Three Many Cooks

March 16, 2015
Accomplished cookbook author Anderson (Perfect One-Dish Dinners, etc.) teams up with her two grown daughters for a warm, gracious extension of their blog, Three Many Cooks, featuring homey tales and easy-preparation recipes. In alternating chapters, the three describe how the young women caught the foodie bug from their mother, a Southern-bred trailer-house only child who became a caterer, then a test cook for Cook’s Illustrated magazine in the 1980s while her husband went to Yale Divinity School. As Anderson gradually mastered the cooking trade and began writing her own cookbooks (each with the word “perfect” in the title), her girls were the “guinea pigs” for many of her tasting experiments- failed versions ended up in their lunch boxes, and one summer in Maine the family had to endure Pam’s “new status as a serial crustacean killer” as she created recipes for her How to Cook Lobster Perfectly. The daughters write that they grew to respect the craft of cooking more as they traveled, married, and started their own households, and all three authors express (rather repetitively) the shared values of work ethic and “the gift of thrift.” The recipes are certainly well tested, and the message plainspoken and unfussy.

February 1, 2015
A mother and her two adult daughters explore their unified histories through themes of food, hard work and love. Best-selling cookbook author and former Cook's Illustrated executive editor Anderson (Cook without a Book: Meatless Meals, 2011, etc.) grew up in a household "where food was revered and big meals were the main event," so she naturally passed that devotion down to daughters Maggy and Sharon. All three co-author the food blog Three Many Cooks, and each describes intimate and distinctive experiences growing up in the kitchen-friendly Anderson clan and within their own extended families. A constant commonality for the trio is the timeless enjoyment of generational go-to recipes (Perfect Carrot Cake, Cheese Drawer Mac and Cheese, Pasta Carbonara, etc.). With equal heft, Anderson extolls the joys and pains of working motherhood and her evolution through the echelons of food editorship, while her daughters exuberantly share the "tragicomedy of our sisterhood" and their Christianity, related through pages of warm anecdotes. All three women exhibit charismatic, affable personalities. Anderson, raised in the Bible Belt by a doting mother and a recovering-alcoholic father, shares her father's recipe for Lemon Chicken, a dish he savored up until and throughout his elderly convalescence. Firstborn daughter Maggy, after marrying, living abroad and returning stateside, revels in her eventual appreciation for the "power of food" and a passion for cooking through her mother's long-held family traditions and talent for "conceptualizing a meal." Youngest daughter Sharon, a former Web editor at Fine Cooking, writes of her courtship with her husband while at Yale Divinity School and the introduction of culinary creativity into their blossoming relationship. Mothers and daughters, especially, will find great appeal in this endearing book of heartfelt personal histories accented with accessible recipes from authors who freely exhibit an "intelligent and thoughtful approach to food." A scrumptious pairing of nourishment and familial devotion.

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November 15, 2014

New York Times best-selling author Anderson is AARP's official food expert. One daughter, Maggy Keet, founded and runs the Big Potluck, which creates inspirational community-focused events for food media; another, Sharon Damelio, works at a nonprofit that aids the homeless and near homeless. You can imagine the power of food, faith, and fun that shines through in this memoir.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015

Anderson (Cook Without a Book: Meatless Meals) and her two adult daughters, who together write a blog after which this book was named, take turns penning chapters in this tri-authored memoir, ending each section with a recipe that ties into the subject at hand. The women delve into topics both mundane and profound, from washing out baggies to growing apart in a marriage. The down-to-earth narratives have distinct voices yet all believe in the importance of shared meals and cooking with the ones you love: food as nourishment; food as connection; food as healing balm. Faith is gently present in many chapters, and wine and cocktails are a part of several meals. These are warm and comforting autobiographical essays from real folks who celebrate the role of food in their lives. VERDICT More prose than cookbook, this work will be enjoyed by cooks and noncooks alike. The 26 recipes are easy to follow (though not always simple) and most are forgiving of substitutions (e.g., this cheese for that, store-bought pie crust for homemade). The book's highest readership will be found in libraries where cookbooks circulate well.--Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley Sch., Fort Worth, TX

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.