Book Review-The Art of Eating In
In the city where dining is a sport, a gourmand swears off restaurants (even takeout!) for two years, rediscovering the economical, gastronomical joy of home cooking
Gourmand-ista Cathy Erway’s timely memoir of quitting restaurants cold turkey speaks to a new era of conscientious eating. An underpaid, twenty-something executive assistant in New York City, she was struggling to make ends meet when she decided to embark on a Walden- esque retreat from the high-priced eateries that drained her wallet. Though she was living in the nation’s culinary capital, she decided to swear off all restaurant food. The Art of Eating In chronicles the delectable results of her twenty-four-month experiment, with thirty original recipes included.
What began as a way to save money left Erway with a new appreciation for the simple pleasure of sharing a meal with friends at home, the subtleties of home-cooked flavors, and whether her ingredients were ethically grown. She also explored the anti-restaurant underground of supper clubs and cook-offs, and immersed herself in an array of alternative eating lifestyles from freeganism and dumpster-diving to picking tasty greens on a wild edible tour in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Culminating in a binge that leaves her with a foodie hangover, The Art of Eating In is a journey to savor.
This is a beautiful book. It is something to be enjoyed. It’s also a bit of a challenge. Where and what are you eating this evening? I love that this book made me feel more mindful of the foods I buy and prepare for my family as well as rethinking where we eat out. I don’t know that I could do what she’s done, but I love books that make me stand back from my own life and think.
~Melissa
My son and family love to watch the show Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives on the Food Channel with Guy Fieri. They also bought a couple of his books and are always on the hunt for these places. The books do have a few recipes and so does the food channel from his show so they are experimenting all the time. My son likes to check out non-franchise restaurants when out-of-town and bring these recipes home for the family to make and eat in using their own veggies and herbs from the garden along with local cheese from the farmer’s market and meat, poultry and fish from the local butcher as this is becoming more common these days…
We like that show too! Jeff and I love to cook together and are always experimenting with new recipes. I like shopping for fresh produce, meat and bread every day. I call it “European” Marketing as this is how they shop for food in Europe. FRESH is always best! 🙂
The “European” Marketing is something that my husband was so familiar with when he lived in Germany and then in France before his return to the US….Maybe this is why our son likes to go to Farmer’s Market?
I think you’re right.