Tag: food

fiction · middle grade

Book Review: A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan

Stephanie1 Comment

I learned about A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan (Clarion Books/HMH, 2020) a while ago, but while the premise interested me, I learned about it at a time when I wasn’t reading much middle grade, so it never ended up on my TBR. But a trip to the library last week had me walking past a display of books about food from the children’s section, and this book was on there. ‘Wait, I know that book!’ I said to myself as I passed it. ‘Guess it’s time to finally read it!’ And into my bag it went. Dual narrative middle grade. So fun!

It’s the first year of middle school for sixth graders Sara (that’s SAH-rah, not Sarah as in Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Elizabeth, and neither is having the best of times. Sara’s new to the school, having transferred from her small private Muslim school after her parents could no longer afford it; Elizabeth is struggling with friend issues after her best friend has taken up with a more popular girl. It’s Elizabeth who’s enthusiastic about joining the after-school South Asian cooking class club; Sara is only there because her mom is teaching it. Their first interactions are hostile at best, and neither walks away feeling great.

But as their time together in the club increases, Sara and Elizabeth realize they have a lot in common. Both are daughters of immigrant mothers; both are having trouble making the transition to middle school; both are desperately in need of friends. But in order to forge a new friendship, both will have to learn to listen to each other, to form a bridge over what divides them and learn to appreciate what makes each of them unique. A cultural festival and a cooking competition will force them to work together, and what they create at the end will be far more than just a new recipe.

What an enjoyable novel. I love dual narratives, and I can’t remember ever having read one from the middle grade section. Sara is downright prickly at the beginning, and this is completely understandable. She’s a Muslim student at a new school, and it’s not like this country is super understanding about non-Christian religions, especially Islam. Her mother’s accent and unfamiliar-to-everyone-else dishes make her feel like she stands out even more, and her defensiveness, even to the most basic of inquiries, is a learned skill. She’s also carrying the financial stress of her family with her, knowing her mother’s catering business is struggling and costing the family money they can’t afford. She lashes out a few times at Elizabeth, and I wanted to hug her. We don’t make life for immigrants or second gen kids easy at all here.

Elizabeth is struggling with problems of her own. Her grandmother died over the summer and her mother is grieving. Her father travels for work most of the week, leaving Elizabeth and her brothers on their own while Mom knits, listens to podcasts, and cries. Elizabeth is deeply worried her mom is going to return to England and leave the family behind, and to top it all off, her best friend is following in her racist father’s footsteps and making hideous comments about Muslims and immigrants. Cooking club and learning to make delicious food for her family helps with the stress, but she’s not having the greatest year either.

The friendship the two girls forge is fascinating. It’s not an easy one; it takes work for Sara to let down her guard and accept that Elizabeth is well-intentioned; Elizabeth has to learn that Islamophobia is a constant part of Sara’s life, and that it’s also her responsibility to speak out and defend her friend from it. (I really loved the role Sara’s friend from her private school played in this; she’s a super chill character and the voice of reason in their interactions, whereas Sara is more impulsive and fiery.)

Both girls are carrying an enormous amount of stress for their ages, an unfortunately not-uncommon experience these days, and while readers may not be personally familiar with their exact problems, I feel like most middle graders will understand what it’s like to worry about family matters you can’t control.

The authors really worked well together to create two middle school girls who are challenged in a variety of ways, and who begin not quite as adversaries, but as two distinct characters who aren’t necessarily on the same page…but who, with a little hard work and understanding, make it there, and the results are great.

What a fun, meaningful book, from an excellent writing team!

Visit Saadia Faruqi’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

Visit Laura Shovan’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

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nonfiction

Book Review: Idiot’s Guide: Foraging by Mark Vorderbruggen

Stephanie1 Comment

Okay, I’m going to admit right here and now, I’m probably never going to be a master forager. I would love to; I so wish I could be the kind of person who traipses into the woods on random Saturdays throughout the year with a large basket, and who comes out with that basket full of plants and roots and berries that I easily identified as safe to eat. But I simply don’t have that much confidence in myself (yet, anyway); with my luck, I’d take a bite of the first thing I had just learned about and immediately drop dead (and wind up the subject of a true crime podcast). But that’s why I love books on foraging: I obviously have SO much to learn, and I’m not giving up! Idiot’s Guides: Foraging by Mark Vorderbruggen (Alpha, 2016) had been on my TBR since about 2019; I finally received a copy through interlibrary loan a week or so ago, and I found this book absolutely delightful.

