A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table (Hardcover)

by Molly Wizenberg (Author)
Key Phrases: New York, Hoosier Pie, Oklahoma City (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Wizenberg's debut shares the same basic format as her Orangette blog—favorite recipes interspersed with personal reflection—but constructed around a much tighter family narrative. Memories of her father, for example, begin with his cherished formula for potato salad and an attempt to recreate his French toast, but also include a variation on scrambled eggs that spurred a comforting moment as he was dying of cancer. The second half of the memoir focuses on her blossoming relationship with Brandon, who started out as a fan of the blog, became a long-distance boyfriend and eventually moved to Seattle and married her—of course, she shares the recipes for the pickled carrots they served at the wedding as well as the chocolate cake she baked for dessert. Though there is an emphasis on desserts, the recipes cover a variety of meals, none beyond the range of an ordinary cook, and Wizenberg's directions are laced with a charming voice that strikes a neat balance with the reflective passages. Her strong personality stands out among her generation's culinary voices. (Mar.)
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Product Description
When Molly Wizenberg's father died of cancer, everyone told her to go easy on herself, to hold off on making any major decisions for a while. But when she tried going back to her apartment in Seattle and returning to graduate school, she knew it wasn't possible to resume life as though nothing had happened. So she went to Paris, a city that held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat. She was supposed to be doing research for her dissertation, but more often, she found herself peering through the windows of chocolate shops, trekking across town to try a new pâtisserie, or tasting cheeses at outdoor markets, until one evening when she sat in the Luxembourg Gardens reading cookbooks until it was too dark to see, she realized that her heart was not in her studies but in the kitchen.

At first, it wasn't clear where this epiphany might lead. Like her long letters home describing the details of every meal and market, Molly's blog Orangette started out merely as a pleasant pastime. But it wasn't long before her writing and recipes developed an international following. Every week, devoted readers logged on to find out what Molly was cooking, eating, reading, and thinking, and it seemed she had finally found her passion. But the story wasn't over: one reader in particular, a curly-haired, food-loving composer from New York, found himself enchanted by the redhead in Seattle, and their email correspondence blossomed into a long-distance romance.

In A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother's pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately entwined. You won't be able to decide whether to curl up and sink into the story or to head straight to the market to fill your basket with ingredients for Cider-Glazed Salmon and Pistachio Cake with Honeyed Apricots.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416551050
• ISBN-13: 978-1416551058
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,167 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At Molly's table, February 26, 2009

By	Jennifer Gingras "8junebugs" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have only made it up through the coconut macaroons, and I have already cried.

Twice.

I preordered this book, being a longtime Orangette reader with unshaken trust in Molly's palate. The combination of ingredients in her Buchons Au Thons alone changed the way I consider food, flavor, and a can of tuna.

More than that, Molly writes about food the way I feel about food -- simple meals are intertwined with memories and people and how we become who and what we are. Even if I someday manage a perfect souffle, I will still crave my mom's egg salad sandwiches, white bread only, on Sundays in July.

I tend to fall into Nigella Lawson books -- she makes cooking look SO sexy and fun -- but the domestic goddess is missing an accessibility Molly manages easily. Her voice and the sometimes heart-rendingly personal stories she tells with each recipe really do bring you to her kitchen table. And then they give you a cookie.

From its simple, delightful design to the stories to the recipes that come with USEFUL instructions (seriously, so many recipes fail at this), this is already one of my favorite cookbooks. This, to me, is what food is about.

If I have one complaint, it's that the simple design doesn't allow for glossy 8x10 photos of each recipe's results. Thank god she's still got Orangette for that!

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a good meal...., March 1, 2009

By	N. Pearce (Fairbanks, AK United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I had to save a little for leftovers. Have you ever had a dinner so good you had to save a little bit at the end of the meal just so you could have a little left to savor the next day? Well, this was Molly's book. I stayed up until 1 a.m. reading this book and when I was finally to the last chapter I just couldn't take that it was going to be over. This morning I got up and made coffee and the Scones from the recipe in A Homemade Life, and sat down to savor the last chapter and the scones. It was perfect both the book and the scones. The scones may very well be the best I have ever made and that says a lot considering I have written about a dozen blog posts related to finding the perfect scone. Really, I'm so glad for Orangette as I know the story does not have to end. I was only a mild follower of the blog before this book, now I want to go back and read every post. All the recipes look amazing as well.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recipes are a bonus, March 1, 2009

By	B. Shortt (Oklahoma City, OK USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I expected this book to be about food, since the aurhor's blog, Orangette, is my favorite among several I read, and a number of the recipes I have tried, from granola to boiled kale (neither are included in this book, but are available on the Orangette site), now make regular appearances on our table.
As delicious as the recipes are, however, this is not primarily a cookbook. The recipes are a bonus feature in as lovely a book of essays as I remember reading in--well, I think--ever. I don't much like essays, usually, but then I didn't think I'd like boiled kale either, and we're having that once a week now. If you skip the essays and only make the recipes, you'll miss the best of the feast.
Ms. Wizenberg's stories of finding her place have obviously been carefully crafted, with deft imagery, but they are also page-turners. You can't wait to see how each little episode ends, even though you know it ends with a recipe and the subject matter is familiar to us all.
She dusts the ordinary, whether she's writing about dough or death, with a shimmer of something that makes it special.