The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove by Cathy Erway

May 16, 2012 Emma rated it 2 of 5 stars

I thought the book started out interesting enough. Being in roughly the author's age demographic, I know the excitement of trying to cook on your own while being brought up in an eating-out culture. Some things she points out- people whose parents didn't cook usually don't cook at home, the price of grocery store shopping vs. eating out, urban foraging were interesting to read. The memoir style writing of it is fine as well, but she quickly loses steam and stretches the most inane stories for wa...more

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Apr 17, 2010 Tressa rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, nonfiction

I can't believe there was enough material in Cathy Erway's life to fill a book. While Erway is a good albeit stiff writer, this book annoyed me to no end. Erway seems a little too precious, a little to self-centered, a little too snobbish, a little to idealistic to be of any interest to anyone except other 20-something New Yorkers.

I rolled my eyes at too many chapters to give this book more than two stars. It got duller with each passing chapter. By the end I thought she was just filling the pa...more

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Apr 28, 2010 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: food_and_drink, memoir-biography, nonfiction

Cathy Erway loves food. Which is good, because she lives in New York City, which is paved with excellent restaurants. But after one too many lousy, expensive midtown lunches and unsatisfying, greasy late night snacks, Cathy decided to give up restaurants. This book is a chronicle of how she spent two years of her New York life trying new recipes, competing in chili cook-offs, packing picnic lunches and making do, even when her apartment has no cooking gas because the previous resident never turn...more

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Sep 23, 2010 oriana is currently reading it

My brilliant friend Leila is a garblogger -- I think she may have even invented the term. Go to her blog, http://everydaytrash.com, which is a trove of insightful and unusual and fascinating things about garbage, here, there, and everywhere. She is amazing!

When this book came out, they sent her a copy to review, which she kindly loaned me, saying that if I wanted, I could post a review on her site. So naturally, being a good friend, I fucking forgot all about it. Ugh. But then! I got these new...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Harkinna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Operation prepare for the baby/learn to self motivate has had some competition from operation hotter than hell outside/TV calling. Some days I self motivate, some days I watch TV.

But after taking back all of the labor books to the library I happened upon this book in the new books section. Bringing new books home to read from the library is strictly prohibited right now. We need books going OUT.

But one thing I have wanted to work on is eating at home more, especially since I am not working. It i...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Izm-i rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read this book when I was motivated to improve my life in regards of what I can do. You know all those you can't control out there, on top of which, I am a New Yorker. Mostly because the theme of this books appealed to me and it seemed even very promising, to distract my frustration about the city life, I picked this book for its nice idea to focus on just eating in, and create values in the idea: swearing off eating what is already cooked by other people, let alone dining at restaurants. The...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Joy Weese Moll rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: home cooks and people who want to cook more but need a bit of inspiration

Recommended to Joy Weese by: Book Addiction: https://heatherlo.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/weekend-cooking-the-art-of-eating-in-by-cathy-erway/

A young woman living in New York City, which she describes as “the eating-out capital of the world,” decides to swear off restaurant food, cook her meals at home, and write a blog about it. The blog, Not Eating Out in New York, continues to this day. It turns out that New York is a very exciting place to not eat out. Her not eating out experiences included dumpster diving and supper clubs, parknics and cooking competitions, urban foraging and feasts for friends.

Cathy Erway’s motivation for eatin...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Marci rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had such high hopes for this book. With a teenage son and a soon-to-be teenage son, plus three other kids, I'm trying to find ways to cut back on my food budget and was hoping to find ways to make eating in an easier experience (not being so fond of cooking and all). The book started out promisingly enough with a young lady in NYC looking to cut expenses and deciding to eat in and blog about it. In the course of blogging she decides to delve into different ways to cut her food budget and tries...more

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Feb 19, 2011 Lucy added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, food, usa, sustainability, non-fiction

This is the first time I have ever given a book on Good Reads no stars; it was dreadful.

