's so nice, but we're talking food here.

And Brennan does that – talks about food – with a combination of level-headed wisdom, experience and enthusiasm for both the food and the world around her. That's also how she writes about food, which she's done in so many cookbooks – more than 30 – that she's lost track.

Her newest book, "Gather: Memorable Menus for Entertaining Throughout the Seasons" (Sasquatch, $22.95, 240 pages), offers a series of menus and recipes for mostly small occasions through the year. It's filled with dishes that are doable, interesting and tied to times of the year when foods will be fresh.

It is, as she says, another way to help people engage in their world and to "be aware of the seasons and what each season brings – to your table, and to everything around you."

Brennan will lead a discussion and do a book-signing at 7 p.m. Thursday at Borders Books, 2339 Fair Oaks Blvd., Sacramento.

For Brennan, who spends part of her life in southern France and part on a 10-acre farm near Winters, food and life are about the little moments even more than the big-deal days, which is why her new book has suggestions for things like movie night, a Sunday brunch in honor of parents and, of course, the Day of the Dead.

For instance, for the fall, one menu is a vintner's feast, a meal that celebrates the wine harvest and is, just as much, an excuse for a dinner party. Brennan's recipes include foods like roasted red peppers with tuna (sweet peppers are at their peak) or walnuts in a tart (the walnut harvest just finished, too). And she suggests, for an easy decoration, simple bunches of grapes.

I met Brennan two years ago when we were both signing books at an event in the East Bay. She is one of the most prolific food and cookbook authors in America. I was there for my book on wine and the Napa Valley, my first, and, you know, only book.

But more than just being impressed by her productivity, I instantly liked her philosophy of embracing the world and the seasons, and of making cooking and eating about connections and the enrichment of life. It's a notion that is gaining ground steadily in Sacramento, and that streak is strong in "Gather."

"Anywhere you are, any season it is, there are things to notice," she said the other day by phone. "Just sitting in my office, looking out the window, I can see oranges beginning to change color. It's another sign of fall, and that also says pretty soon it's going to be citrus time.

"If you're kind of aware of what's going on, you can't help planning ahead. You don't always have to run to the store and grab a bag of salad mix – though we've all done that – because you go to farmers markets or just naturally think ahead about what's available locally that's interesting.

"It isn't hard, and when you tap into that vein, it opens your eyes to so much in your life."

In short, Brennan is all about looking at what's nearby, and about eating fresh and locally. She says there may not be a better- located big city in America than Sacramento for doing so.

"Really there isn't," she said. "We have so many of the farmers, so many of the relatively small, organic and sustainable farms where they grow some of the best food in the nation. It's so easy to take that for granted, but it's just as easy to take advantage of it.

"On top of that, this is wine country. Every direction you look, there are great vineyards. We're as close to Napa as San Francisco. Even where I am in Yolo County, there are 23 wineries in my county. People come to the region as a destination because we're in the heart of a wide range of wine country."

All of that together – the farms, the fresh food, the great wine, just the nature around us – are both fodder and inspiration for Brennan. It also explains, a little, how she can produce such an abundance of books.

"Even though we have a certain urban sophistication, we're still rural and agricultural in a meaningful way with many, many sources we can tap into," she said. "To me, food and wine and life are always changing, always interesting, and there's so much to write about."

Call The Bee's Rick Kushman, (916) 321-1187. Listen to him Tuesdays at 8:40 a.m. on NewsTalk 1530 (KFBK).