As a devoted reader of Molly Wizenberg's weekly culinary blog Orangette, her Bon Appetit magazine column, and a committed archaeologist of her online archives, I thought I knew Molly's story. I certainly knew the parts about quitting grad school to start a blog, that the resulting blog landed her a husband and attention from publishing houses and so on. But sometimes a whole book is needed to fill in gaps and order chronology, plumping out the story more than these snippets ever could. A Homemade Life begins with the brown faux-fur mini-dress that her mother was wearing when she met her father, winds through her childhood aversions to bananas, and ends with a chocolate wedding cake.
Upon first hearing that she was writing a 'cookbook' I was apprehensive that what I loved about Orangette might be compromised by squishing it into a serial recipe format. On the one hand it would be great – a shortcut to the food. In my experience, Molly's approachable recipes are almost always spot-on hits. You're not really taking a gamble when you try any one of her concoctions for the first time on guests (and I have). For a reliable log of toothsome recipes her work would fit the bill.
On the other hand it's the writing, it’s the stories, it's the Molly behind the meals that makes her my menu-planning-pick over any four fork recipe on Epicurious.com (though you can find her there too authoring a monthly column entitled 'The Cooking Life'). It's not the list of ingredients and their order of mixing, but rather the way she describes celariac root, making you ashamed that you never before noticed it lying shriveled and hairy on the grocer's shelf. That is what made her blog, as her friends might have said, 'spread like wildflowers.'
Happily, Wizenberg streamlines the same story-based-format into A Homemade Life. Her philosophy -- outlined in the introduction -- is that 'In the simple acts of cooking and eating, we are creating and continuing the stories that are our lives.' Nothing attests to this creed more than her recollection of her father's last days, and its inevitable reminder of the Italian Grotto Eggs that she fed him on his hospital bed in the den. When 'French-Style Yogurt Cake with Lemon' is passed around she never forgets that she owes that humble cake a debt of gratitude for leading her husband to her.
Article comments
1 - Peter
I don't cook. I don't read about cooking. I only eat. But your review actually made reading about cooking an interesting future prospect...especially if it were to result in good eating.