More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen

by Laurie Colwin Narrated by Rebecca Lowman

Overview

With a new foreword by Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, the triumphant sequel to*Home Cooking*by “a home cook, like you and me, whose charm and lack of pretension make her wonderfully human and a welcome companion as she chatters on about the small culinary accomplishments and discoveries that occur in her kitchen” (Chicago Tribune).*

Lucky readers in the 1970s and '80s discovered Laurie Colwin's urbane, witty fiction in The New Yorker, as well as her warm, engaging food writing in Gourmet magazine columns. More Home Cooking, the second collection of these columns, is an expression of Colwin's lifelong passion for cuisine and offers a delightful mix of recipes, advice, and personal anecdotes from the kitchen and beyond. She muses over the many charms and challenges of cooking at home in timeless essays including “Desserts That Quiver,” “Real Food for Tots,” and “Catering on One Dollar a Head.”

As informative as it is entertaining, and filled with Colwin's trademark down-to-earth charm and wit, More Home Cooking is a rare treat for anyone who spends time in the kitchen and feels “like having a great conversation with someone that you love” (Samantha Bee).

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Editorial Reviews

Charlotte Observer

Colwin's writing is down-to-earth and friendly, as though she is presenting little morsels she has prepared just for you. There are no frills or tricks. Like a classic dish, her writing's magic in its simplicity.

Boston Phoenix

Filled with essays about food, family, and life...Her writing is a treat...It's a joy to read—the kind of work that makes you want to get cooking yourself.

Seattle Weekly

We all need a best friend when we are at home cooking; this is the next best thing.

Wall Street Journal

Colwin’s humor calms you down. It’s a treat to read her classic cookbook-memoirs.”

Jezebel

[Colwin’s] work embodies the home cook’s generosity of spirit—making do, improvising, exhibiting grace under pressure…to remind even the most experienced home cook of the beauty of simplicity.”

BookRiot

Even as someone who doesn’t love to cook, the book was a joy for me to read.”

From the Publisher

"Colwin's humor calms you down. It's a treat to read her classic cookbook-memoirs." — Wall Street Journal

“Colwin’s food writing is built on a commitment to good, simple food, cooked very well; what she describes in one of her novels as a sort of domestic sensuality.” — Vox

“Every home cook should have Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking and More Home Cooking on hand for brief moments of culinary self-doubt or personal inertia. . . . [Colwin’s] work embodies the home cook’s generosity of spirit—making do, improvising, exhibiting grace under pressure. Naturally, there are also recipes, all of which are unfussy enough to tackle at 7 P.M. on a Tuesday and delicious enough to remind even the most experienced home cook of the beauty of simplicity.” — Jezebel

"Even as someone who doesn’t love to cook, the book was a joy for me to read." — Book Riot

“The first time I read Laurie Colwin I knew I’d found the friend I’d always wanted to join me in the kitchen. Warm, funny and unpretentious, she made me laugh and made me want to cook. Her recipes were easy and delicious. All these years later, when I’m feeling sad, or wondering what to cook, I turn to Laurie Colwin. And she never lets me down.” — Ruth Reichl, author of Delicious!

“Laurie Colwin teaches us how to cook, eat, deal with disasters, write and live. We turn to her books for a kind of comfort and sustenance that only she can provide.” — Emily Gould, author of Friendship and Perfect Tunes

“Filled with essays about food, family, and life. . . . Her writing is a treat. . . .It’s a joy to read—the kind of work that makes you want to get cooking yourself.” — Boston Phoenix

“We all need a best friend when we are at home cooking; this is the next best thing.” — Seattle Weekly

“Colwin’s writing is down-to-earth and friendly, as though she is presenting little morsels she has prepared just for you. There are no frills or tricks. Like a classic dish, her writing’s magic in its simplicity.” — Charlotte Observer

Emily Gould

Laurie Colwin teaches us how to cook, eat, deal with disasters, write and live. We turn to her books for a kind of comfort and sustenance that only she can provide.

Charlotte Observer

Colwin’s writing is down-to-earth and friendly, as though she is presenting little morsels she has prepared just for you. There are no frills or tricks. Like a classic dish, her writing’s magic in its simplicity.

Vox

Colwin’s food writing is built on a commitment to good, simple food, cooked very well; what she describes in one of her novels as a sort of domestic sensuality.

Ruth Reichl

The first time I read Laurie Colwin I knew I’d found the friend I’d always wanted to join me in the kitchen. Warm, funny and unpretentious, she made me laugh and made me want to cook. Her recipes were easy and delicious. All these years later, when I’m feeling sad, or wondering what to cook, I turn to Laurie Colwin. And she never lets me down.

Book Riot

"Even as someone who doesn’t love to cook, the book was a joy for me to read."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160378992
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/14/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The Lone Pilgrim

I have been the house pet to several families: friendly, cheerful, good with children, and, most important, I have an acute sensitivity to the individual rhythms of family life. I blend in perfectly, without losing myself. A good houseguest is like an entertainer: Judy Garland, Alfred Hitchcock, Noel Coward. You know what a specific public wants-in my case, groups of two, with children.

