A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table: 07/12/13

I read A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg right on the heels of finishing A Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. While Wizenberg's book is a memoir, and Bender's book is fantasy, thematically they belong together.

Wizenberg begins her book with her father and his death from a particularly nasty cancer. Her parents (especially her father) had loved to cook at home and from scratch (except, oddly, for the box pancakes). So it is through her memories of food that the author celebrates her father and finds herself.

Now the book's description puts its emphasis on Wizenberg's trip to France. It sounds like she was fleeing her responsibilities to mourn. The actual memoir though, doesn't spend that much time on the few months she spent there. Instead, most chapters are centered on a specific recipe and the stories behind it. There will be the description of how to make the dish, the people she associates with the recipe and a story that defines her memories of it.

Five stars

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