Saturday, June 7, 2014

Relish: My Life in the Kitchen

Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley, 192 pages
A 2014 Alex Award Winner

The daughter of a foodie dad and a chef mom, Lucy grew up with a healthy appetite for foods of all kinds. In this memoir (more a series of vignettes), Lucy recounts many of her favorite food memories and thoughts in bright, colorful comics. Food seems to be the touchstone in her life, the one thing that is a constant, even after her parents divorce and her mother moves her from New York City to the country, or when she moves across country to Chicago for art school. She turns to baking when worried, loves to cook for others and with others, and goes through periods of craving certain foods, like mushrooms fried in butter and oil or McDonald's french fries. She also includes an illustrated recipe with each chapter, usually one for a food she just focused on, including her own tips and solutions for problems you might encounter when making the dish yourself. This is definitely a foodie book for all of us who just enjoy good food without the pretentiousness. Interwoven in many of her stories is a central idea that she keeps returning to: food is meant to be shared with the ones you love, even when it's bad, because it's about coming together and gathering around the things you make together. Don't read this one on an empty stomach.

(Read as part of YALSA's Hub Reading Challenge.)

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