The book is a collection of anecdotes and stories from Cathy, who -for somewhat inexplicable reasons- has chosen not to eat out in New York. Cathy shares with us her revelations that home-cooking is cheaper, healthier and sometimes tastier than eating out. I fully acknowledge that I entered into the relationship in complete knowledge of Cathy's agenda, however, I do enjoy a good foodie book so was willing to...more This is the first time I have ever given a book on Good Reads no stars; it was dreadful.

The book is a collection of anecdotes and stories from Cathy, who -for somewhat inexplicable reasons- has chosen not to eat out in New York. Cathy shares with us her revelations that home-cooking is cheaper, healthier and sometimes tastier than eating out. I fully acknowledge that I entered into the relationship in complete knowledge of Cathy's agenda, however, I do enjoy a good foodie book so was willing to put aside my concern over the premise of the book. I shouldn't have. It was dire.

'Well i decided to give home cooking gimmick of my own. To eat for a prolonged period of time without the assistance of restaurants whatsoever. Was that something that a New York-born, New Jersey-bred, working, middle-class, twenty six year-old American such as myself could achieve?"
It's certainly a question that only a "New York-born, New Jersey-bred, working, middle-class, twenty six year-old American" would pose.

The book offers us insight into Cathy's homecooking: including her first foray into bread making where -despite claiming to be an avid cook- she states " I didn't think I'd ever seen one of these packages of yeast before". Unfortunately I ignored this giant flag to "STOP READING NOW!" Cathy is clearly a keen and competent cook but does she 'homecook' like normal people? Does she hell. Her dinners always appear to take hours of preparation and end up on the table at 11pm at night. Occasionally she tries to excite us by listing those things she just 'threw in a pan': I cannot believe that she doesn't realise this is how most people usually cook/eat.

She also visits freegans; supper clubs and cook-offs in an attempt to widen her culinary horizon. This could have been really interesting, perhaps if she told us some more background or studies or facts about any of these things, then I might have been more interested. As it was we heard Cathy's non-too-deep thoughts on the matters: "I didn't feel that I was sacrificing my health by having meat only once or twice a week. On the contrary you could argue less meat in our diets keeps humans and the earth healthier".

The whole book was written like a diary of a 14 year old girl. A 14 year old girl with no writing talent.
I am flabbergasted that Cathy pens a very successful blog and has made her career as a copy writer. The woman cannot write. I'm not sure I've ever read a book with so many examples of poor sentence structure and ill-advised word choice. Was this book even edited?* Here are a few of my choice favourites:

"I decided it was a good time to bring others into the fold by having guests over-if only because of the fact that there were so many different dishes I wanted to make and not enough mouths to serve them to'.

'Plus there are a million and one uses for leftover bread- it can become bread crumbs used to stuff or coat things in a thousand different ways".

"If you search "wild edibles" in Google you're likely to come up with Brill's website first and foremost"

And so here I make a little confession... I actually finished the worst book I've ever read because I really enjoyed looking for these humdingers of sentences. Did I learn anything about not eating out in New York? No not really. Did I learn anything I didn't already know about the benefits of eating in? No not really (although it should be noted that Cathy estimates her grocery bill for a week of eating in to be $25 which is about £15 or €19. What?! I knew food prices in America were artificially low, but that is ridiculous!). Would I recommend it to anyone else? Er no.

*I actually read this on the kindle: my first e-reading of a book for fun and not for academic purposes. There were points where I think the punctuation errors were not the fault of the author. I think the e-book also needs a good editor. There were also occasions in which I thought the wrong word had been used "by friends sitting on a pastiche of blankets in a clearing of trees'. I wouldnt put it past Cathy to use the wrong word here but I think she meant patchwork, I am giving her the benefit of the doubt and blaming this on the e-book.(less)

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Jan 03, 2011 Dina rated it 2 of 5 stars

