Spring Cookbook Club 2025

I lost my mother a few months ago, suddenly. It's strange to experience this extremely personal, very solitary thing, and also accept it as a part of life that so many before me already have. My initial and continuing solace is in our shared memories of food; the way she nourished my family and the countless friends who knew her. When I got home to begin shifting the pieces back into place, I noticed a pie in the fridge, a pot pie she had made to deliver to someone in their time of need. Likely the last thing she ever made, I froze it because I wasn’t ready to face that reality yet.

Instead I preferred an escape to the 24-hour donut shop in my hometown, Baker Ben’s. As a teen I would stay up late with my mother, both of us night owls puttering around the house until sometimes it was late enough to get the first batch of the day, still warm from the fryer, barely light outside. Her favorite was the frosted white cake donut with nuts. Mine, chocolate glazed.

I’ve since leafed slowly through her cookbooks, pages stained and crispy from hundreds of uses. You know those that just open to the most-loved recipes, as if possessed? Before the internet, anyone who cooked had these—books filled with recipes. But there was one that grabbed you, stuck in your taste memory and became part of your lexicon; a signature. A few drops of wine laughed onto the paper, flour in the binding, your love spilled on the page.

I love reading cookbooks. I would love to write one of my own someday. For me, it’s as much about the story and the process than how the recipe turns out. Some of my favorites, my most recommended, I’ll share with you below.

The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Judy Rodgers, 2002

I worked at this beautiful historic restaurant. It was a pivotal experience, even if my two years there have been forgotten, a fraction of their 45 years open. Judy passed a few years after I moved on, yet her legacy remains vibrant in this James Beard Award-winning book, where the recipes are more like sense guidelines. The dishes are lessons, techniques, meant to be retained and applied again and again. My copy opens easily to the roast chicken with bread salad.

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, Jennifer Reese, 2011

This book is simply a pleasure to read. It reads like something any one of us could have written during Covid quarantine, albeit years prior. Penned by a woman who found herself without a job and lots of time, she decided to try making things like pop-tarts and Worcestershire from scratch. She hilariously describes her experiences with these tasks, often deciding not to even share the recipes if you’re better off just buying the final product. A great read, even if you make nothing from it. I’m partial to the cream cheese recipe, and have read the hot dog story aloud so many times that I finally saved it digitally for easy retrieval at happy hour.

A World of Breads, Dolores Casella, 1966

I’ve only ever had one thing from this book: the “Cheese Wine Bread” my mom made for us when we had soup or lasagna (my favorite). I’ve never had it as printed, because I didn’t grow up with alcohol in the house, but I look forward to trying it. It may not scratch the itch of nostalgia, however, and I’ll likely revert to her amended one; notes written in the margins, tried-and-true. I haven’t attempted any of the other recipes, and I may never. The book has been trained to this recipe so many times I don’t even think I could keep it open to any other page. Somehow this feels right, the book itself demanding I remember.

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