September 2025 Cookbook Reviews

 

3 Doughs 60 Recipes by Lacey Ostermann

In 3 Doughs, 60 Recipes Lacey Ostermann does just that - gives 3 basic dough recipes and 60 other recipes using those dough bases. The 3 doughs are sandwich bread, focaccia, and pizza so the cookbook is basically divided into three sections with the first dough recipe and then other recipes either using that bread or that dough in another way. Ostermann has really great photos of each step in the 3 dough recipes that should make it easier to follow the steps. I already make my own pizza dough regularly but I would love to make focaccia and sandwich bread regularly too. This is a cookbook I might buy because there are so many recipes that I'd like to try. If you're interested in making your own bread without the commitment of sour dough, definitely check this one out.

Feasts on the Farm by Tamara Hicks and Jessica MacLeod

Feasts on the Farm includes 60 seasonal recipes from Tomales Farmstead Creamery in California. The dairy is made from sheep and goat milk so the book includes lots of cute animal pictures. The photographs of the farm and the food are beautiful. I didn't really see many recipes I wanted to try and obviously the dairy in all the recipes are their specific cheeses - while you may find a comparable substitute, not having tasted their cheese it would be hard to know if your version compared with theirs. Overall, a beautiful cookbook but just not tons of recipes I want to try.

September 2025 Reviews

 

Care and Feeding by Laurie Woolever

I think a more appropriate title for this book would be Drinking and cheating: a memoir. Of course, if that had been the title I wouldn't have picked it up to read it. There was virtually no "care" and very little "feeding" in this book. Laurie Woolever went to culinary school and worked for two of the most well-known and powerful men in the food world - Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. But about 75% of the book was about her completely out of control drinking, drug use, and random sex/cheating. I know the restaurant world, especially pre-#metoo, is known for debauchery, but Woolever seemed to make it her personal goal to out-do almost everyone in her orbit.

She never had a great experience working with Batali - he was always a predatory dick - but she knew he could open doors for her and he did. He was the one who recommended her to Bourdain. Bourdain, thankfully, was not a predatory dick and seemed like a nice guy - although still a celebrity with the expectation of all things magically getting done for him. Woolever seemed to have a much better working environment with Bourdain and he also opened a lot of doors for her. She was just such a trainwreck of a person. I could never figure out what if anything led her to becoming an alcoholic. There didn't seem to be any obvious family trauma or anything that happened to her that would explain her need to be checked out. She also dated or cheated with some of the WORST guys imaginable. Her poor husband. He seemed like a really nice guy who married a tornado of chaos. To me the only enjoyable part of this book was when she was working for Bourdain and when she finally got sober. But I also feel like her sobriety was REALLY glossed over because she made it seem like she just decided to stop when up to that point she was drinking or smoking pot pretty much continuously when she was awake (including a lot of her pregnancy...).

Overall, I would not recommend this one. The only reason I gave it 2 stars was for the parts when she worked for Anthony Bourdain. She was just not a likable person AT ALL.

Some quotes I liked:

"This was one of the many ways that the well-connected rich stay rich, which is by underpaying young, ambitious skilled workers, trading on the promise of access to more rich and/or famous potential clients. Any rich person could pay top dollar for a catered dinner from Glorious Foods, but the real game was to find a hungry, unincorporated lone wolf like me, with a persistent doubt about her own worth, too polite and concerned about seeming greedy or losing the gig to negotiate for anything, for fear of losing out." (p. 108)

"This was the downside of working hard in the shadow of an important man. I should have known better, because I'd spent almost my entire career working in such shadows - Mario's, Hector's, all the big chefs I interviewed for Art Culinaire, everyone with power at Wine Spectator, and now Tony. Very few people are curious about the unknown women who prop up the work of important men. Without the Tonys and Marios and Hectors of the world, there would have been no book or TV show or magazine work for me. The flip side of this, that the end products, credited solely to the marquee men, wouldn't exist without the work of women like me, was both a maddening riddle and a colossal 'no shit.'" (p. 245)

Reconnected by Carlos Whittaker

Carlos Whittaker is an author, podcaster, speaker, and content creator so he basically lived on his phone and social media. But he knew it was becoming an issue and a crutch when he realized he was spending over 7 hours a day on his phone, so he decided to do something radical (by today's standard) and go phone-free for 7 weeks. The first two weeks at a monastery, the second two weeks on an Amish farm, and the final three weeks at home. He literally had a friend in California keep his physical phone so there could be no cheating. The book is divided into two sections - one about his time at the monastery and the other about his time on the Amish farm. The chapters are short and funny with tips/ideas from his time in these places and how we can translate those ideas into our phone-filled lives. He also had a brain scan before and after his phone fast to see if there were any noticeable changes.