The premise of Erway's book is a simple one: she's a broke-ish twenty-something who is getting bored with the monotony of restaurant hopping around her city and figures not eating out in the capital city of eating out would make pretty good blog fodder. She's not necessarily looking for enlightenment, just a challenge and way to save a few bucks. This is all well and good, however, it also ends up being the biggest downfall of the book, a drawn out tome at 320 pages. Unlike others in the food wr...more The premise of Erway's book is a simple one: she's a broke-ish twenty-something who is getting bored with the monotony of restaurant hopping around her city and figures not eating out in the capital city of eating out would make pretty good blog fodder. She's not necessarily looking for enlightenment, just a challenge and way to save a few bucks. This is all well and good, however, it also ends up being the biggest downfall of the book, a drawn out tome at 320 pages. Unlike others in the food writing genre who set out on some far fetched plan hoping to learn about and demonstrate larger ideas through their experiments (Pollan and Spurlock off the top of my head), Erway seems to be doing the not-eating-out thing on a lark and finding a bit of notoriety along the way is just a happy surprise.

There are some interesting forays into ways of not-eating-out: dumpster-diving, supper parties, cook-offs, etc. and Erway does a nice job of reflecting if each of these activities is a genuine form of staying away from restaurants, given that the dumpster-food is from Dunkin' Donuts and the supper party meals may well be cooked by big name NYC chefs. There's a fun aside on the act of dating when going out for dinner is off the table, but the challenge isn't observed as closely as each of Erway's suitors are. There-in lies my biggest complaint of the book and possibly the reason for its overly-optimistic page count. If I were a more diligent reader, I might have thought to jot down each time a new friend of Erway's popped up, an occasion I'd guess to occur at no less than 50 times. These friends rarely provide any insight into the not-eating-out challenge, nor do they really appear to be doing anything at all, aside from getting a shout-out in an acquaintance's book. Knowing that Luke asked if you needed help stirring a pot a chili before disappearing from the narrative forever is a waste of space and such occurrences took up a large block of space, such as a completely irrelevant story of a friends recovery from being hit by a car while on bike. Touching, but irrelevant.

Also frustrating was that Erway's experiment ended as arbitrarily as it began. On a day approaching her two year anniversary of eating in, her mother asks that she meet her and an uncle for lunch. And why not? Soon we're gobbling down Korean in a hole in the wall just like everybody else. The only explanation we're given is that Erway feels she has outgrown the experiment; she knows that she can eat in forever now, so why not eat out? (I'm reminded of a scene in the movie Coffee and Cigarettes with Tom Waits and Iggy Pop discussing quitting smoking: "I quit, so can I have one. Right?") Lastly we're left with an ill-thought out "opposite week", in which Erway decides she will only eat at restaurants for an entire seven days. This, too, is not meant explore any real ideas other than 'just to see'. After the week is up we reflect on her weight gain/loss (which was not a concern in any other part of the book) and cost efficiency (duh).

All in all, if you're looking for a book to inspire you to cook at home more often, don't start here. I suppose the recipes tacked on at the end of each chapter are supposed to nudge you in that direction, but reading one that was mentioned 30 pages ago, 30 pages filled with insights of going out to bars and listening to music with friends, makes it difficult for a reader to remember why they might want to cook that recipe in the first place. (less)

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Nov 11, 2010 Liza marked it as i-will-never-finish-this-book

Sorry, this book is just far too San Francisco for me. I enjoy Erway's website because I made an amazing recipe from it, but I don't like when people come across as self-important about their dining choices. It's just completely absurd to me when most people on earth don't have enough to eat. Also, I'm reminded of my friend who lives in an area with absolutely no restaurants within a 5-mile radius. So she has no choice about eating in, and she doesn't make a big deal about it, because it would b...more

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Jul 13, 2010 Breanne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I loved this book. Not only did she investigate what it would be like to abstain from restaurants, she also delved into other eye-opening food experiences, such as foraging for edible plants in central park, checking out the underground New York supper club scene, competing in local cook-offs, and she even investigates the "freegan" lifestyle - searching for perfectly edible food that has been thrown out (while it seems extreme, the impressions that she came away with were very interesting). But...more

