Book Review of
Home Cooking

Lynn's Review

Home Cooking, by Laurie Colwin, is a food memoir in essay form. It was published in 1988, so it is definitely a backlist book. 

I love to read food essay books. I love food and cooking. I have been blogging and developing recipes at Lynn’s Kitchen Adventures since 2008. I also love memoirs, so a food memoir combines two things that I love. 

This book was a slow read for me in the evenings, usually just before bed. 

I loved the old fashioned feel of this book. If you can call 1988 old fashioned. Food now is often complicated. With fancy ingredients and detailed instructions. In the age of online recipe development and a quest for difference, we have lost the simple, basic recipes of the past.

We have also complicated entertaining. Laurie shares stories of simple meals like chicken salad that she serves to company, and of complex recipes she tried for the first time and turned into disasters while hosting a dinner party.

Laurie Colwin reminded me that simple can be delicious and that entertaining can be fun, even when it doesn’t go as planned. 

If you love food memoirs. This is a good one. If you were alive during the 1980s and 1990s, this in many ways, will be a trip down memory lane. If you are a younger person who has no clue what the 1980s and 1990s were like, you might not appreciate it as much, but it will give you a look at the kitchen of the past.

This was a four star read for me.