I didn't know who Carlos Whittaker was before reading this book. I wasn't an Instagram fan and I hadn't read any of his other books. I didn't even know the book had a Christian theme/focus when I picked it up. I was just curious about his idea of not only going phone-free but doing so in such different environments. I liked the book and it was an easy read. But it didn't go too in depth in any of the areas or how he adjusted afterward. I would have liked at least another chapter or an afterward that talked about how he was doing a couple months after this experiment/fast ended. I was also a little skeptical that the brain scan would really show anything noticeable after 7 weeks - but I'm not a neurologist so maybe that is possible.

I also think there is an opportunity for a play on Morgan Spurlock's 30 days TV show where people from different walks of life/ages/etc. could go smartphone free for 30 days and see how they fare. Overall, I liked the book and everyone could use tips on how to have better boundaries around phone/social media use.

Good Soil: the education of an accidental farmhand by Jeff Chu

In his 30's Jeff Chu had a successful career as a magazine writer and was living in New York City with his husband. After struggling for years to reconcile his sexuality and Christian faith, he decided to enroll in seminary at Princeton. There he was introduced to the Farminary - a 21 acre working farm that sought to help students see the ties between farming/food/agriculture and the Christian faith. Chu never grew up gardening, but he did love cooking and so he found that he really enjoyed working on the farm more than he expected. As he continues to wrestle with his faith and future, he finds the farm is his go-to place for peace and solitude.

I knew who Jeff Chu was because of Rachel Held Evans and even though I knew on the front end that I wouldn't agree with his theology I wanted to give this book a chance because of the tie between Christianity/faith and farming. I personally found Chu to be borderline insufferable. Everything was very "woe is me," no one has suffered like me, no one is an outcast like me, etc. To me he still seemed very conflicted on how to reconcile (or not) his sexuality with the faith he grew up in. There seemed to be a LOT of guilt - some could say it's because of the way he was brought up or some could say it's conviction. Either way, he didn't come across very likable at all. He also was never clear about why he actually wanted a seminary degree - from the author info at the back of the book he's back working in magazines again. So why spend all that money on a degree that you never intended to actually use? I also wish there had been more about how he became friends with Rachel Held Evans. While the writing is good and the parts about the farminary were interesting, the rest of the book was just way too much complaining for me. If you're interested in the intersection of faith and farming/food I would highly recommend Joel Salatin's The Marvelous Pigness of the Pig.

Nashville: scenes from the New American South by Ann Patchett, Heidi Ross, and Jon Meacham

We went to Nashville for vacation this year and I had to go visit Ann Patchett's bookstore, Parnassus Books. I picked this one up as a souvenir of our trip since it's a collection of photographs from all around Nashville, TN. Ann Patchett writes the introduction to the book. We only visited Nashville for a week but I felt like the book did a good job of showcasing the city and it's vibe. It's a great book to flip through and the perfect souvenir of our trip.

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horowitz had been married for thirty-five years when he died suddenly and unexpectedly while on his book tour on Memorial Day 2019. Memorial Days tells two stories - the immediate aftermath of Horowitz's death and then 3 years later when Brooks went to Flinders Island, a remote island in Australia, to take time to properly grieve her husband and revisit their love story. While this is not a fun memoir to read, it is beautifully written. The reader can feel the love between Brooks and Horowitz and Brooks's devastation after his death. She writes about their life together as foreign correspondents, authors, and parents. She also writes about the callousness of dealing with death in American culture. This is definitely a reminder of how quickly someone can be gone and the importance of enjoying people while they are still here.

August 2025 Cookbook Reviews

 

Garlic, Olive Oil + Everything Mediterranean by Daen Lia

This cookbook is unique in that the recipes aren't organized by type but by the ingredient - garlic, olive oil, butter, bread, crumbs, and eggs. Each section has a variety of recipes all featuring that signature ingredient. Many of the recipes build on previous recipes in the book and there are also tips included with the recipes that either offer alternate variations or ways to use up any leftovers. There weren't a ton of recipes I'd like to try but there was a good variety of recipes and I liked the way they were organized by ingredient instead of appetizers, side dishes, etc.

The Essential Canning Cookbook by Molly Bravo

This is a great cookbook for someone who's newly learned to can. I always say if you're new to canning, please take an in-person class or learn from an experienced canner - don't learn from a book. The first section of this book covers "foundations and techniques" which includes how to both water-bath and pressure can. The second half has recipes organized by type like fruit, vegetables, broths/stocks, etc. There was a good variety of recipes and a lot of the recipes include helpful tips and variations of that recipe. Overall, this is a solid canning cookbook and there were a couple new recipes I'd like to try.