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Jun 08, 2010 Ciara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobio-memoir, read-in-2010

i should have written this book up as soon as i read it, because i liked it a lot. now a few weeks have passed & i don't feel motivated to say much. it's another blog-to-book, & it's another "i'll do something for a year (or two) & then write about it" book, which means that it should have been absolutely dreadful. it's also yet another "experimental foodie in the big city" book. i have a sick obsession, what can i say? even though these books are almost always terrible. i guess i ke...more i should have written this book up as soon as i read it, because i liked it a lot. now a few weeks have passed & i don't feel motivated to say much. it's another blog-to-book, & it's another "i'll do something for a year (or two) & then write about it" book, which means that it should have been absolutely dreadful. it's also yet another "experimental foodie in the big city" book. i have a sick obsession, what can i say? even though these books are almost always terrible. i guess i keep reading them because sometimes i stumble across a bit of a gem, like this one.

the "gimmick" here, you might say, is that cathy decided to stop eating out in new york city, where she lives. she decided to cook every meal & snack for herself. at first she decided to do it for a year, but when the year was coming to a close, she was still going strong, so she wound up doing it for about two years before things kind of petered out & she felt interested in eating at restaurants on occasion again. it wasn't all that clear what inspired this hard line against eating out at restaurants. something about the food not really being all that great, & the expense. i rarely eat out myself, preferring to use the money i'd spend on restaurants to buy really nice ingredidents & make wildly superior meals at home, but i make an exception for certain meals i just can't replicate at home. none of my attempts at chicken tikka masala have been quite as delicious as what i can get at a decent indian restaurant. i have recently become obsessed with sushi & don't have any sushi-making tools, & living in kansas, my access to fresh sushi-quality fish is pretty questionable. (i mostly limit my sushi consumption to when i am on the east coast.)

in the process of devoting herself to eating in, cathy discovers a whole secret underbelly of foodie-ism in the city. she starts attending supper parties (where volunteers collect $30-$150 a plate & cook a big meal for an elite guest list of pre-vetted diners, as far as i can tell--sounds interesting, but too expensive & snooty for me) & even tries to start her own with some friends (with questionable results). she gets into entering cook-offs for all kinds of different dishes, & as her blog gains notoriety around the city, she starts being invited to judge them. she makes picnics for her friends & struggles to date without going to restaurants. it was all pretty interesting, though i was a touch disappointed that cathy's palate & recipes were almost entirely in opposition to what i like to eat. there was a lot of asian-inspired cooking, which is a quick & easy way to introduce a lot of vegetables to your diet...but i have never really been into many asian sauces, which tend to have base flavors (peanut, sesame) that don't appeal to me. i also prefer steamed or raw vegetables to vegetables that have been doused in sauces of any sort. so i skipped over most of the recipes & just enjoyed the stories. i was pleasantly surprised by some of the anarchist-y shout-outs (when cathy goes on a wild urban foraging tour, the guide is late & someone remarks that he's on "anarchist time"). i doubt i will eschew restaurants anytime soon, but this book did make me think more about making my own ice cream.(less)

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Mar 13, 2010 Rose rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Art of Eating In chronicles the two-year hiatus that self-titled “foodie” Cathy Erway took from New York’s restaurants and eateries. She started a blog to keep friends and a growing fanbase apprised of her culinary journey, and condensed its highlights into a book.

