I have been following Molly Wizenberg’s extraordinary blog, Orangette, for almost four years. The ability for blogs to allow us into the worlds created by strangers is both amazing and confusing. You feel as though you know someone by the words they write and the feelings they express, and yet, they are complete strangers. Molly has been documenting her love affair with life, food, photography, friendship, romance, peace and tranquility in the most obsessively readable blog I have ever stumbled upon.
When she first mentioned that she would be working on a book, my radar went up. Could this mean she would be changing her voice? Would she be overly vulnerable to an editor who possibly didn’t see the world through the same eyes? Would she be “selling” out or exposing herself to the demands of the publishing world too soon? All of my fears were erased the minute I picked up this extraordinary and beautiful work by a writer with lasting power. Dorie Grrenspan, author of Baking: From My Home to Yours expressed it perfectly when she said, “Molly Wizenberg writes like an angel.” I couldn’t put it more succinctly. This is exactly how Molly writes. She sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and she allows her readers to see it that way, as well.
I can’t recommend this book strongly enough. My review can’t even do it justice. Pick it up for yourself. Immerse yourself in Molly’s world and let go of everything else.
Molly Wizenberg is certainly an author to watch!
BOOK SUMMARY:
When Molly Wizenberg’s father died of cancer, everyone told her to go easy on herself, to hold off on making any major decisions for a while. But when she tried going back to her apartment in Seattle and returning to graduate school, she knew it wasn’t possible to resume life as though nothing had happened. So she went to Paris, a city that held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat. She was supposed to be doing research for her dissertation, but more often, she found herself peering through the windows of chocolate shops, trekking across town to try a new pâtisserie, or tasting cheeses at outdoor markets, until one evening when she sat in the Luxembourg Gardens reading cookbooks until it was too dark to see, she realized that her heart was not in her studies but in the kitchen.
At first, it wasn’t clear where this epiphany might lead. Like her long letters home describing the details of every meal and market, Molly’s blog Orangette started out merely as a pleasant pastime. But it wasn’t long before her writing and recipes developed an international following. Every week, devoted readers logged on to find out what Molly was cooking, eating, reading, and thinking, and it seemed she had finally found her passion. But the story wasn’t over: one reader in particular, a curly-haired, food-loving composer from New York, found himself enchanted by the redhead in Seattle, and their email correspondence blossomed into a long-distance romance.
In A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother’s pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately entwined. You won’t be able to decide whether to curl up and sink into the story or to head straight to the market to fill your basket with ingredients for Cider-Glazed Salmon and Pistachio Cake with Honeyed Apricots.
