I should preface this review by saying that I really did enjoy this book. I looked forward to picking it up in the mornings and evenings (and sometimes after lunch). I loved Molly's casual voice and the way she wove each recipe into the story. Each chapter built on the last, but still felt like it could be a little standalone essay. I feel like I know Molly Wizenberg now, and if I happened to bump into her on the street, we could have a conversation like old friends.
However.
I've read a lot of food memoirs, and many of them seem to follow the same pattern: author reminisces about her golden childhood full of wonderful food memories. Author has a few difficult teenage/college years, probably involving homesickness, but her dad's/mom's/grandmother's recipes get her through. Author goes to Paris (occasionally Italy) and falls in love, but that relationship doesn't work out. Author goes back to the states, loses herself, and eventually finds herself again by starting a food blog. One of her parents dies, or her parents get divorced (either before or after the genesis of the food blog, but usually before). Eventually she falls in love again (occasionally with the same guy from Paris) and gets married. The book ends with their wedding.
Not all food memoirs follow this template, of course, but a surprising number of them do. It's not a bad formula. They all have different variations, different writing styles, and, of course, different recipes, so I keep coming back for more.
Which brings us to the subject of today's post: A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg.
As I already said, I enjoyed it very much.
One thing that Molly says about herself multiple times is that she's a creature of habit. I can relate. I have a set breakfast schedule for every day of the week and I rarely deviate from it. I've talked about my morning routine so often that my fiancé put it on a list of what he thought my top three joys in life were (I guess he's not wrong). But what I really related to was when, near the end of the book, Molly was talking about her engagement with Brandon. And she says this: "... it's hard to love someone, I've found, when you're preoccupied with holding your entire world firmly in place. Loving someone requires a certain amount of malleability, a willingness to be pulled along, at least occasionally, by another person's will." My main worry, as my own wedding date draws nearer, has been finding a new routine. Adjusting to the changes of sharing my life so intimately with someone else. I like my solitude, and I have the inclination to guard it jealously. But what I've realized is that I shouldn't have the mentality of protecting my routine, my energy, my time. That's a really stupid way to start a marriage, and a good way to end one. I need to give it all, and what I'll get in return will be worth a million times more.
I was a couple chapters away from the end of the book when I looked up Molly Wizenberg on Instagram, wanting an epilogue of sorts (well, really I wanted pictures of Brandon). And it turns out that Molly Wizenberg is like Elizabeth Gilbert in at least two ways: they're both writers, and they both divorced their husbands (whom they wrote books about) because they decided they were in love with someone else. This is none of my business, obviously, and they are free to do what they want. But it breaks my heart. So I like this book a little less than I would have if I hadn't looked up Molly Wizenberg's Instagram, but I still enjoyed it quite a lot.
Some random reflections:
- I loved the chapter about Molly and Brandon trying to live without a car in Seattle and taking a cake to a friend's house on the bus. That was definitely one of my favorite chapters.
- If you told me I could only try one recipe from this book, it would have to be the slow roasted tomatoes with coriander. Not only because it's summer, but because they just sounded good. A close second would be Molly's mother's pound cake with raspberries and blueberries.
Finally, just for fun, here are a few of my other favorite food memoirs (in list form, because you know how I feel about lists):
- A Half Baked Idea, by Olivia Potts
- Garlic and Sapphires, by Ruth Reichl (really, anything by Ruth Reichl)
- My Berlin Kitchen, by Luisa Weiss
(Those were in alphabetical order, by the way, not in order of favorite to least favorite.)
Talk to you next Wednesday!
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