Let this book fall open and you’ll find that each plant covered gets a two-page spread complete with multiple full-color photographs, a map of where said plant grows, what to look for, edible or poisonous look-alikes, and various bits of knowledge about the plant (uses, how to prepare it, how NOT to prepare it, and things to look out for). The photographs alone are phenomenal; should you be just starting out on your foraging journey and want to get serious about it, I feel like this book would be an excellent tool just for identification. (Fun story: I had just started this book when, later on that night, I caught a reel by Black Forager on Instagram and immediately recognized the linden/basswood tree she was talking about, before she identified it, because I’d read about it in this book! How cool is that?!!???)

This was definitely worth the read. I’ve been able to identify a few more plants and trees because of it, and while I’ll likely never be the kind of person that can disappear into the woods and survive for months solely on the plants I’ve recognized there, Idiot’s Guide: Foraging has definitely pushed me a little closer to that ideal. : )

Visit Mark Vorderbruggen’s website here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It by Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott

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Food. It’s part of all of our lives, and it’s likely that you too spend a lot of time thinking about it, preparing it, shopping for it. And if you’re a parent, it’s even more complicated, because no matter what you feed your kids, someone is out there judging you for it (give them snacks: “Why are you feeding them so much sugar? Do you WANT them to be overweight?!?!??” Give them Brussels sprouts: “OMG, don’t they ever get any fun treats?!?!??”). There are a lot of public conversations about food right now, and most of them are headed by rich white men who aren’t struggling to work and raise kids in difficult conditions. Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It by Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott (Oxford University Press, 2019) takes a hard look at WHY it’s so difficult for women, on whom the vast majority of cooking falls, to ‘just cook healthy meals at home.’ I’d been looking forward to reading this before the pandemic, and I’m so glad I was finally able to get my hands on a copy.

This research team followed a group of mothers in and around Wake County, North Carolina, to see what their lives were like and the challenges presented to them when it came to food. When food activists like Michael Pollan claim that we need to get back to the kitchen, cooking healthy homemade meals from real ingredients and sitting around the dinner table as a family, he’s not considering the struggles of women like those covered in the book. Irregular work schedules, living out of a hotel where the only cooking implements are a hotplate and a microwave, miniscule budgets, lack of transportation to the less expensive grocery stores, lack of storage space, unsupportive partners: all of these and more factor into the difficult of providing home-cooked meals, and these challenges are almost always dismissed as personal failures, instead of the societal failures that they are.

Pressure Cooker delves deep into the lives of women who universally want to provide their children with healthy, nutritious food, but face often insurmountable challenges to do so. Some are shamed openly for their poverty; others spar with their partners on what a healthy diet looks like (how often should kids have soda and other sugary treats? Dads are far more likely to hand these out than moms); still others struggle with wanting to feed their kids the foods they grew up with in their home countries, when the kids have learned to crave American foods like hot dogs and pizza. Food is a deeply complex subject, and being able to create healthy home-cooked meals is quite often an unrecognized privilege. This book examines why.

Such a fascinating read that was very much worth the wait. There are a lot of really maddening stories in here, such as the woman who was treated terribly at her county WIC office (it never ceases to infuriate me, the hoops we force people to jump through in order to perform their poverty to our liking so they can receive food. I do volunteer work that involves creating spreadsheets of services that include food pantries, and I have RAGE FOR DAYS about the dehumanizing language and requirements pantries have for their clients), and the struggling grandmother living in a hotel with her daughter and two grandchildren. We *could* do better as a society, but we actively choose not to and instead allow people to suffer. It’s shameful.

Food is so complicated, and Pressure Cooker shows exactly how, and how empty so many food activists’ arguments are. Imploring people to cook at home will not fix the deep societal problems that have people hitting the drive through or throwing a frozen pizza into the oven more nights than not (what are moms who have a several-hour commute supposed to do when they don’t even get home until 6 pm and the kids still need to eat, need help with homework, need baths? How are we supposed to live like this?), and this book is an excellent counterargument to the claims that dinner around the family table will fix all our woes.

food · food history · memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty

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It’s not hugely often that I’m in time to spot Jewish books on NetGalley (I’m deeply realistic about what I have time for, so I tend to not browse the NetGalley shelves too often!), but I was thrilled when I happened to be clicking through and stumbled upon Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty (Amistad Press, 2022). I was so excited when I received notice that my request had been approved. Into the world of Black Jewish cooking I dove!

