This collection of essays penned in the 1970s describe Colwin’s various misadventures in the kitchen, as well as her advice to novice chefs and dinner party planners. It’s her wit that really shines through and I laughed aloud several times. In a chapter on stuffing she admits, “It was years before I could come out and say how much I hated stuffing. Everyone in the world but me was fired by an elemental urge to fill up bird cavities with this and that.” She has this to say of dinner parties: “It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life.” She tells the story of mixing giant cans of tuna fish and beating the cores out of iceberg lettuce in college as she assembled tuna fish sandwiches for hungry undergrads. Or the tale of her tiny New York kitchen, in which she hosted many a dinner party even though she had to cook on a two-burner hot plate and wash the dishes in the bathtub. Essays like “How to Disguise Vegetables” or “Easy Cooking for Exhausted People” combines a story with recipes, which are often very simple and homey like Chicken with Chicken Glaze or Shepherd’s Pie. Not every recipe has that classic timelessness—she claims chicken salads have “a certain glamour” and that there’s “no such thing as a bad potato salad,” and I’d politely beg to differ on both counts. Still, it’s interesting to see how our eating habits have changed and also how they’ve evolved. Colwin mentions trying to get organic chickens and eggs on several counts, a difficult find at the time but now practically ubiquitous. Part memoir, part cookbook, the book was what I wanted: homey, comforting, and amusing.

Would I recommend? If you enjoy throwing dinner parties or witty women in the kitchen, Home Cooking will serve the dual purpose of taking you back to a different culinary era in America but also making you feel right at home.

To read more of my reviews, visit my blog at yearofmagicalreading.wordpress.com