Eating out is so customary in the Big Apple that some apartments don’t even have kitchens installed. But for Erway, struggling to support herself as an underpaid executive assistant, this tradition was draining her wallet at a dan...more

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Nov 08, 2011 Jessica N. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Oddly enough, I thought I was going to give up on this book the entire time I was reading it. I'd pick it up and say to myself, "If it doesn't get any better, I'm giving up." And then I'd learn something. I learned about freeganism, urban foraging, supper clubs, tripe. Things I never knew I was curious about - except the tripe. I think I'll continue to be distantly, distantly curious about that.
The only gripe I have with the book is that the last quarter of it, the author decides to regale the r...more

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Mar 28, 2011 Hieka rated it 3 of 5 stars

I didn't think this book was as bad a some reviewed it. It interested me because we eat out a lot and frequently use "convenience" foods. Cathy ate in for two years, and just for that she deserves at least 3 stars. She goes through the different types of groups who tend to eat in and the extremes that people go to when obtaining food. There is dumpster diving, only buying from certain areas, growing your own food etc... Basically what she found out is that anything pretty much she wants she can...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Jonathan Chen rated it 2 of 5 stars

The book is a product of the author's two-year-long project of "not eat out in New York", in which she details her effort to prepare every meal from home. The book contains a lot of painfully detailed descriptions and reconstructed dialogues between she and her friends, which are mostly, inane. While readers might expect more thoughtful exploration into certain topics, such as the environmental and social impact of eating inn/out, they are barely touched on. For example, the author went dumpster...more The book is a product of the author's two-year-long project of "not eat out in New York", in which she details her effort to prepare every meal from home. The book contains a lot of painfully detailed descriptions and reconstructed dialogues between she and her friends, which are mostly, inane. While readers might expect more thoughtful exploration into certain topics, such as the environmental and social impact of eating inn/out, they are barely touched on. For example, the author went dumpster diving and on urban foraging tours, which are both fascinating topics. A thoughtful treatment (think This American Life) would've included in-depth interviews with the dumpster divers and the store owners/workers that throw out the food, instead, we only get a few sophomoric lines on how dumpster-diving might be embarrassing.

The endless details on cooking for friends, the amateur cook-offs, and the "supper clubs" are simply not interesting. The so-called supper clubs seem to be pretentious, "foodie" events, to me at least. But the concept of "foodie", good or bad, was never discussed.

The bottom line is that the book never fulfills the promise of its title. The author seemed to have started the project on a lark, rather than with a clear singular motivation, like health or cost. I'm reminded of several movies that do have clear theses: "No Impact Man," amount of waste reduced; or "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead," drastically improve one's health through juicing. Instead, the author lamely tries to weigh the containers and wrappers that come with her take-out meal. How about measuring the carbon footprint of such a meal? Or just incorporate the idea of carbon footprint? The lack of any in-depth exploration speaks to simple laziness.

The bottom line is that this was a wasted opportunity. In an era where people are starting to care about food, where it comes from, how healthful it is, and its environmental impact, we are not interested in the fact that not eating out crimps someone's dating style. (less)

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Apr 26, 2012 Marsha rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cooking-food-wine, non-fiction

Ms. Erway was forced by budgetary considerations to stop wasting so much time and money eating in restaurants. She also wondered why she should throw away such precious commodities on lousy fast food. So one day, she announced her intentions to start a two-year blog on her experiment—spending time cooking rather than throwing away money on outdoor cookery. Much like Julie Powell’s book on a similar theme, but more earth conscious, Ms. Erway discovered a whole new world of cooking, gleaning, cons...more

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Jul 11, 2011 Winnie Marvel rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book isn't what I thought it might be. Not a cookbook, or a how to. Cathy tells of her experience giving up restaurant dining in favor of cooking in. A sabbatical that lasted for two years, she discovers more than just how to cook. She stumbles on alternatives in cooking lifestyle such and freeganism, the waste associated with takeout meals and the joys of foraging. This book appeals to my own sense of experimentation when it comes to food, but from a younger generation that grew up in a mu...more

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May 24, 2010 shannon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

so far it's inspired me to make ice cream [vietnamese coffee, and it was amazing:]. hopefully it will result in less takeout?

three and a half, really.
what i like about it is that it causes me to think hard about my eating and dining habits. i also share her interest in reducing waste and the ethics of knowing where your food comes from. i agree with all the comments about the plot getting quite thin toward the end [but then, complaining about the self-centeredness of any book that comes from a b...more

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Feb 11, 2011 Julie Davis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Cathy Erway needed an interesting subject for the food blog she was considering beginning. She decided to give up eating out, though that would be difficult for a young twenty-something in New York City, and begin cooking her meals at home. What began as an interesting experiment became something of an obsession. As Cathy's blog, Not Eating Out In New York, grew in popularity, she threw herself into the project with an increasing passion that lasted two years.

