On Thursdays, we will offer the occasional cookbook or food book review.
Today, I'm reviewing "Bittersweet: Lessons from My Mother's Kitchen," by Matt McAllester, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former war correspondent for Newsday.
This book reminded me of "Glass Castle: A Memoir," by Jeannette Walls. Like Walls, McAllester is a very talented journalist who struggles with a difficult parent. In Walls' case, her parents chose to live as squatters in an abandoned apartment building in New York and she despairs at their choice to be homeless. In McAllester's case, his mother begins to fall into the abyss of her mental illness when he is a teenager. After her death, McAllester tries to reconnect and rediscover his mother through her recipes and affection for food writer Elizabeth David. It is a sad, engaging tale that is definitely worth your time.
