Let Us Eat Cake: Adventures in Food and Friendship

Every woman has poignant food the times she licked the bowl when her mother baked a cake, or helped her grandmother make blintzes, tortillas, or Southern fried chicken. And how about the times she and her girlfriends baked chocolate-chip cookies or, later, prepared elaborate dinners to impress potential husbands? One day when looking through an old desk she’d bought as a newlywed thirty years earlier, food writer and restaurant critic Sharon Boorstin discovered a notebook of recipes she’d collected from her mother, relatives, and girlfriends at the time. It inspired her to reconnect with the recipe givers — some of whom she hadn’t seen in years — and to explore the power of cooking and food in establishing bonds among women. Let Us Eat Cake celebrates these connections. As a young girl, Boorstin helped her mother make tuna casseroles; on a college trip to Europe, she and her girlfriends compared men and restaurants with equal zest; after she became a food writer, Boorstin bonded with women in the food world including Barbara Lazaroff (Mrs. Wolfgang) Puck, the Too Hot Tamales, and Julia Child. Today, after decades of enjoying food and cooking together, Boorstin and the women in her life have come to understand what truly makes for female friendships. With dozens of delicious recipes and vintage photos, this moving book will inspire readers to remember and cherish their own experiences with food, family, and friends.