Michael Twitty is a chef and a writer, living at the intersection of Black and Jewish in a country (and a world) that doesn’t have an excess amount of kindness for either group. That said, despite people’s confusion, despite people not understanding and deliberately not bothering to learn, being Black and Jewish co-exists beautifully together and is expressed lovingly in many ways, chiefly in the food that Mr. Twitty cooks. From the traditional dishes of various African countries, to the meals cooked up in the slave cabins of his ancestors, to the Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions that are now his traditions, Michael Twitty finds deep meaning in the art and flavors of cooking and how his many beautiful identities color his culinary creations.

Part-memoir, part academic history, part exploration of the culture of food and how our identity contributes to what we cook (and how Black identity in particular brings not just baggage, but joy and beauty), Koshersoul defies genre – maybe making the point that those of us with multiple intersecting identities defy traditional classification as well.

Michael Twitty is a talented, eloquent writer. His writing is scholarly enough to challenge my exhausted, pandemic-addled brain, but friendly and comfortable enough that reading this is joyful. He writes of his life, his ancestors, with a deep reverence, and the same reverence is afforded to the food he creates and serves. To him, cooking is an art and deserves the same respect afforded to works of art, and his veneration of tradition has made me consider cooking in a different way: less of a chore, more of an act of worship, a respect for those who came before us, a celebration of who we are and our survival over the centuries. They tried to kill us; they failed; let’s eat.

Koshersoul wanders from subject to subject; it doesn’t follow any linear structure, but that’s part of what keeps it so interesting. His interviews with other Black Jews and chefs (many of whom I already follow on Twitter, so it was great seeing their words in long form!) intrigued me, but I also deeply appreciated reading Mr. Twitty’s experiences, difficult as some of them must have been to recount (racism is, unfortunately, alive and well in the Jewish community). The book is also heavy on Judaism and his life within it, so that absolutely called to me and made my own soul happy.

Koshersoul is available from all major retailers on August 9th (and it contains recipes!).

Visit Michael W. Twitty’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

fiction · historical fiction

Book Review: The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan

Stephanie2 Comments

World War II! Rationing! Making do in trying circumstances! From the moment I learned about The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan (Ballantine Books, 2021), I knew I would enjoy it. I’m fascinated by all things rationing (check out a review I did of a book about the subject, Make Do and Mend: Keeping Family and Home Afloat on War Rations, forward by Jill Norman) and have been ever since I was introduced to the subject as a young girl in one of my favorite books in the world, Back Home by Michelle Magorian. The Kitchen Front didn’t disappoint; it was as charming as I suspected it would be.

It’s wartime Britain, and the BBC has introduced a new contest on its show dedicated to helping housewives learn to deal with wartime rationing. The Kitchen Front’s contest is looking for the best rationing chef, and four women are desperate to win. Audrey is a widowed mom to three boys, struggling to stay afloat ever since her husband was killed in the war. Gwen, Audrey’s image-obsessed social climber sister, is hiding her unhappy reality behind an icy-old façade. Nell, an orphan-turned-maid, is scared of her own shadow, but cooking brings out the best in her. And Zelda, a professionally trained Cordon Bleu chef, will do just about anything to win – but will the secret she’s carrying ruin everything for her?

A ruthless beginning eases into something with softer edges as the women are forced together and begin to understand each other’s stories. Rifts will be mended, new bridges forged, and brand-new paths forward will appear amidst the strain and struggle of wartime. The Kitchen Front is full of charm, friendship, and the can-do attitude that gave British women the reputation for strength and fortitude of character that pulled them through the long years of rationing.