The Art of Eating In chronicles that...more Cathy Erway needed an interesting subject for the food blog she was considering beginning. She decided to give up eating out, though that would be difficult for a young twenty-something in New York City, and begin cooking her meals at home. What began as an interesting experiment became something of an obsession. As Cathy's blog, Not Eating Out In New York, grew in popularity, she threw herself into the project with an increasing passion that lasted two years.

The Art of Eating In chronicles that two year period. The book isn't composed of blog entries but is a memoir with recipes of Cathy's journey of discovering the wide world of cooking and the myriad forms it can take on in New York City. This leads to her participation in such adventures as cook-offs, underground supper clubs, urban foraging, and joining a freegan group for some evening foraging (dumpster diving, etc.).

For our next stop on the tour, we walked a few blocks south to a small upscale grocery store. The store was closed, its dim lights exposing the aisles of gourmet food inside. The store was closed, its dim lights exposing the aisles of gourmet food inside. At the curb in front lay our target—a disheveled heap of black garbage bags.

The group began tearing into the bags with a careful, yet determined dexterity that must have come from much experience. They would feel around the outsides first, then untie the top and take a peek in. I helped open one bag, which was filled with a variety of produce. Hands reached in from all directions around me, and one by one, fruits and vegetables were removed. Finally, I stepped back and surveyed what had come out of the group of bags so far. Along the sidewalk, the group had lined up a cluster of several decent-looking apples, some with bruises here and there. Many more spotted bananas were recovered, some good-looking pears, and several tomatoes, which looked wet on their surfaces, probably from condensation and being squashed beside something else, but otherwise fine. I was amazed to see bag after bag of prewashed mixed salad greens emerge from the garbage as well. The bags were sealed shut, and through the clear plastic, the greens still looked perfectly crisp. But the telltale expiration dates on their packages were one or two days past. Chatter floated around about what to set aside for the freegan group dinner the next evening. ...

I enjoyed reading about Erway's more unconventional adventures such as the quest to find a good theme for a supper club. I found it amusing when reading about her friends' dedication to truly test menudo's fabled qualities as a hangover cure (they went out the night before and got well and truly drunk so they were hung over the next day). Erway's research into subjects like the history of restaurants seemed sound as did her other forays into discussing food history.

The personal improvement into a confident cook was less interesting because anyone who has read much food writing has encountered this sort of story often. They generally follow the same developmental track and Erway is not unique in her story. It is not badly written; it is simply not that unusual. The story sparkles much more when reading about the investigation of the different ways New Yorkers express themselves through food (the supper clubs, foraging, etc.)

Erway also relates her personal dating life, evenings spent drinking, various hook-ups, and other such details of her life. These I could have done without. The cooking and other food related activities were plenty interesting without having to slog through the loss of her boyfriend and dating adventures. They weren't that unusual and didn't add anything to the overall story. It is too bad the editor didn't use a firmer hand in directing the book's focus. However, these are not difficult parts to skim over and the book is interesting despite them.

Note: This was a review book. I'd have said the same either way.(less)

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Sep 28, 2011 Anna Bez rated it 3 of 5 stars

I discovered this book literally within days of realizing how much money I was wasting on take-out for lunch and dinner (~$20/day!) and the impact that settling for meals of convenience was having on my credit card statements. I resolved to start cooking more, googled a recipe for cassoulet, and serendipitously landed on Cathy's blog. The name of the blog (noteatingoutinny.com) was immediately intriguing since it seemed strikingly similar to my recent resolution. When I saw that she had written...more

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Mar 15, 2010 Annmarie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, memoir, cooking

