
Every woman has poignant food memories: the times she licked the bowl when her mother baked a cake, or helped her grandmother make blintzes, tortillas, or Southern fried chicken. And how about the times she and her girlfriends baked chocolate-chip cookies or, later, prepared elaborate dinners to impress potential husbands?One day when looking through an old desk she'd bought as a newlywed thirty years earlier, food writer and restaurant critic Sharon Boorstin discovered a notebook of recipes she'd collected from her mother, relatives, and girlfriends at the time. It inspired her to reconnect with the recipe givers -- some of whom she hadn't seen in years -- and to explore the power of cooking and food in establishing bonds among women.Let Us Eat Cake celebrates these connections. As a young girl, Boorstin helped her mother make tuna casseroles; on a college trip to Europe, she and her girlfriends compared men and restaurants with equal zest; after she became a food writer, Boorstin bonded with women in the food world including Barbara Lazaroff (Mrs. Wolfgang) Puck, the Too Hot Tamales, and Julia Child. Today, after decades of enjoying food and cooking together, Boorstin and the women in her life have come to understand what truly makes for female friendships.With dozens of delicious recipes and vintage photos, this moving book will inspire readers to remember and cherish their own experiences with food, family, and friends.
This book investigates how the shared preparation and consumption of food functions as a primary mechanism for establishing and maintaining female friendships across generations. Author Sharon Boorstin, an established food writer and restaurant critic, utilizes her personal history and a collection of rediscovered family recipes to frame her inquiry. By reconnecting with the women who contributed to her early culinary education, she constructs a narrative that links domestic labor and social dining to the evolution of female identity and interpersonal bonds. The work serves as both a culinary memoir and a sociological reflection on the role of the kitchen in women's lives.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Readers frequently note the accessible and nostalgic tone of the prose, which balances personal storytelling with practical recipe sharing. Experts highlight this as a lighthearted contribution to the genre of food memoir that emphasizes the social utility of cooking over technical instruction.
Page Count:
336
Publication Date:
2003-06-17
Publisher:
William Morrow Paperbacks
ISBN-10:
0060012846
ISBN-13:
9780060012847
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!