Customer Reviews

Dirty Sugar Cookies: Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a professional cook and boringly-avid reader of coobooks and food memoirs, this one--dare I say it--hit the spot. Halliday's self-deprecating honesty, sense of crazy fun and scary talent of total recall about growing up in the seventies and all the cream-of soup casseroles that entailed made it a read-in-one-sitting book. All that with some saliva-inducing recipes. So fun!

Ayun Halliday remembers the details, and relating them brings humor and poignancy to her writing. I've relished each page of the three books of her's I've read, because she is clever, wide-open and specific - if you relate to her, boy, do you relate. I am a crunchy progressive Mommy who is also a child of the 70's, and Ayun Halliday speaks my language. I will read anything she writes.

I loved this food memoir, it made me think about growing up in the 70's and brought back many good food memories.

Ayun Halliday is one of my all time favorite writers. Her style cracks me up and I love her cooking flair in this book. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to cook and also has a sense of humor. Ayun rules!

Every one of Ayun's books has been a can't-put-it-down-er for me, and i go into withdrawal in between books, waiting for a new one to come out. Luckily, her zine, The East Village Inky, keeps me going in between new books. I love her funny ways of sharing recipes and appreciate learning how to make a quiche in the quirkiest of ways. Ayun's ability to recreate her past experiences with food through stories is unique and well worth a read by all.

Loved, loved, loved this book. Picked it up on a whim and then couldn't put it down again. Halarious! One of those snort-out-loud kind of books....I completely reccommend it if you are looking for something completly different from all the other books out there. So good in fact that now I am half-way through her travel book called "No Touch Monkey!" and it's right up there with "Dirty Sugar Cookies". Ayun Halliday doesn't hold back on anything and for that I say, thank you!!

As devout foodies, we bought blindly Ayun's book from the food section. While we may have been expecting an Anthony Bourdain description of food, we found ourselves laughing out loud to the point of tears remembering our own childhood. This book is not about gourmet food but it was about how food shapes our lives. A definite must read!

I have to admit that generally speaking I suffer from picky eater syndrome and would not normally pick up a book pertaining in any way to food. Nevertheless, there I was figuring that if anyone could make this topic interesting for me it would be Ayun Halliday and hoping that I would not be let down. Thank God I picked it up. This book is witty, interesting, and never has a dull moment. Her style is fast paced, continually honest, perpetually funny, and always entertaining. From discussing her grade school cafeteria experiences through dealing with her children's like (or dislike) of given dishes, there is no topic she will not cover. I never knew that I would find a book about food to be so interesting. Ayun's enthusiasm is catching and I will be the first to say that I will actually venture into trying at least a recipe or two of the many she provides at the close of each chapter.

I read it slowly as to savor it! I especially liked reading about the quest for Gran-Gran's recipe box!!!!! I enjoyed Ayun's sugar cookies, dirt and all, every evening for over a month. I read a tasty morsel each night (to help me unwind after a crazy day of summer library program) as long as I could keep my eyes open. Sometimes I stayed awake long enough to mark the page with my new magnetic monkey bookmark recently acquired from a friend who is scared of monkeys. Sometimes I was just conscious enough to dog ear my page before nodding off so I could find my spot the next night. (Don't tell anyone a librarian would do that to a book, but hey it's my book, not the library's copy!) Sometimes I passed out before marking my spot only to roll over and squash my glasses and kick the book onto the floor.

Anyhoo. I woke up this morning determine to finish this long, delicious meal. After enjoying the index, (Ayun, you crack me up! Did you index it your ownself?) I flipped through to the two pages before the last page to find an amazing replica of a squashed pill bug. I thought, dang, whoever designed this book has quite a sense of humor...realistic drawings of flies lighting on the first page of each chapter and now this life-like bug at the end. Jeeze it looks so real, it's almost 3-D. Wait a minute...it was 3-D...I flicked the squashed pill bug out of the back of my copy and just had to laugh. Very ironic. He must have crawled aboard on one of those nights the book got kicked to the floor. The pill bug skeleton is lurking with the dust bunnies under my bed, but the stain remains!

Anyway...thanks again for another great read, Ayun!

(P.S. I loved the cover!!!!! Disgusting AND sweet. You should have seen the looks I got in the doctor's office waiting room...)

One of my favorite books is Halliday's "the Big Rumpus" so I thought I'd check this one out. I enjoyed it, especially as I'm used to, and enjoy, the author's almost stream-of-consciousness writing style. Dirty Sugar Cookies seems a bit more all over the place than Rumpus, jumping all over her life and habits, but I still liked it. I think I expected it to be more "food-related" sometimes, but it's fun none the less. I haven't tried any of the recipes from the book yet, as intriguing as a cake that looks like a kitty-litter tray is, but they do look worth-while to attempt.

...plus it's so good to know I'm not the only one with a child whose whole acceptable meal plan is exhausted in less than 48 hours....!