Braided Heritage by Jessica B. Harris

This is a unique cookbook that explored the Braided Heritage of American food that was rooted in a combination of Indigenous, European, and African history and traditions. Each section of the book focuses on one of those areas with recipes and also articles about specific ingredients or about that culture and food. Harris is a food historian and most of her career has been researching and exploring Southern food through the lens of African influence. While there weren't a ton of recipes I wanted to try, there is a lot of great information and it's obvious that she did a lot of research to create this book.

August 2025 Reviews

 

Framed: astonishing true stories of wrongful convictions by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey

John Grisham and Jim McCloskey (founder of Centurion Ministries) cowrote this book that shares 10 stories of innocent people wrongfully convicted (and one executed). The ones that McCloskey writes are cases that he actually helped with through his work with Centurion Ministries. I was impressed with McCloskey's writing - it has to be intimidating to write half of the stories in a book when the other half are written by John Grisham. All the stories are compelling and as the subtitle says, astonishing. I think the American public understands that there are innocent people in prison (or executed) but I don't know that the true numbers are actually known and if it were known it would be terrifying. This book is terrifying. Even though I read and watch a lot of true crime stuff that is in this vein, it was hard to read story after story of people spending DECADES in prison for crimes that not only they did not commit, but were basically framed by police/prosecution. I think this is an important read, but it is a hard read.

Some quotes I liked:

"Clarence [Brandley] was never compensated for his wrongful imprisonment on death row. He initiated lawsuits against the authorities responsible for his false conviction, but a judge dismissed them, saying those agencies had sovereign immunity. In 2011 he was denied compensation under the Texas compensation statute for false convictions. The fund claimed that his application was made too late. To add insult to injury, Texas ordered him to pay $25,000 for child support payments in arrears during his nine and a half years of false imprisonment. His weekly wages were garnished for many years." (p. 63)

"In a 2001 study, twenty-five well-known bite mark experts were given four identical sets of bite marks and asked to compare them with seven sets of dental molds. The error rate was an astonishing 63.5 percent. Only one-third accurately 'matched' the marks with the teeth. Almost all of them continued consulting and testifying in bite mark cases as if the study meant nothing...In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) declared that bite mark analysis as a forensic specialty was not based on science...In 2016, the Texas Forensic Science Commission declared bite mark analysis so unfounded that it should no longer be used in criminal trials. A moratorium was also recommended by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. But, science be damned. Bite mark analysis is still allowed in most jurisdictions; sought by prosecutors, presented by experts, approved by judges, believed by jurors, and rubber-stamped by appellate courts." (p. 86-87)

"Among innocence advocates and lawyers, it is often said that it is much easier to convict an innocent person that to get one out of prison." (p. 148)

The Wisdom of Sheep: observations from a family farm by Rosamund Young

The Wisdom of Sheep is a collection of farm observations from Rosamund Young. Rosamund and her brother Richard grew up on a family farm that they then took over from their parents. Rosamund always wanted to keep sheep, but I guess they are more labor intensive than cattle and so she had to wait until their Mom passed away as she was her mother's main caregiver. The entries range from a few sentences to a few pages. Some are directly about the workings of the farm and some are more musings on nature and animals. The whole tone is very gentle and meandering. This was exactly what I needed after finishing Framed by John Grisham about innocent people spending decades in prison after being framed by crooked cops/prosecutors. My only complaint is that the timeline of the entries is all over the place, so sometimes it's a little hard to follow. I wish there had been a little more information about how/why she and Richard continued the farm - did neither of them want to get married or have their own family? In her bio it says she runs the farm now with her partner Gareth. Gareth is introduced in the book but I would have liked more backstory on how they went from being roommate/landlord to romantic partners while still living in the house with her brother. I'd also like to know a little more about the farm - since they name all the animals they obviously aren't raising meat, so is it dairy and wool? I feel like there are a lot of unanswered questions. There are some nice black & white drawings throughout the book but I would have liked a few pages of photographs of their farm and some of the animals mentioned. Overall, a very gentle, pleasant reading experience about living on a cattle and sheep farm in the UK.

