Slices of Life: A Food Writer Cooks through Many a Conundrum

by Leah Eskin

Overview

For nearly a decade, Leah Eskin has been serving up chronicles of everyday life, along with mouthwatering recipes, to the readers of her “Home on the Range” column in the Chicago Tribune. Now she has whipped up Slice of Life, a collection of her columns covering everything from her early married days to parenting adolescents—and everything in between. From “Best Friend Biscuits” to “Recovery Paella” to “Sullen Child Oatmeal Squares,” there's always a recipe to cope with life's sticky situations: the dinner party gone awry, the mortifying soccer match, the houseguest who eats nothing, the teenager who won't listen. She tells the story of family life through its ordinary disasters—and pleasures.

Slice of a Life is both a charming memoir told through food, and with more than 200 recipes, it's also a delectable cookbook that will enchant anyone who appreciates the big and little moments of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762453139
Publisher:	Running Press Book Publishers
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Leah Eskin has written features for Saveur, Elle, Garden Design, Salon, and People magazine. Since 2004, her food column “Home on the Range” has run in the Chicago Tribune, and has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2005 she was named best food columnist by the Association of Food Journalists. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

07/07/2014
For the first time, food writer Eskin (two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee) offers readers of her beloved Chicago Tribune column "Home on the Range" a collection of her work that is equal parts cookbook and memoir. She includes more than 200 recipes for the at-home cook, each prefaced with a short essay retelling the personal moments that inspired them. Individually, the essays and their subsequent dishes—each named to reflect the occasion of their creation, "Beach-House Spaghetti" or "Red-Hot Pepper Cure"—are as much fun to read as for Eskin to write and whip up. Loosely—and not altogether efficaciously—organized into six chapters of her life (the early days of her column, her family's move from Chicago to Baltimore, her battle with and triumph over breast cancer, etc.) the collection's double-duty feels, as a whole, slightly at odds. A cook looking for recipes may find it difficult to navigate, while a reader hoping for an overarching narrative won't find one. Even so, Eskin's clever storytelling, deft command of language—"Consider filo with its connection, however flaky, to ancient Greece"—and practical, straightforward recipes will delight both audiences. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

For charm, you can't beat Leah Eskin's memoir and cookbook, Slices of Life. [Eskin] brings an irreverent humor, cool precision, and gustatory gusto to her accounts of American family life.”
—Saveur.com

“I feel like I've discovered a treasured writer who I didn't know existed, on par with Laurie Colwin and M.F.K. Fisher. For me, reading Eskin's essays is like taking a graduate course in creative writing. I keep studying her sentences, dissecting her use of personal pronouns and marveling at her choice of words.”
—News & Observer

“Slices of Life is one part cookbook, one part memoir, and two parts feel-good read….Although Eskin's columns are often charming and funny, it's the recipes that will leave copies of this book heavily earmarked.”
—Bust magazine

“The book reads like a novel.”
—KitchenTable4.com

“This book bubbles over with Leah's love of food, and her belief in the profound importance of eating—and cooking—together with family and friends. The recipes are great, too!”
—Ted Allen, host of the Food Network's Chopped

“Leah Eskin's recipes are seamlessly interwoven into her reminiscences, vignettes of domestic life, and culinary aperçus, and the result is as charming as it is practical.”
—Colman Andrews, editorial director of TheDailyMeal.com

“Leah Eskin's writing is like her food—honest, heartfelt, and tremendously appealing. She writes about the challenges of modern family life with wit and good humor, and firmly believes that good food will make any day better.”
—Jack Bishop, editorial director of PBS' America's Test Kitchen

“Reading Leah Eskin's columns one by one is a pleasure; reading this collection from start to finish is a joy. It's also proof that the sum is much greater than the parts, even when the parts are terrific. Smart, honest, literate, funny – very funny – and packed with recipes for happy days and calamitous ones, Slices of Life is bound to find a place in your heart and your kitchen.”
—Dorie Greenspan, author of Around My French Table

From the Publisher