This cookbook was inspirational not in the usual bookmark-to-later-try-a-recipe way, but in a soulful, lasting way.

Tamar Adler reminds, in prose both crisp and seductive, that passion persists as an option; that there is a world beyond the factory floor. If I could go back in time for just a couple of days, I'd spend a part of those two days in their kitchens--breathing in the aromas of hot fresh donuts, or roast beef. Once greens are cooked as they should be, though: hot and lustily, with garlic, in a good amount of olive oil, they lose their moral urgency and become one of the most likable ingredients in your kitchen. This apt book about “eating affordably, responsibly and well” isn’t a conventional cookbook – though there are plenty of recipes in it – but a thought-provoking reflection on the meaning of cooking and eating.Then fry them, hot and quick, to be eaten immediately with nothing in mind but the crisp, salty vegetable itself. English peas need shelling, but they need it for only a few weeks, which makes the process bearable, and not a little grounding. I enjoyed the author’s insightful writing about her cooking knowledge; and really, this guide to all things culinary would be on my kitchen shelf instead of in my bookcase, if I’d wanted to remain a full-on omnivorous eater. Put them on a board and squish down with the bottom of a mug or jar or something, then wiggle it around a bit.

That said, this was a mildly successful book, in that it did teach me some things, while also boring me through some chapters of stuff I already know. In an age when every recipe seems to come with a list of ingredients as long as my arm, Tamar Adler's approach to food is disarmingly simple, refreshingly intuitive, and utterly sensible. It was as if we had sat down together to reminisce about life, cooking and favorite mealtime experiences.I loved her paragraphs on roasting vegetables and what she has to say about adding "a few bunches of dark, leafy greens. There are lines like this, for example, when she exhorts the reader to toast a piece of stale bread and rub it with a garlic clove and then to place it in a bowl. That is an entirely different book than this one, and should be attempted once a daily practice has been established. In addition to inspiring us to try more parts and forms of the animals and vegetables that we eat, she has given me a mind to check out MFK Fischer’s writing as well.

An A–Z compendium of recipes and tips to combat food waste by using every part of the ingredients you’re cooking with. She would probably think this book of essays a pure waste of time: elevating to prose what she used to do every day and celebrating what she gladly stopped doing when all of us began leaving home.

It's about how to cook with frugality, economy, efficiency and most of all Grace because we all make mistakes in the kitchen. I forget the way bliss can trip into meaning, into vibrancy, into a stunningly pigmented existential composition. i make it out of bits of things that i've saved over the week for that purpose-- also without thinking about it much.