Seeking Shelter: a working mother, her children, and a story of homelessness in America by Jeff Hobbs

This is a unique look at homelessness through the story of two women, fifteen years apart, who are both helped by a unique organization called Door of Hope in Los Angeles, CA. Evelyn's family is the primary focus of the book and shows just how quickly a few bad decisions can lead to homelessness. Evelyn and her husband Manny decide to move from Lancaster, CA to Los Angeles to be in a better school system for their kids. Evelyn has 5 children, 3 with Manny and 2 with a prior boyfriend who is prison for gang-related crimes. After they move to LA, Manny quickly gets frustrated with their cramped situation living in an extended stay motel with 7 people and starts drinking more. Coming home drunk one night he punches Evelyn's oldest child, then attacks her when she gets home from work. She packs up the kids and leaves, launching them into homelessness. Shortly afterward, she finds out she is pregnant again. The whole year and a half that Evelyn and her kids are homeless, they never miss school and she is working, volunteering at the kids school, and still trying to find permanent housing. Through a social worker she gets referred to Door of Hope, a shelter that is an actual home where she receives therapy, job training, and free childcare. She has a kitchen to cook for her family and a back yard for them to play in with other kids at the shelter. After "graduating" from Door of Hope, Evelyn is matched up with Wendi, a prior "graduate" from Door of Hope who know works for the organization as a mentor to women who leave the program. Things aren't perfect for Evelyn once she leaves the shelter and is in her own place, but this help puts her family on a new path.

One of the most unique aspects of this book is that the author appears to have no agenda - no commentary on what can "fix" homelessness, no opinions on what Evelyn or Wendi did right or wrong, no political suggestions. He wanted to highlight the stories of two women who ended up homeless who weren't addicts or mentally ill to show that depending on your circumstances this can happen to anyone. Door of Hope is a unique organization that appears to be very successful in helping families go from homeless to housed, but it's help is just a drop in the bucket of the need out there. What was highlighted for me in the book is that for women being involved with the wrong man can destroy your life. The women are almost always the ones who end up with the kids and for both of these women if they had either had fewer children or the same number of children with the right man, they would have never become homeless. Definitely a very interesting and well-written book highlighting an the overwhelming problem of homelessness/affordable housing in the US.

Bringing Up Beaver: two orphaned beaver kits, their humans, and our journey back to the wild by John Aberth

John Aberth is a licensed wildlife rehabilitator in Vermont. In May of 2020 he got his first beaver call. Beavers are different than many other wildlife rehab because if they are young kits they need to stay with the rehabber for 2 years. They also require socialization so John and his wife would need to interact with the beaver kit like they were his family. "...Nine out of ten beaver kits in rehab die, often due to 'rehabber error' (p. 8-9) and a lack of bonding would make the kit depressed and lonely. John and his wife create environments for the beaver kit (whom they name BK) both inside and outside. During their two years with BK they learn a lot about rehabbing beavers, they help him find a mate (another orphaned, rescued kit), and find a new pond for him and his mate to be released. The book includes a selection of photos which is great because you get to actually see BK and some of the other animals Aberth rehabbed during the BK time period.

I LOVE beavers so I was really looking forward to reading this one. It also has a great cover that really draws you in to the story. But I didn't love this one. Maybe it was a little too repetitive - a LOT of poo talk and descriptions, a lot of descriptions of refilling water tanks, washing bedding, etc. It is an interesting story and I admire Aberth and his wife for spending so much time (and it is a LOT of time) doing this to help wildlife. Aberth and his wife don't have children and it was a little off-putting to me how much he referred to themselves as beaver-parents. Two years is a long time and of course you would bond with BK, but that aspect of the story was odd/off-putting to me. I did really like the postscript about "the tragedy of trapping" that highlights how harmful animal trapping can be and how untold numbers of beaver kits die when their parents are trapped. I think hunting for meat/food is fine but trapping seems to only be for fur or "nuisance" and there are other ways to handle those issues. Plus there is just a lot more suffering and cruelty in trapping. Overall, this is an interesting book but I didn't love it as much as other animal memoirs I've read. I would highly recommend Eager: the surprising, secret life of beavers and why they matter by Ben Goldfarb and Aberth quotes him in the postscript as well.

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson (Books & Banter book club)

In the summer of 1919 Constance Haverhill is at Hazelbourne-on-Sea helping an elderly family friend, Mrs. Fog, recuperate from influenza. Constance had been running the accounting for this same family's estate during the war, but has now been released from that role for men coming back from the war. Constance's parents are no longer alive and her brother and his wife have taken over the family farm, so she feels like she needs to find her own way now. At the Hazelbourne seaside hotel she meets Poppy. Poppy is from a well-to-do family and is trying to help keep women working even after men come home from war with her motorcycle taxi service. Her brother, Harris, was wounded in battle and is struggling to reacclimate at home. Poppy sweeps Constance into her circle of friends and women motorcycle riders. Constance is having an amazing summer, but knows that she is not in the same class as Poppy and her friends and needs to find work that can support her soon. The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club uses the aftermath of World War I to explore issues of class, sex, race, ability, and money.