What a lovely book. The characters are all with their own personal struggles, but each is so determined to triumph despite them, that you can’t help but root for every single one, even when some of them sink to some truly low levels to win. The research put into this story is evident, with characters foraging for wild-grown ingredients, substituting local ingredients for little-known ones, and utilizing cooking techniques and recipes known to the era. (A few of the lines mentioned in the book, particularly about manner of dress for women at the time, I had learned just days before while watching episodes of Horrible Histories with my daughter!) This was very obviously a labor of love for the author, and it shows in her respectful treatment of all of the characters and how they came together in the end.

If you’ve read other books by Jennifer Ryan, I’d love to hear if you enjoyed them! I don’t read as much fiction as I’d like, and I tend to be kind of picky about the fiction I do read, so if you’ve got recommendations here, I’d love to hear them! Her The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle looks particularly interesting!

Visit Jennifer Ryan’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir

Book Review: Ant Egg Soup: The Adventures of a Food Tourist in Laos by Natacha Du Pont de Bie

Stephanie3 Comments

I think Ant Egg Soup: The Adventures of a Food Tourist in Laos by Natacha Du Pont de Bie (Hodder & Stoughton, 2005) originally ended up on my TBR as part of a reading challenge that fell to the wayside when the pandemic hit, but I was still looking forward to reading it. No matter how hard we try, we all have gaps in our education and knowledge, and I realized that I knew almost nothing about Laos, other than…it was a country in Asia? (Southeast Asia, to be exact, which I thought, but wasn’t entirely certain of.) So this was definitely something I needed to read!

Natacha Du Pont de Bie is a lifelong foodie, and around the turn of the millennium, she became interested in Laotian cuisine and decided to take off to Laos, travel around the country, and do her best to eat like a native. While her travels occasionally led to unsafe situations (heads up for a brief attempted sexual assault; she fights him off), the vast majority of her time was spent getting to know the warm, generous, welcoming people of Laos, their beautiful green country, and their fascinating food.

She had barely stepped off the plane before she was sitting in a restaurant eating raw water buffalo. She learned that various forms of salad are served with most meals in Laos, that most families grow their own vegetables or at least their own herbs, and fish is eaten in some form at almost every meal. She ate frogs (not just the legs!), drank turkey blood, and finally, finally, after ages of searching, was able to consume ant egg soup (apparently, ant eggs taste kind of nutty). Along the way, she learned about the politics and history of this one-party Communist nation and experienced its natural beauty.

What a neat book! I had known almost nothing about Laos, and I knew even less about the food eaten there (more noodles than I thought. If pressed, I would’ve thought that rice would have been more common, but it turns out a lot of people can’t afford rice. So many people in Laos live in fairly dire poverty and there’s almost no infrastructure at all- almost no roads, and most of the country didn’t have electricity when Natacha was there. I can’t speak to conditions nowadays, almost twenty years later). Accidents, including plane crashes and bombs and landmines from what Americans refer to as the Vietnam war finally detonating, were common, and Natacha had a few near-misses. Western policy has badly affected and still continues to affect living conditions in Laos, something I had read about briefly before, but was deeply sobering to read about again and in more detail.

It struck me again while reading this how lovely it is for someone like me to read travel memoirs. Laos, with its lack of infrastructure, is likely someplace I could never go, what with my terrible back and my occasional difficulty getting around. I could never hike the trails Natacha hiked or visit the sites she did. Traveling for more than six hours on terrain that gave her problems and caused her pain would do me in. It’s not a chance I could take. So I very much appreciate being able to armchair travel via accounts like this one. It’s not quite the same, but it’s the next best thing for me. It’s nice to tag along, even in literary fashion.

Visit Natacha Du Pont de Bie’s website here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Hand Made: The Modern Woman’s Guide to Made-from-Scratch Living by Melissa K. Norris

Stephanie1 Comment

I’m a homemaker- not necessarily by choice, but that’s just kind of how things ended up, so I do my best to lean into my role. I cook almost everything we eat from scratch, I clean constantly (and make my own cleaning products), I craft (for myself, as gifts, and for charity), and I try to do everything I can in the most frugal and most earth-friendly ways. But I get burned out from time to time, as we all do, and a little inspiration is nice. Sometimes that comes in the form of blogs; other times, I pick up a homemaking book. That’s how Hand Made: The Modern Woman’s Guide to Made-from-Scratch Living by Melissa K. Norris (Ten Peaks Press, 2017) ended up on my TBR. We all need a little boost now and then, right?

