The youngest of five children, Kathleen Flinn grew up in a world of weekend hunting trips, summer fishing vacations and cinnamon rolls for birthday breakfasts. Although she later found her way to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and a career as a food writer, the connection between her Midwestern heritage and her chosen career wasn't always apparent. But when Flinn began researching her family's history, she was surprised to discover "just how honestly I'd come to my love of the kitchen." In her third book, Flinn (The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry) tells her family's story through food, from her great-grandmother Anna's hearty Swedish recipes to her uncle Clarence's cornflake-crusted fried chicken.
Flinn begins with her parents' love story on the night they met at a skating rink (he knocked her over). Years later, with four young children, they made an impulsive move to San Francisco from Michigan so Flinn's father could work at his brother's pizzeria. Pizza was still an exotic import in the late 1950s, but Flinn's parents were never afraid of a challenge: they worked at the pizzeria until it closed and a family emergency pulled them back to the Midwest. They moved into a rundown farmhouse with frozen pipes and peeling wallpaper, but managed to make it a home with secondhand furniture, elbow grease and many pots of simmering bean soup.
As Flinn notes in her introduction, her family's story is "both unremarkable and utterly fascinating." Her ancestors, immigrant and otherwise, were plain, hardworking people: cooks and farmers, laborers and fishermen. As Flinn unraveled fact from family lore and tracked down recipes, she began to see what food meant to all of them: safety, stability, sustenance, love. As it does in many families, a hearty meal often took the place of an expensive gift or eloquent words. Flinn and her siblings never received extravagant birthday presents, but always got to "order" their meal of choice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Flinn's grandma Inez once summed up her food philosophy as she handed her young granddaughter a piled-high plate: "I don't have to tell you I love you. I made you pancakes."
Readers may recognize their own family stories in Flinn's homespun, heartwarming scenes of canning fruit preserves and sharing many meals around the table. Neither the recipes nor the prose are exotic or fancy, but their warmth and nourishment may inspire readers to trace their own heritage through food--or just make a batch of Flinn's cinnamon rolls. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: Kathleen Flinn's third food memoir traces her Midwestern family's journey through heartwarming stories and simple, comforting recipes.