1 of 1 copy available
When Suzan Colón was laid off from her dream job at a magazine during the economic downturn of 2008, she needed to cut her budget way, way back, and that meant home cooking. Her mother suggested, “Why don’t you look in Nana’s recipe folder?” In the basement, Suzan found the tattered treasure, full of handwritten and meticulously typed recipes, peppered with her grandmother Matilda’s commentary in the margins. Reading it, Suzan realized she had found something more than a collection of recipes—she had found the key to her family’s survival through hard times.
Suzan began re-creating Matilda’s “sturdy food” recipes for baked pork chops and beef stew, and Aunt Nettie’s clam chowder made with clams dug up by Suzan’s grandfather Charlie in Long Island Sound. And she began uncovering the stories of her resilient family’s past. Taking inspiration from stylish, indomitable Matilda, who was the sole support of her family as a teenager during the Great Depression (and who always answered “How are you?” with “Fabulous, never better!”), and from dashing, twice-widowed Charlie, Suzan starts to approach her own crisis with a sense of wonder and gratitude. It turns out that the gift to survive and thrive through hard times had been bred in her bones all along.
Cherries in Winter is an irresistible gem of a book. It makes you want to cook, it makes you want to know your own family’s stories, and, above all, it makes you feel rich no matter what.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
November 3, 2009 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780307702890
- File size: 95593 KB
- Duration: 03:19:09
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Colon writes a charming, uplifting story of getting her mojo back after losing her dream job at a famous magazine. The book is part celebration of family and part cookbook as the author finds strength in her own family's struggles through the Great Depression. She learns about these when she unearths a folder of family recipes in her efforts to economize. When an author opts for reading his or her own material, it's always a gamble. In this case, one can hear that this material might have been better served by a professional actor's ability to bring out the humor and quiet drama in this appealing little book. D.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine -
September 14, 2009
As the economy tanked throughout 2008, magazine editor ColĂłn began strategizing and was better prepared when she lost her job. At her mother's suggestion, she unearthed her grandmother's recipe file, and with it a greater sensitivity about a family history that spanned the hardest years of the 20th century. The resulting book is half cooking memoir with recipes, some more practical than others, and partly family chronicle, some personalities more resilient and dimensional than others. The menfolk, including the narrator's husband and her forebears are mostly given their due (though the disappearance of ColĂłn's biological father is elided), but the story reads as a substantial homage to a strong matriarchal line, from the author's own determined persona and voice to the prominent and similar roles played by her mother and her maternal grandmother. The narrative has ample Working Girl
spunk and shifts deftly if quickly among stories and decades and geographies.
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