Home Made focuses mainly on the kitchen, taking inspiration from the pluck and grit of those who weathered the Great Depression, cooking from scratch with the basic ingredients that most of us have on hand and making use of leftovers, ensuring that nothing goes to waste. If you’ve ever felt intimidated by making your own fermented foods, such as fermented veggies, yogurt, kefir, and sauerkraut, this book has a great section with clear instructions on getting started. And there are recipes- comfort foods, such as chicken and dumplings; homemade cakes and pies; pizzas and pastas; and plenty more. There’s a shorter section on medicinal herbs, and a brief primer on two different kinds of soap-making. This is a decent homemaking book.

What I didn’t love about it was the unexpected Christian content. I’m all for people participating in whatever faith they want as they choose- if you find what works for you, that’s awesome, and I’m truly happy for you. But in terms of this book, I just wanted some inspiration to wash my floors a little more often; I wasn’t looking for a diatribe on how I needed Jesus (I’m good, thanks). There were occasionally several pages at a time with nothing but the author’s particular take on Christianity (which I flipped past; I almost never do this in books. I will occasionally read books marked as Christian, though I’m Jewish- Rachel Held Evans, may her memory be a blessing, was a wonderful author and advocate for her faith, and I’ve even read a few Christian novels that were just fine. I’m truly not opposed to wading through some Christian content; I can even find inspiration in others’ heartfelt commitment to their faith- Mister Rogers, anyone???). I enjoyed the stories about her life, but I absolutely wasn’t expecting and didn’t enjoy the leap from reading about Christmas lights to a multiple-page musing about how Jesus is the light of the world, and how Jesus makes us better homemakers. This Jewish woman isn’t interested, but thanks anyway.

You’ll probably enjoy this book more if you’re Christian and are looking for a faith-based book to inspire your homemaking. If you’re not Ms. Norris’s particular brand of religious, know that this isn’t at all a bad book; just be prepared to flip past a lot of pages. The recipes are really good, however. I wrote down quite a few of them and used Friday’s leftover challah (my Jewish readers are probably going, ‘What’s leftover challah???’) to make chocolate bread pudding from this book, which was absolutely delicious, and I’ll be making this on a regular basis. There’s also a Pumpkin Bread Pudding recipe that looked incredible, so I’m looking forward to trying that as well.

To sum it up- this book is probably more fully enjoyable for Christian readers, but it does contain some great recipes.

Visit Melissa K. Norris’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: TREYF: My Life as an Orthodox Outlaw by Elissa Altman

Stephanie1 Comment

Sometimes it’s hard to write a review of a memoir. The best memoirists are able to craft a narrative of their lives that centers around a theme, that has a direct story arc that continues throughout the story and wraps up in, if not a full conclusion, then an understanding that makes the whole story make sense, that shows the growth and maturity the author has experienced. This is what I hope for from every memoir I delve into (and I read a lot of them; it’s a genre I enjoy, because I appreciate the glimpse into someone else’s life), but I had a harder time with this in TREYF: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw by Elissa Altman (Berkley Books, 2016).

The definition of ‘treyf’ is something that is unkosher and forbidden. Ms. Altman writes a lot about what made her family treyf, and what made her treyf: her family’s departure from the religious and ritualistic aspects of Judaism; their consumption of unkosher foods; her preparation of pork products in her deceased grandmother’s kosher kitchen; the dawning realization that she’s not entirely straight (a much bigger issue in the 80’s and 90’s than today).

Despite its occasionally focus on unkosher foods, this is really a memoir of a dysfunctional family. Mom and Dad’s marriage was strained and unhealthy. Mom pushed her daughter towards seriously unhealthy eating habits. Grandma had some seriously repressed sexuality. The creepy neighbor moved away quickly after it became known that he had a thing for little girls; Ms. Altman alludes several times that she was one of those little girls, as well as being molested by a teenage neighbor (neither is written about in graphic detail, but heads up if this is a difficult topic for you). The family is close but struggles in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons, and their struggles are common to both families from that era, and to families who have survived trauma or who have recently immigrated in the past few generations.

The memoir ends on a depressing note; Ms. Altman remarks that she is exactly the person her family made her to be, and that if you belong everywhere, you actually belong nowhere, a thought that gave me pause. Who do we become when assimilation is the end goal? Should assimilation be a goal at all? Why? Are we stronger instead as separate pieces of a mosaic?

