A review by roctothorpe
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

funny reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

A catalog of some things I ate while reading this book:

• Six leftover shrimp, toast with mayonnaise and truffle hot sauce
• Peanut butter dumplings
• Sliced avocado with honey, lemon juice, flaky salt
• Olives straight from the jar

These essays on cooking and dining alone are quite short and I read a couple each day. Some are funny but most are more introspective. A lot of the pieces had a rather same-ish tone and premise: struggling writer living alone in New York apartment the size of a shoebox. I am quite fond of cooking on my own and so I was kind of shocked how sad (or at least melancholy/wistful) many of these essays were and how so many of the authors associate cooking for oneself with loneliness or shame. To the surprise of absolutely no one, I enjoyed Murakami's short story on spaghetti. The last essay "Food Nomad" is also great; it muses on the unique foods that evoke a sense of home. I don't think that any single piece will stay with me but the concept as a whole was lovely and I enjoyed sampling from this anthology.