I found this book hard to get into. There are a LOT of characters and storylines going on and it can be hard to keep up with all of it. I did like Constance and I wanted to see what would happen to her. A lot of the other characters were pretty awful - spoiled, elitist, selfish, etc. The story overall was pretty slow, then all of a sudden the end sped up and SO MUCH was going on in the last few chapters. A lot of the storylines were either quickly wrapped up or dropped. I was happy with the ending for Constance but I wish that there hadn't been so many other storylines to wrap up. I think several characters/storylines could have been left out altogether. It was OK but I wouldn't recommend it and I wouldn't have read it if not for my book club.

The Wager: a tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder by David Grann (Evening Edition, re-read)

Two years after leaving England with a fleet of five warships survivors from The Wager wash up in Brazil telling a wild story of shipwreck, murder, and survival. These men are hailed as heroes who survived shipwreck, starvation, and a myriad of illnesses and trials. But a few months later another small ship lands in Chile and says the first group are actually mutineers who abandoned their captain and ship. The Navy calls a court martial and all surviving sailors from The Wager are called to testify. The press and public are fascinated with this dark tale of shipwreck and mutiny - but which group will prevail in the court martial? Who is actually telling the truth?

David Grann does an AMAZING job of telling this wild story that highlights the adage, the truth is stranger than fiction. And actually several maritime authors use the story of The Wager as inspiration for fictional books in later years. Grann gives the back stories of several of the key players in this real life drama, tells the story of The Wager's doomed voyage and shipwreck, and how the sailors who survived lived to tell their tales. It's amazing that anyone survived to today reading about how AWFUL life on the sea was for the sailors - and that was before any fighting/war even happened. Life on a ship it was almost like a prison with the chance of drowning added in and Grann explains how press gangs went around basically abducting men into service because it was such a hard life and high mortality that few would volunteer. What's amazing to me is several of the survivors went on to continue in Naval careers after their ordeal! The shipwrecked sailors ordeals were horrific and as one reviewer aptly put it - this was like Lord of the Flies non-fiction edition. I can't reiterate enough how well Grann lays out this story and the amount of research he did to get all the facts together and then convey it to the reader. He also includes several color photographs of paintings that depict some of the sailors and ships involved in this story, as well as some photographs of the island they were shipwrecked on in Patagonia. Once again, he's taken a true story that could have been lost to history and turned it into a page-turner book that you can't put down until you know what happens in the end.

Some quotes I liked:

"She was christened in honor of Sir Charles Wager, the seventy-four-year-old First Lord of the Admiralty. The ship's name seemed fitting: weren't they all gambling with their lives?" (p. 18-19)

"Byron confronted an inescapable truth of the wooden world: each man's life depended on the performance of others. They were akin to the cells in a human body; a single malignant one could destroy them all." (p. 38-39)

"Logbooks were supposed to be preserved from a wreck so that the Admiralty could later determine the potential culpability of not only the captain but also the lieutenant, the master, and other officers. Bulkeley was shocked to discover that many of the Wager's records had disappeared or were shredded, and not by mere accident. 'We have good reason to apprehend there was a person employed to destroy them,' he recalled. Somebody, whether a navigator or perhaps even a more senior officer, wanted to shield his actions from scrutiny." (p. 102)

Learned a new word - "internecine" which means "destructive to both sides in a conflict." and definitely summed up the shipwreck survivors of The Wager. p. 160

"Eighteenth-century British naval law has a reputation for being draconian, but it was often more flexible and forgiving in reality. Under the Articles of War, many transgressions, including falling asleep on watch, were punishable by death, yet there was usually an important caveat: a court could hand down a lesser sentence if it saw fit. And although overthrowing a captain was a grave crime, 'mutinous' behavior often applied to minor insubordinations not deemed worthy of severe punishment. Nevertheless, the case against all of the men of the Wager seemed overwhelming. They were not accused of negligible misconduct but, rather, of a complete breakdown of naval order, from the highest levels of command to the rank and file. And though they had each tried to shape their stories in ways that justified their actions, the legal system was designed to strip these narratives down to the bard, hard, unemotive facts." (p. 233)

