Joys and comforts of cooking: Kitchen Yarns

from Smoky Mountain News | January 20, 2021

Business News

On the shelf Joys and comforts of cooking: Kitchen Yarns

Before taking a look at Ann Hood’s butter, Fritos, a Devil Dog, and half a pound ter “Comfort Food II,” she writes of her Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, of cherries.” On other days, she might send daughter Grace’s death: and Food (W.W. Norton & Company, “a meatball grinder wet with spaghetti 229 pages), I feel compelled to make two sauce, two apples, and a mini blueberry “Sometimes I wake at three or four in the personal points. pie.” morning feeling like I am having a heart attack.

Though I can whip up a tasty breakfast At the end of this essay, Hood writes, But I realize soon enough that what is gripping — my wife and I operated a Waynesville “My mother built lunches the way some peo- me is not a literal seizing of my heart. It is bed-and-breakfast instead a metaphorical one. for 15 years — and My broken heart is seizing up my gazpacho soup again, remembering, aching, and quiche with sobbing. salad have brought “What I want to say, to me compliments believe, is that it gets better. from family and friends, I am no longer much of a cook. Living alone these past six years, I Jeff Minick Writer And in some ways it does. God forgive me, days and days pass in which I don’t think about Grace. How this can be so I don’t know. When mostly subsist on she first died, not even a seclow-calorie microwave meals, bagged salads, ond passed without my thinkgrocery store rotisserie chicken, sandwiches, ing of her. Or of the absence of and canned soups. Occasionally I’ll cook up her.” a big pot of chicken soup and live on that for two or three days, but over half of the ingre- If you’re looking to give dients come out of cans. a cookbook as a gift, or as a

Such as they were, my cooking days are comfort to a grieving friend, behind me. Kitchen Yarns might be per-

Next point to note: reading Kitchen fect for you. Yarns made me hungry.

The daughter of an Italian-American ••• family, Hood celebrates both of these culi- Recently, I spent an nary traditions in her book and her kitchen. evening with my son’s famiHere are almost 50 recipes, all delivered to ly in Asheville. My 12-yearaspiring home chefs in clear and easy to fol- old granddaughter read low instructions. They range from “Perfect Debbie Tung’s Book Love, Grilled Cheese” to “My Perfect Spaghetti which I had included in a Carbonara,” from “Indiana Fried Chicken” belated Christmas gift basto “Annabelle’s Risi e Bisi.” Included also are ket to the family, in one sitrecipes from other cultures: central Mexican ting. Just before bedtime, guacamole, for example, and Matt the family gathered before a Gennuso’s cassoulet. ple build skyscrapers fire in the living room,

But Hood is no food snob. She proudly or monuments. It where their mother read declares herself a carnivore, champions “the wasn’t until I was an aloud to them from a book deliciousness of American cheese “for a adult that I realized of religious meditations and grilled cheese sandwich, especially on they were her Taj then asked some questions Wonder bread and served with Campbell’s Mahal — all of that of the older children based tomato soup,” and the delectability of glorious food on that reading. The next Thomas’ English muffins. jammed into a brown morning, I found my son,

In addition to these delights, Hood uses paper bag, made only the early riser of the crew, Kitchen Yarns as a vehicle for telling some of for me.” reading a book in the living her own story. Like all of us who have lived a For those of us room. long life, Hood has suffered various misfor- older folks, Hood’s In these crazy times in tunes and tragedies: failed love affairs and childhood descrip- which we now live, when marriages, the loss of a sister at an early age, tions will bring back everything seems a swirl of and later, still much too early, the death of a memories of riding in chaos and mistrust, certain brother. Her 5-year-old daughter, Grace, station wagons in the books can speak to us, takdied suddenly “from a “virulent of strep pre-seatbelt days, ing us away from the madthroat.” In the Acknowledgments, Hood backyard barbecues ness that has affected so writes, “It breaks my heart that my mom, where Dad manned many, giving us comfort, Gogo, didn’t live to see this book in print. the pit and the flames, and schools “where however temporary, and providing us with a But her fingerprints are on every page, and we began our days by wishing the teacher vision of who and what we are not found in on my heart.” good morning, followed by the Pledge of the daily headlines.

Some of my favorites in this collection of Allegiance and an off-key rendition of a Look for those books — the good, true essays were those in which Hood looks back patriotic song, which is to say it is the 1960s, books — and listen to them. to her 1960s childhood. In “Love, Lunch, when kids still hid under their desks to prac- (Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four and Meatball Grinders,” for instance, she tice what to do when the atom bomb fell.” of his own: two novels, Amanda Bell and Dust describes the school lunches prepared by Hood’s realistic ruminations on sadness On Their Wings, and two works of nonfiction, her mother, called Gogo by Hood’s children. and death may also touch readers who have Learning As I Go and Movies Make the Man. “Fried chicken — two pieces — bread and suffered the loss of a loved one. In the chap- minick0301@gmail.com)