Customer Reviews

Talking with My Mouth Full: Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a delightful book!! A mouthwatering book with great "conversation", traveling tidbits, and recipes.

I will definitely make the Gas Company Candy -- too bad today's utility bills aren't "sweetened" with such welcomed inserts.

Since I live in the DC area, I really resonated with (and enjoyed) all the descriptions of the Lexington market, Eastern Market, the delightful La Cuisine, and of course, the inimitable Bawlmor - what great memories (culinary and otherwise) this evoked!!

My only disappointment came when the book ended -- it felt like I was in the middle of eating a GREAT meal and suddenly all the food was taken away from the table! Oh please, if you re-issue this book -- put a picture (in color) of one of those sweet creations you wrote about, like maybe Smith Island Cake, on the last page, so we do not feel such a let-down!!!

This is a relaxing, satisfying book to read. It's full of nice stories about good people and fun times, and it goes a long way in covering the culinary variety America has to offer. Bonny Wolf seems like such a nice person, and she's written a book that's somehow part Charles Kuralt's road trips, and part family gathered in a warm Midwestern kitchen. I liked Talking With My Mouth Full, as you might guess.

For years I've enjoyed Bonny Wolf's food commentary on NPR (which, by the way, is much better than the SNL parody). Her new book captures the wit and personal touch of her radio pieces along with recipies and more in-depth background of the foods we eat. By examining how various people throughout the country enjoy and value the cultural act of eating, Wolf manages to show us the diversity of the nation through the unique foods we consume. It's a fascinating story and well worth reading.

"Talking with my Mouth Full" had me laughing with my mouth full of Bonny Wolf's comfy recipes.

Wolf has written an amazing book that blends the comforts of food with the frenzy of family and friends. It is chock full of recipes and antidotes that will make for a great dinner party, and even better dinner conversation. Through the lens of food Bonny makes sense out of the American experience.

The book is about the history of cultural food items and related recipes. It was well written and informative.

This item is still wrapped as a Christmas gift, but I looked it over before wrapping it. I liked it and think the person receiving it will, too!

TALKING WITH MY MOUTH FULL is a collection of winsome essays with recipes attached by Bonny Wolf, journalist and NPR correspondent. It seems as if today's food journalists come from one of two diametrically different backgrounds: either they were raised by parents who nearly poisoned them (think Ruth Reichl) or they were raised by parents who passed along their delight in food. Wolf belongs to the latter group, having grown up a baby boomer in Minneapolis reveling in particularly middle-class American institutions which she celebrates and has elaborated on as an adult. Just when you think America has gone to the food dogs with the endlessly vacant discussion of green bean casserole at holiday time, along comes Wolf to say, really, we're eating some good stuff here and we should just enjoy it. Much of it is comfort food and none of it is more difficult and elitist than what a family might serve at a dinner party for friends and family.

Her joie de vivre is contagious as she explores everything from the history and revival of Bundt cakes, regional foods, aprons, dinner party disasters, state fair fare, pot luck suppers, DC's (pre-fire) Eastern Market, Baltimore's crab cuisine, etc. Food as she talks about it is inseparable from place, friends, family, memory and living. Before I knew it, I was marking recipes to try and jotting down titles of old cookbooks to seek out. I doubt I'll overcome my aversion to Jell-o and do the retro thing and make a molded salad, and I'm not going to use lard or suet in the pastie pastry, but Wolf otherwise has me hooked.

Bonnie Wolf has written an absolutely beautiful meditation on the subject of food and its relationship to people. Throughout the reading of the book, I found myself nodding and thinking "The woman knows of what she speaks", particularly in her fantastic section on comfort foods. In the photograph on the book cover, Bonnie looks like someone I would very much like to know -- her kindness and joie de vivre shine through on every page. And the recipes, the recipes. Alas, too often reliant on processed ingredients which are not (and God willing never will be) available here in Eastern Europe where I live, but the recipes, the recipes! Thank you, Bonnie!

I loved this book. It was so real, reading made me hungry to try the many recipes. Though on some subconscious level I realized the importance of food, cooking, and recipes in my life, to have it written in such a way made it wonderfully apparent how. I too was a bit disappointed with how abruptly the book ended, I wanted a conclusion of sorts. Still a very wonderful book with special meaning to those of us who realize our lives are intertwined with food experiences.