"Strikingly, there was one surviving castaway who never had a chance to record his testimony in any form. Not in a book or in a deposition. Not even in a letter. And that was John Duck, the free Black seaman who had gone ashore with Morris's abandoned party. Duck had withstood the years of deprivation and starvation, and he had managed with Morris and two others to trek to the outskirts of Buenos Aires. But there his fortitude was of no avail, and he suffered what every free Black seaman dreaded: he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Morris didn't know where his friend had been taken, whether to the mines or to the fields - Duck's fate was unknown, as is the case for so many people whose stories can never be told." (p. 248)

"John Byron, who married and had six children, stayed in the Navy, serving for more than two decades and ascending the ranks all the way to vice-admiral...in the cloistered wooden world he seemed to find what he had longed for - a sense of fellowship. And he was widely praised for what one officer called his tenderness and his care toward his men." (p. 254)

Update from re-reading for book club 8/2025:

This is still an amazing read and I flew through it again because even though I knew what was going to happen you still get caught up in the story. Reading about earlier times when there were no antibiotics, no understanding of scurvy, life was just brutal. And the life of a seaman was beyond brutal. It's still amazing any of these men survived what they did to tell their stories. I'll be curious what my book club members will think because this is not our normal book club reading.

July 2025 Cookbook Reviews

 

The Blue Kitchen by Cider Mill Press

I was familiar with the Blue Zones and have watched the Netflix docuseries as well. Even though I don't 100% agree with all the dietary suggestions (mostly plant based) I thought I would check out this cookbook. I didn't realize there were prior Blue Zones cookbook so I can't compare this one to those. It's organized like a typical cookbook with chapters on appetizers/snacks, salads/bowls, soups/stews, etc. Not many recipes jumped out as something I want to try. I also felt like many of the recipes were either too basic (a cucumber salad that just marinated cucumbers) or overly involved. Overall, I wasn't super impressed with this one. Not saying it's a bad cookbook, just not for me.

Sun-Kissed Cooking by Brooke Williamson

Brooke Williamson has already had a long career in professional cooking starting from a young age in professional kitchens. This is her first cookbook and the focus is on vegetables. Growing up in Los Angeles there are fresh vegetables almost year round and as a professional chef she would build her menu around what's in season. I really liked that the recipes are organized by vegetable. I didn't find many recipes I wanted to try. I enjoyed reading her introduction about how she got into cooking and her career so far. Overall, if you're looking to add more vegetable recipes to your personal kitchen this one is worth checking out.

July 2025 Reviews

 

Slow Noodles: a Cambodian memoir of love, loss, and family recipes by Chantha Nguon

Chantha Nguon grew up in Cambodia in what would probably be considered middle class. She and her siblings were educated, she had money for treats, and their family ate well. After her father's death her mother is able to keep things going for the family but then Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge come in and their family flees to Vietnam. In Vietnam their circumstances are much reduced but she still has her mother and older sister and the three of them are doing OK. Then when her sister and mother die in quick succession, Chantha understands what real deprivation and poverty is. She cobbles together whatever means she can to make enough money to eat for the day. Eventually she meets her husband, Chan, who is also half-Khmer and also came from an educated, middle class family who also lost everything during the wars in Cambodia and Vietnam. Together they try to escape Vietnam, spending 10 years in a refugee camp in Thailand, before realizing they won't be able to emigrate to Europe or America. They go back to Cambodia and try to rebuild their lives. But back in Cambodia, Chan and Chantha not only survive but they begin to thrive. They also not only rebuild their own family, but help their community begin to rebuild. Throughout all of these trials food is what continues to connect Chantha to her family and Cambodia. She has nothing material from her childhood or family so the recipes and memories are what she cherishes and also passes on to her own children. An inspiring story of one woman's path from war-torn refugee to successful businesswoman. She also includes 22 Khmer recipes that sustained her through it all.

Secrets of Adulthood by Gretchen Rubin

This is a little book of aphorisms that Gretchen Rubin has put together to share her Secrets of Adulthood. In case you're not familiar, an aphorism is "a concise statement that contains an expansive truth." (p. 12) She initially started writing down these "secrets" to share with her daughters, but also realized they could be good reminders for her (or anyone) as well. The aphorisms are divided into 4 larger categories (Cultivating Ourselves, Facing the Perplexities of Relationships, Making Things Happen, and Confronting Life's Dilemmas), then each category has several subcategories/topics like Work, Creativity, Tough Decisions, Adventure, Friendship, etc. This is a really quick read - like you could probably sit down and read it all in an hour or so. This would also make a great high school or college graduation gift. A cute, quick read with lots of memorable quotes and aphorisms.