I enjoyed this book as a story of a family with its own deep-seated difficulties, but that wasn’t what I had expected going in. The use of the phrases ‘treyf’ and ‘unorthodox outlaw’ had me expecting a memoir akin to Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox, but instead, this was more along the lines of a random family that just happened to be Jewish and who rarely interacted with the religious aspects of it (which is fine! I’m not at all judging that, to be clear. I had just expected a memoir about a woman who had moved away from the religion she had been raised with, and instead found a story where her father fed her canned Spam as a girl).

So I didn’t dislike this, but I didn’t love it, either. Her descriptions of her grandmother’s goulash sounded incredible, however (even though I don’t eat meat!). Food is always better when it’s cooked with love, and it sounded like Ms. Altman’s grandmother packed that dish full of it. 😊

Visit Elissa Altman’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Miriam’s Kitchen by Elizabeth Ehrlich

Stephanie1 Comment

Reading lists are both the best thing ever and the bane of my TBR. I don’t know that I’ve been able to look at many lists titled things like, “100 Books Coming Out This Year That You Can’t Miss!” or “You Will Literally Die If You Don’t Read These Books!” without my TBR growing exponentially. It’s really the best problem to have, isn’t it? It was a reading list that introduced me to Miriam’s Kitchen by Elizabeth Ehrlich (Penguin Group, 1997). The premise had me hitting that want-to-read button immediately, and interlibrary loan delivered the book into my hands- in a stack of other interlibrary loan books, of course, because, as we know, everything always comes in at once!

It’s not until she’s an adult and has children of her own that Elizabeth Ehrlich begins deeply pondering what her Jewish identity means. Never fully identifying with the religious aspects, she turns to the kitchen of her mother-in-law Miriam, a Holocaust survivor who still maintains a kosher kitchen and cooks nearly everything from scratch. Homemade noodles, chopped liver, all the dishes that Elizabeth remembers her grandmothers laboring over appear on Miriam’s table, and Elizabeth wants to know more. Something in these old ways calls out to her, and at Miriam’s side, she begins to learn and ponder the traditions that have been passed down for millennia through her family. Little by little, she moves toward a kosher kitchen, toward trying out the religious aspects of Judaism, seeing what fits, seeing where she belongs, all the while recounting the stories of her family members- mostly women, but some of the men as well. These people lived through some of the worst violence humanity has ever perpetrated on their fellow men; the miracle of their survival pushes Elizabeth to look deeper, work harder, to create something to pass down to her children. Even if they ultimately reject it, giving them something from which to turn away- and maybe return to one day- feels right.

This is an absolutely lovely memoir. Miriam and Ms. Ehrlich’s bubbes and her mother are women of valor, women who experienced horrors, who weren’t given many options in their lives, but who persevered anyway, doing the best they could with what they had. They exemplified hard work and honor, working both in and outside the home, without many of the tools we take for granted. Seeing all they did without many of the luxuries I own really made me think while I was reading this.

I deeply identified with Ms. Ehrlich’s draw toward certain aspects of Judaism, that pull without fully understanding the why of it. Sometimes you just feel moved toward something that doesn’t necessarily make logical sense- it’s a bit like falling in love, I think. There’s not always a rhyme or reason to it. When she was faced with the daunting task of kashering her kitchen and living a kosher life, she was somewhat dismayed by all the extra work it will take, all the time and emotional labor necessary to remember which sponge is used for wiping up meat spills and which for dairy, all the strength it takes to tell her children no, that we don’t eat that, and then cooking after a long day at work. But still she felt drawn to do it, even knowing the difficulties, and that is something I understood and felt on a visceral level. (Not for the exact same reasons- I’m vegetarian, so that cuts out like 99% of the problem right there, and I live in a house with three non-religious, occasional meat-eaters, so unless I wanted to maintain my own set of pots and pans and dishes, keeping a kosher kitchen wouldn’t really be possible for me. I *could*, but I don’t know that anyone else in the house would remember which dishes were just mine, and I’d end up having to re-kasher them like twelve times a day…)

She’s hard on herself, seeing all the ways she falls short of Miriam’s ideal, but still forging ahead and jumping in with both feet, which I found deeply admirable. So often, we shy away from what intimidates us- I know I’m guilty of this- especially when we know that perfection is unattainable. But she begins anyway, taking the steps to live the life she feels drawn to, and that’s a message to live by.

