Customer Reviews

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As, I had read this before-when I saw it for a super low price I could not resist. This book is delicious. If you like food for more than taste but for the whole experience of eating-this is a great book. It has recipes sprinkled throughout. The book is not a recipe book but a book about eating alone(the joys and perils) and writers take on it.The prose is wonderful. The writers included are writers who know how to incite, seduce and warm your heart.

This is a collection of short stories centered on the idea of eating alone - or feeding oneself when unaccompanied. It is a great foodie read and would make an excellent gift for a foodie you know. Funny, happy, sad, poignant...all the emotions we have experienced when eating alone are represented. Many of the authors are heavy hitters in the food world. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it without reservations.

I saw this in a bookstore while I was out of town and was tempted to buy it. After finding it at the library, I am so glad I did not. I read the whole book, but out of some pathetic sense of obligation. To be fair, M.F.K. Fisher's essay was good, but that's no surprise. What was surprising was the amount of bitterness and bile hidden (barely, I might add) underneath prose that was supposed to be self-deprecating but really just sounded, well, whiny and self-involved. There were several essays bemoaning a tiny New York kitchen: we get it, the apartments are like closets, etc. I can't imagine that anyone but New Yorkers found this interesting. The rest of us are tired of the cliche.

And the recipes! Yikes: avocado raita? I mean, I get we all eat weird things when we're alone, but that's not a reason to share the recipe. Maybe the recipes were supposed to be some sort of joke, but if so, it fell very flat.

I read this because I like to cook and to eat, but I'll bet there are far more entertaining and interesting books on eating alone. At least I hope there are.

totally disappointed expected eggplant receipes, not chapter on individuals who spent all or part of their time in a kitchen with or without company.