Cellar Rat: my life in the restaurant underbelly by Hannah Selinger

After Hannah Selinger finished college at Columbia University, she came home to Massachusetts and decided to work at a local restaurant for the summer. The dysfunctional connection she found as a restaurant worker led her on a 10 year detour from journalism (her college major) into the underbelly of the restaurant world. She worked her way from a local pub into fine dining working as a sommelier at restaurants like Bar Americain, BLT Prime, Jean-George, and Momofuku. Throughout all the restaurants Selinger worked, the common thread was dysfunction. Restaurant workers, whether front of back of the house, have brutal schedules - long, hard hours, working holidays, weekends, it's very hard to get time off, and it's rare that your days off align with anyone working a more "normal" job. Restaurants also tend to draw partiers and addicts and staff often go out after work to blow off steam leading to more unhealthy aspects of this career/lifestyle. Selinger found herself in a love/hate relationship with working in restaurants. It was like an abusive relationship - when it was good, it was really good, but when it was bad, it was brutal. After her father's death, Selinger realizes that is the wake up call she needs to get out of restaurants and go back to writing.

In 2020 Selinger saw a series of tweets about a powerful man in the restaurant industry that she had crossed paths with back in her restaurant days. That triggered her memory of all the dysfunction she witnessed and participated in during her restaurant working days. I was surprised at the mixed reviews of this book. Several people said that they thought the book would be more about wine and how to pair it with food (that is NOWHERE in the description of the book) or that Selinger was a narcissist who just wanted to whine about all the bad stuff that happened to her. She doesn't come across as narcissistic AT ALL to me. Nowhere in the book does she say that every minute of every day in the restaurant industry was awful and toxic. That's the whole point of the book the love/hate aspect of restaurants - when it's good it's intoxicating but when it's not, it's really bad. It's also frustrating and sad to keep reading about abusive people in power who are never held accountable. Certain industries are known for this but it's anywhere where there is enough money to shield people from their consequences. I really liked the book even though it was not a happy or light read. Selinger is a good writer and this book shines a light on things that are likely still going on in restaurants today despite the #metoo movement and everything else.

Some quotes I liked:

"But to be a woman who loved food was very different than to be a man who loved food. You were still supposed to care about restraint. You were supposed to love it, want it, understand it, obsess over it, talk about it constantly - but never really indulge in it. To indulge was to give up the last vestiges of control. To indulge was to slip from a size 0 to a size 2 to a size 4 to a size 6 and so on and so on." (p. 168)

"To fit in at Momofuku, after all, you couldn't be nice. You could pretend to be nice, but you couldn't actually mean it. It was hard to know where I fit in when it came to this jigsaw puzzle of personalities. I wasn't mean, but I was a misfit. After work, I was happy to commiserate with the servers and creative personalities at the late-night bars. Even though I was upper management, I wasn't treated like a manager, and I wasn't included in the camaraderie extended to Dave's so-called Momo family. From the outside, it was a happy place to work, a communal place, where everyone pushed everyone else to be better. But inside, it felt competitive and exclusive, and, for me, unwelcoming. It was a workplace led by people who wanted you to believe that they had your best interests in mind, when really they wanted you to fail." (p. 198-199)

The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon

I was all set to really love this book even though I wasn't familiar with Sharon McMahon or her podcast and "Governerds" fans. Reading about 12 "unsung Americans who changed the course of history" sounded like a fantastic book. I barely got through the first person she highlights and honestly only because I wanted to find out if Clara Brown ever reunited with her daughter. Not being familiar with her podcast style, I found her writing very off putting. As one review put it her constant "cringeworthy attempts at humor" fell flat for me. There was also a LOT of rabbit trailing and asides that took away from the person who was supposed to be the focus. I also agree with other reviews I read that said it was hard to tell who the 12 people were because there was WAY too much information (and in my opinion too many chapters) for each person. Why not have one chapter per person to be sure it's obvious who they are? There is a way to give historical background about a subject/person without getting too bogged down and there is a way to have humor shine though even when writing about difficult topics but none of that was present in this book. This was rambling and awkward in my opinion.

Night Magic: adventures among glowworms, moon gardens, and other marvels of the dark by Leigh Ann Henion

In Night Magic Leigh Ann Henion invites us to turn off our porch lights and explore some of the creatures of the dark. Covering everything from fireflies and glowworms to foxfire fungus and moon gardens, she explores things that are becoming more and more hidden or lost to our constantly "on" and lit up world. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she is from the NC mountains and lives in Boone so a lot of what she talked about was familiar to me. She explored some interesting things like Mothapalooza, a moth-focused festival and helping researchers trap and tag/record bats. While a lot of what she talked about was very interesting, a lot of it was overly-flowery or came across like she was trying too hard to make EVERYTHING extra special. I personally found the first half (which was focused more on things in NC) more interesting than the second half. I did like it and I do think she is bringing attention to important parts of our environment.