I wonder if Miriam ever felt intimidated by the older women in her life, if she ever felt that her cooking, her kitchen, wouldn’t measure up. Will Ms. Ehrlich’s grandchildren feel the same as they observe her preparing Miriam’s recipes? Do we all feel like this to some degree, that we’ll never be the strong, capable women our foremothers were? This book raised a lot of questions about how we connect to our pasts and what we carry with us into our futures, what we pass down, and I’m glad this ended up on my TBR. I don’t know that I’ll try any of the recipes in it- some of them sound absolutely delicious, but in terms of heart-healthy cooking, they’re not something I would normally make (thank you SO much, genetic cholesterol levels!). Perhaps one day, I’ll get up the courage…

I don’t see any websites or contact information for Elizabeth Ehrlich; if you’re aware of any, let me know in the comments and I’ll amend this post. Miriam’s Kitchen is the winner of a National Jewish Book Award.

nonfiction

Book Review: Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation by Sharon Astyk

Stephanie1 Comment

What does your pantry look like? Do you have a dusty can of beans from a year when One Direction was still together, a package of an ingredient you’ve never used and are too intimidated by to open, and not much else? Or are you like me, with a few months’ worth of food stashed away in various corners of the house? This past year has shown us the importance of being prepared for tough times- job losses, shortages, weather events that cut off power and access to stores, all that and more has plagued us (pun intended) as a society, and being prepared for these terrible events isn’t a bad idea. Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation by Sharon Astyk (New Society Publishers, 2009) has been on my TBR for a while; it piqued my interested because having a fully-stocked pantry has always been important to me (mostly because I’m lazy and don’t ever want to have to make an emergency run for a missing ingredient!). This seemed right up my alley, so I requested it via interlibrary loan.

Think about this past year, when toilet paper, hand sanitizer, yeast, garlic, and various other products were nowhere to be found on store shelves. How did you fare? Having a well-stocked pantry in trying times could alleviate stress and get you through rough patches caused by job loss, weather events, power outages, economic downturns, illness, pandemics, and all the other chaos that disrupts daily life and may make getting to the store or procuring sustenance for your family difficult or impossible. Changing your diet to one more sustainable to your location, gardening, obtaining food and supplies from more local and sustainable sources, and preserving this food in a variety of ways are all suggestions that Ms. Astyk has for creating a better-prepared life.

It’s a lot of work, true, but so is pretty much anything worth doing, she argues, and stocking your pantry is never something you’ll regret if things go sideways. With in-depth discussions on gardening, locating storage space no matter where you live, recipes, the ups and downs of various forms of preservation, and more, Sharon Astyk has created a basic primer for anyone interested in living a prepared life.

This is a pretty good book for anyone starting out on the journey of planning and stocking their pantry. She lays out some pretty compelling arguments for the need for keeping your larder stocked, and a lot of the scenarios she frets about have actually taken place in the years since the book was published. Her pleas to her readers about the necessity of storing water don’t seem so wild after this year’s devastating winter storms in Texas that saw residents without running water for ages, and storing pantry food isn’t at all far-fetched after seeing the shortages on grocery store shelves during this past year. (I keep at least two full boxes of toilet paper from Sam’s Club in the basement at all times; it wasn’t even something I had to think about last year as I watched people all over the country scramble for even the rough stuff. The only thing I lacked was an adequate supply of hand sanitizer, but that’s because it wasn’t something I normally use. Now, though, I’ll always have some on hand!) Some of the Goodreads reviews seem to view her as a kind of out-there prepper, but I have to wonder how those people handled the crises this past year.

If you’ve been serious about storing and preserving for a while, there’s probably not much to learn here, but this is a great resource for anyone who has realized that maybe it’s not so bad to keep a three-month (or longer) supply of food on hand. Ms. Astyk covers all of the why, along with some of the how, and provides a few recipes along the way. This was a nice reminder of why I shop the way I do, and why my kitchen resembles a small overflowing grocery store.

Visit Sharon Astyk’s website.

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