For example, Paul and Vera Martin and their children, Ben and Violet. Paul and Vera are lawyers. Paul spends rainy Sundays fishing, and although Vera is a good cook, she is not fond of cleaning fish, so Paul's grandfather's knife is entrusted to me. I do the neat job of a surgeon. Vera, who likes precision, was so impressed by my initial performance that she allowed me into her kitchen, and we have been cooking together ever since. I knew by instinct where she would keep her pots, her baking dishes, her mixing bowls, her silverware. If you are interested in people, their domestic arrangements are of interest, too. That's the sort of student of human conduct I am.

In Maine, I visit Christopher and Jean Goodison and their little son jean Luc. The Goodisons are haphazard housekeepers, but I have their routine down pat. Their baby and I get along famously. We have a few moments together: a hailstorm he observed from my lap; a lesson in crawling; an afternoon with a kitten. The best way with babies, I have come to know, is quietude. Never approach first. Be casual. Pay minimal tactile attention, and never try to make them love you. You can sit on the same sofa with a child and do nothing more than clutch its little foot fromtime to time, and before long you will have that child on your lap.

The Goodisons will leave jean Luc with me when they go shopping, although ordinarily -- with ordinary mortals, that is-they are very protective of their son. When they return, I surprise them with a Lady Baltimore cake. Alone in their house, I admire their Shaker table, the fancy-back spoons I find mixed in with their spatulas, the dried-flower arrangements in their lusterware pitchers.

And there are others: the Hartwells in Boston, who live in a Spartan apartment decorated with city-planning. charts. The rigorous Mazzinas, who take me camping. The jerricks, who dress for dinner and bring you a breakfast tray on Sunday morning: coffee, toast, and a small vase with a single flower in it. My friends admire my charm, my sagacity, my propriety, and my positive talent for fitting in with the daily life of others while holding my own.

The adhesive tape on my mailbox reads "P. Rice." Paula Rice, that is, known to all as Polly. I am the charming girl illustrator. I did the pictures for Hector the Hero, The Pig Who Said Pneu, Fish with Feathers, Snow White and Rose Red, and The I Don't Care Papers-all children's books. Five feet four, reddish hair, brown eyes, long legs. At college, I studied medieval French literature, but kept a sketchbook with me at all times. During the summers, I studied calligraphy, papermaking, and bookbinding, and worked as an apprentice at the Lafayette Press, printers of fine editions. I make a living illustrating children's books, but to please myself I do etchings and ink drawings, which I often present to friends on special occasions -- marriages, anniversaries, birthdays.

On the side, I am a perfect houseguest. I have the temperament for it. Being a designer teaches you the habit of neatness, and an appreciation for a sense of order not your own. Being a houseguest allows you to fantasize with no one crowding you. After all, you are but a guest, an adornment. Your object is to give pleasure to your hosts. Lolling around in other people's houses allows your mind to drift. Inspired by my surroundings, I indulge myself in this lazy, scene-setting kind of thought. For example: a big yellow moon; the kitchen of an old house in an academic community. On the window ledge a jar of homemade jam, a pot of chives, a cutting of grape ivy in a cracked mug. A big dog sleeps in front of the stove. If you open the window, you feel the crisp October air. An apple pie or a loaf of bread is in the oven, and the house is warm with the scent of it. You wonder if it is time to deal with the last pumpkin, or to pickle the, basket of green tomatoes. In the study, your husband is drowsing over an elevating book, a university-press book in blue wrappers. You are wearing a corduroy skirt, a chic blouse, and a sweater of your husband's is tied around your shoulders. You are a woman contemplating seasonal change.

Or you go to the Martins on a rainy night. They occupy two floors of a Victorian brownstone, and as you contemplate the polished moldings and watch the rain through the leaded windows, you feel you are in England in the spring-in a little house in Devizes, say, or Bexhill-on-Sea. Your children have just been put to bed. You have finished reading a book on the life of Joseph Wright of Derby. There is a knock on the door. You start up. Your husband is away, and it is foggy outside. At the door is an old lover, someone who broke your heart, who is in England on business and has tracked you down.

Of course, the fact of the matter is that you live in a flat in New York. Your work is done at an oak drawing table, surrounded by pots of brushes and pens. In other people's houses your perspective widens. You contemplate the Martins' old Spode platter. You know the burn on their dining-room table -- the only flaw in its walnut surface -- is from Paul's cigar, placed there the night before Ben was born. These details feed the imagination.

Oh, domesticity! The wonder of dinner plates and cream pitchers. You know your friends by their ornaments. You want everything. If Mrs. A. has her mama's old jelly mold, you want one, too, and everything that goes with it -- the family, the tradition, the years of having jelly molded in it. We domestic sensualists live in a state of longing, no, matter how comfortable our own places are.

The Lone Pilgrim. Copyright © by Laurie Colwin. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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