Some quotes I liked:

"...naturalist Lynn Faust, who used to spend summers in the now-defunct Elkmont community, grew up admiring the fireflies we're watching. As an adult, she came across and article about sychronous-flashing fireflies in Asia, and she recognized similarities in what the scientists were reporting and what she'd seen as a child. When she reached out to researchers in the 1990s, they were skeptical that an unknown-to-science species existed in the most-visited national park in the country [The Great Smoky Mountains National Park], so she sent a musical composition mimicking the sequences of flashes in Elkmont. It's what convinced firefly scientists that they should make a trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where they confirmed a never-before-recorded synchronous species: Photinus carolinus. (p. 6-7)

"We might think of songbirds as daytime companions as opposed to night owls, but 80 percent of North America's migratory birds travel at night, using stars as navigational devices while avoiding the turbulence of daytime thermals. In U.S. cities alone, 365 to 988 million birds are killed every year during these nocturnal migrations in part due to artificial lighting issues, which disorient and cause them to collide with buildings, often fatally. And without access to navigational stars in cities awash with LEDs, some birds simply lose their way, with city lights drawing them away from their ancestral migratory flyways." (p. 70)

News of the World by Paulette Jiles - History & Historical Fiction book club, re-reading

After the Civil War Captain Jefferson Kidd rides from small town to small town reading the News of the World from various newspapers. He's lived through three wars, is widowed, and enjoys the freedom of not being tied down in his old age. While at one of his stops he is offered a fifty-dollar gold piece to bring a rescued white child back to her family. Johanna Leonberger's parents and younger sister were killed by Kiowa raiders and she was kidnapped and lived with them for 4 years. She is now 10 years old, does not speak English, and doesn't want to leave her Kiowa family. The Captain agrees to take her against his better judgement, but while traveling across the wild Texas territory the two form a unique bond. Once they reach her extended family outside San Antonio the Captain has to make a terrible choice that will ultimately change both he and Johanna's lives forever. This is a short, but fantastic book with two very memorable characters and would make a great movie! Definitely worth reading!

Updated review after 2nd reading:

Re-reading this book was even more enjoyable the second time. There were scenes I didn't remember, but overall I was able to read it a little more slowly because I knew the ending so I wasn't rushing to find out what happens. I still got choked up at the very end. I just LOVE Captain Kidd and Johanna and now to find out there will be a movie later this year is even better!

Update after 3rd reading:

It's been 5 years since I last read News of the World and I still love it. This time the poetic language really stood out to me and just how well she tells the story. She is able to pack so much description in so few words. Such a great book. Update to my second reading - I saw the movie and was not impressed. This is a hard book to turn into a movie because it's not super dramatic and more about the developing relationship between Captain Kidd and Johanna. Also just found out that Jiles passed away this month.

June 2025 Cookbook Reviews

 

Sunny Days Taco Nights by Enrique Olvera

I love tacos and Mexican food. My favorite summer snack is homemade salsa. So, I'm always checking out taco/Mexican cookbooks to get new ideas. This one was a huge disappointment. I've never seen LESS appealing taco photos - like NONE of them looked good. Several were like a tortilla with a huge slab of some kind of meat on it. Surely that's not how you're expected to eat it? So why not show what it looks like with either cut or shredded meat and some toppings? It was just a disappointment overall.

Grow Cook Eat: a food lover's guide to vegetable gardening by Willi Galloway

This is a unique half gardening half cookbook. The first 40 pages cover gardening basics - planning your space, creating good soil, planting, etc. Then the rest of the book is divided into types of plants - herbs, greens, legumes, squash, cabbage family, roots, warm-season vegetables, and fruit. Each section covers specific plants and tips for growing and then a recipe for that plant/veggie. There was a lot of good information but I do wish there were more recipes, one per plant/veggie just didn't seem like enough. But I think this would be a good book for a beginner gardener to help decide what to grow.

The Cook and the Gardener by Amanda Hesser

An American cook is working for a year in a French chateau and befriends a curmudgeonly French gardener. While the premise sounds great, I was expecting a cookbook. This was like half memoir/story of her time working as a chef at this French chateau and how she becomes friends with the older French gardener and his wife. I would read that book if it was published as food/gardening memoir/nonfiction book. But a cookbook with not one picture or photo of the recipes? No thanks. In the future, maybe I'll revisit when I have time to read all of the writing around the recipes. I also agree with one review I read that said it had a know-it-all vibe too. I haven't read any of her other books and after this one I'm not inspired to.