An enjoyable cooking memoir/narrative nonfiction mix. The author, a 25-year-old living in NYC, decides to quit eating out at restaurants and to blog about the effort. Her blog, www.noteatingoutinny.com, is evidently quite popular. She already knows how to cook quite well, so instead of a "I learned to cook" book, it's more a discourse on the social issues & history involved in eating out at restaurants, and then an exploration of the food movements current among twenty-somethings (and older)...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, food

Wow. I don't think I've ever seen so many mean-spirited comments on a book before. I've already read half of 'The Art of Eating In' and I'm glad I did before I stumbled upon the hate-fest of supposed reviews or I might not have bothered with it.

It is not the best food book ever written but it is by no means the pile of excrement most of the previous reviews make it out to be. Many comments center on the reviewer's irritation that Erway considers cooking at home to be a novelty and smack of a "wh...more

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Nov 27, 2011 Patrice Sartor rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: food, biography, love-sex-romance, non-fiction

3.5 stars, really. This book describes the author's reasoning behind, life during and culmination of her decision to not eat out (at restaurants, lunch carts, etc.) while living in New York. I had not previously heard of the blog that she launched because of her decision: noteatingoutinny.com, though after reading the account of the process I bookmarked it.

Because I was unfamiliar with the blog, I cannot state with certainty whether or not regular blog readers will find enough extra to read abou...more

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Mar 12, 2011 Linda S rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: bio-memoir, food

I liked this book. I'm not always fond of blogs made into books, but this author added research into her personal story at appropriate times so it didn't seem so much like a "me me me" blog the entire time. I like her reasoning for the challenge that she chronicles, but there are times when I feel she comes off a little too superior for freeganing and condemning restaurants. But since it was spawned from a blog, I figured whatever...that's what blogs are for. That aside, I stayed interested for...more

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Jul 14, 2010 Beth G. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, non-fiction, memoir, library-books, books-for-grown-ups, bloggers, food

Another in the string of blog-turned-memoir titles on the market. Better written than Julie and Julia (the author of which has a blurb on the back cover), since Erway is able to keep a clear timeline (usually) and avoid too much whining. Each chapter features a couple of recipes for dishes referred to in the text - a must-have for any foodie memoir, it seems.

Erway spends two years avoiding restaurants (most of the time), instead exploring cooking new foods on her own, "freeganing" and foraging w...more

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Mar 31, 2010 Emma Kaufmann rated it 1 of 5 stars

Only in America could a book be based on the premise of the author going on a fast - and guess what the fast was - it was nothing remotely difficult like living on soya beans - it was not going to restaurants for two years and cooking for herself!! WOW!! lol
Okay and even if that premise is flimsy at best a better writer might have made something of it that was astute or insightful. But all Cathy's observations were trite and obvious and read very much like a mid twenties woman with little/no exp...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Camille rated it 2 of 5 stars

I didn't finish this book either. I hadn't touched it all week, and today I'm returning it to the library.

I totally believe in the concept of this book - cooking your own meals is better for you and for your budget. Eating sustainable, seasonal food is challenging but feasible, and can also be fun (and colorful)! It is a wake-up call for everyone to think about how we eat, what we eat, and where our food comes from.

However, this book is also a lifestyle choice for a twenty something New Yorker...more

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Apr 23, 2010 AnnaBnana rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-info

There were parts of this book that were interesting, and I confess that I added Erway's blog to my feed reader after reading it (mostly for the recipes).

That said, the lower star rating is because this book is not what I thought it would be based on the title or the marketing. Erway did indeed embark on a quest to stop eating out in NYC and she learned to love the stove. I thought the book (and its tips) would be more practical. I wanted to read it and feel like I could do it. But Erway doesn't...more

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title link	preview: The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove
avg rating	preview: The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove Goodreads rating: 3.27 (879 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7103842-the-art-of-eating-in?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1318878292l/7103842.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7103842-the-art-of-eating-in?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove by Cathy Erway[/url]

The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove

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