Customer Reviews

Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times (Vintage)

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Thank you Suzan! What an enjoyable book! So many wonderful stories. Inspiring and a good perspective check, for me anyway. It is helpful to think about women who have come through hard times and kept their sense of humor.

I tried to make the Butter Cookies. They were yummy but I recommend lightly greasing the cookie sheet. Mine were cut thin enough to make 24 cookies from each tube of dough and they came out very thin and almost too crispy to get off the cookie sheet.
The broken cookies did make a wonderful ice cream topping. It is a documented fact that broken cookies have no calories at all.

So my next batch of butter cookies I will try to get 2 dozen instead of 4 dozen out of the two rolls of frozen dough. Worst case, more dessert topping....

Among those hit hardest by the current recession are not the ones suffering the most economically. Sure, some have lost their jobs but their spouse remains employed and has health insurance. They are pursuing freelance opportunities. And even though some, such as magazine writer Suzan Colon, acknowledge that they don't have it as bad as some other Americans who are in genuine dire straits, this recession has just about blown their young yuppie minds.

Gracious. While still working at her former magazine job, Colon had to economize. No more buying lunch when she could make do with leftovers and sandwiches. After she loses her job and writes from home, she has to choose between a cooler room where the modem is located or going upstairs to the warmth and broadband. That these choices are treated as revelations of character shows how much people forget within the space of time that still exists in the memory of some living folks. (Just ask anyone older than, say 70, about the Great Depression. Or read The Grapes of Wrath. Or for more contemporary times, download Christmas in Appalachia) [...]

Still, these forced economies send Colon to her late grandmother's recipe file and readers benefit from the stories about that remarkable lady. Cherries in Winter refers to how important it is to feed one's spirit by occasionally buying a treat. There was a time when fresh fruit, such as cherries, out of season were prohibitively expensive for all but the very rich. But a time when the author's mother bought them remains an episode that nourishes Colon's soul to this day. An earlier ancestor spent a week's worth of grocery money on a pair of vases that the author's mother still has.

Although the author's family is filled with women who put this kind of nourishment above constant penny-pinching, it is her grandmother Matilda who best embodies the spirit of feeding the soul. A can-do woman regardless of the circumstances life throws as her, Matilda never grumbles and always keeps on the sunny side. At one point her husband decides to uproot them from New York City to become farmers. Matilda befriends the ladies of the Grange by promising that, if they teach her how to cook, she'll do their hair and makeup. It's a happy arrangement and many of the recipes Colon finds in Nana's file are from those ladies.

Cherries in Winter is slim, even with stories from her family's past and recipes. But this is Colon's magazine background showing as much as anything. Instead of going on in greater detail, Colon keeps things as breezy as her grandmother's standard reply of "Fabulous, never better" to the question, "How are you?" Colon's volume is the kitchen equivalent of spending the afternoon at the day spa or a coffeehouse with girlfriends. Cherries in Winter is a forthy entertainment that demonstrates there are worse things that not having money. There are other kinds of poor, and money isn't the solution.

This slim book, a mere two hundred pages, is filled with tasty slice of life vignettes, interspersed with delectable recipes. The story recounts snippets of the history of five generations of the writer's family. Recipes for life are found while recalling the lessons learned through cooking and sharing love through the generations. Good times and some very lean times are measured by the recipes, from the Great Depression to the current economic recession. This would make a great holiday gift for any member of the family.

This lovely little book essentially tells the story of the author's effort to seek strength through the hearty recipes passed down from a grandmother who cooked her way through a world war and the depression. Ms. Colon's warm, witty narrative voice shines though as she draws parallels between her contemporary financial difficulties and those of her ancestors, as she and her husband eat their way though the comfort food recipes her family has survived upon for generations. The stories are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and always relatable. The lesson here is that the key to surviving these tough economic times doesn't lie in just looking forward; there is wisdom to be gained from those we love who have faced the same kind of challenges in the past. It's nice to know that the sense of reassurance we are all seeking these days may be in our own attic or basement, just waiting for us to find it.

As many of us do, I well remember my grandparents talking about the Great Depression. Little did I dream that some day I might be having a similar experience, so I recall what they told me and the stories of how they coped. Thus, I feel an affinity for Suzan Colon and what she learned when she went down to the basement and found her grandmother's cookbook.

Matilda was her grandmother's name and she had left not only a collection of favorite recipes but also commentary, wise words from the past. At this point in her life Colon needed all the help she could get. It was 2008 and she'd just been laid off from her magazine editor's job in the downturn that left so many out of work. (She's now a contributing editor with O (the Oprah magazine).

Nonetheless, more than the tried and true recipes from Grandmother Matilda she found a chronicle of how her family had gotten through some very tough times. Thus, what we have in CHERRIES IN WINTER is not only menu suggestions but examples to buoy our spirits.

Hearing Colon read her story is a large plus as she brings a timbre and feeling to it which would be very hard for a professional narrator to duplicate. For those who are feeling a bit down, CHERRIES IN WINTER is a viable tonic.

- Gail Cooke

But this is not an extraordinary book. It's a quick read, sweet and memorable only for the fact that her grandparents and mom are special to her ... but also typical.

While it's not a flop like the book, "Julie and Julia" (which I absolutely hated), it's not as good as some of the other memoirs out there. It's just a typical story of a typical woman who is trying to keep a stiff upper lip after she lost her job. Her ideas are not new and the recipes ... are exactly the same I fix for my family today. I think that is why I am disappointed in this book as I thought it would be a well-written book on food and memories and perhaps have new ideas but instead, I find her ideas are recycled, and a bit on the unhelpful side.

I do enjoy the memories of her grandparents ... it brings back a lot of memories of mine. This recession may be new to her and her hardships may be new to her, but for the rest of us, it is old news and we've been scrimping and saving for a lot longer than she has. The only extraordinary thing about this book is her love for her relatives, which is very nice to see (especially in a publishing field that is dominated by so many children critical of their parents!).

This is a sweet book but nothing really special. The recipes? I bet you can find any comparable already on your bookshelves at home or if your church is selling cookbooks for a fund-raiser, buy them instead. Those recipes are just as good as the ones in this book.

3/10/10

Cherries in Winter. The title made me think of frugal housewives picking their own fruit and packing it into Mason jars in the summer so there would be food in the pantry come winter. As I read Suzan Colon's book I came to realize that her word picture had a different meaning. Having lost her six-figure job at "Harvard" magazine (read the flyleaf for the translation) she found herself short on cash and needing something to write about. So she dug out her family's old recipes and began to connect her own situation to the hard-times experiences of her mother and grandmother. She had the advantage of a lot of great material to work with, memoirs as well as recipes. She also had many other advantages, including a great resume and, as apparent from the acknowledgments in the back, a ton of influential friends and connections in the right places. Not to mention, she can write.

I think knowing all of the above is what left me feeling a little cold after reading her book. A few months on unemployment is not exactly the same as living through the Great Depression. Great life-lessons, like great cooking, take time to be learned. At one point she is telling us that she only lets a tea bag soak for half the time she used to, so she can use it again. Then we see her husband coming home with sea bass, imported French limonade, and truffles for supper. That takes me back to the meaning of her title, Cherries in Winter. No matter how tough life is, she concludes, you should not deprive yourself of the special things in life. In other words, you do not can the cherries in the summer, you buy them when they are top price, in the winter. It's an idea some of us readers might have a hard time relating to, having lived always on modest incomes.

And I hate to be cynical about the recipe part, but after cooking from scratch for forty years, I have a few questions about whether she actually made all those dishes. And if she did, I wonder what she learned through the process. For instance, what is "flaky" bread, anyway? Maybe you'd want a biscuit to have some flakiness, but a loaf of yeast bread? And you sure do not make it flakier by kneading it more. She capitalizes on this reference, though, to make a clever comparison to her own "flaky" self, a self that seems to me to be the farthest thing from that. Her book is well-planned and purposeful, and I personally can not imagine a "flaky" person losing her job, reinventing her lifestyle, learning to cook, and writing a complete book in less than a year.

And what about Nana's Lemon Meringue Pie? "I take the lemon pie from the oven," she says, after throwing her attempt at meringue down the sink and deciding to go topless. You do what?! Why in the world would you put a lemon meringue pie in the oven if you have no meringue to brown? The recipe says to chill the filling, not bake it! Not only does she do this strange thing with her pie, she derives a moral lesson from it. "It even makes tiny crackling noises as it continues to bake, a group of formerly separate ingredients humming together to form something new," meaning the new direction her life is taking. The impact of the comparison loses its effectiveness when I imagine the chilled custard running all over the place.

So do I recommend the book? Check it out for yourself. I admire Suzan Colon for writing it, for her resourcefulness. I enjoyed hearing about her grandmother, and I laughed at some of her stories. Besides, "Mom's Meatloaf" is to die for if you like old-fashioned comfort food. I'm just not sure the book worked for me on an emotional level. I'd like to thank Random House for my free copy of Cherries in Winter, though, and their interest in my opinion.

I received a free copy of the book "Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe For Hope in Hard Times" through smile.ly today in the mail.I happened to receive bad news today, so I read it all today, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I'm sure that with the economy as it is, I'm not the only one whose had to cut WAY back on spending or worried how the next bill will get paid. This book reminded me that even in hard times, we still have plenty of reasons to be grateful, and that as hard as we have it, there are others who have it harder! It was an enjoyable read and it made me think of my grandma who lived through the depression. She had a rough life, but she still sees the glass as half full, and I never see her down! I found the book very uplifting!

This review will be just like the book, short and to the point. This book was simplistic and yet radiated so much warmth from the pages. The recipes and how they were tied into her family's story were so heartfelt. It made you want to cry in some spot and laugh out loud in others. When I finished this book I was left feeling uplifted and inspired. I may even try out a recipe or two on my family. If you're looking for a simple, sweet, heartfelt story this would be a great choice. I received this bound galley from Doubleday.

Virtually any book that mentions the Bronx is going to be a strong contender to win me over. So, Suzan Colon's book "Cherries in Winter" scored points with me on that front.

Looking back on Suzan Colon's discovery, by way of her grandmother's "veteran" recipes, that it is the journey and not the destination that brings us joy in life, I am struck by some threads of commonality that run through the women of the family. When her Matilde splurges on vases instead of commodities, as a reader I groaned, but I imagine now that those vases hold a place of honor in the family home long after the commodities would have been forgotten.

When Matilda says, "Is there anything better in the world than being in Manhattan in Central Park and eating cherries in winter?," I appreciated that sentiment! Although she had splurged on the cherries, it is possible to be in Manhattan AND Central park for free, creating memories.

The copies of the recipes, the notes about the trip to Florida, and the other family mementoes added to the look and feel of this book.

It was enjoyable, and I ended up craving some butter cookies after a dinner of liver and onions.

I was also proud of Suzan's journey, and her discovery, as she stated on page 145, that "Not giving while I still have something to give, no matter how little, is an inner beauty routine I won't do without."

(NOTE: I received a free copy of this book from smile.ly com as a reviewer.)