A portrait of American cooking. 600 recipes from the nation's best home cooks, farmers, fishermen, pit-masters, and chefs

A fun concept for a book. ( )

Really beautiful and useful. I received this copy at a benefit diner on Ellis Island in 2011, which she inscribed to me after a really nice conversation. I had enjoyed her writing for many years and it was a great pleasure to meet her.

Too many interesting recipes for photocopies, so it has to go on my wishlist at B&N. ( )

[This] book began about ten years ago as an attempt to answer a question: Had Americans stopped bothering to cook? That seemed to be the consensus among the people in the circles O’Neill frequented, but then she was a well-known restaurant critic in Manhattan who ate five-star, five nights a week. Had Americans really come to this? Eat out or order in? Well, after ten years of “research” (Molly O’Neill has the perfect life) involving traveling all over the country and inviting herself to backyard barbecues, potlucks, small town food festivals, immigrant grocery stores and church suppers, O’Neill’s opinion is “No.” Even a casual reader with only a knife and a microwave-safe bowl to their name paging through the finished book would have to agree.

Ultimately, the 600 recipes in the book were culled down from over 10,000 that were shared with her by the people she met, corresponded with, traded cooking tips with over email, online fora and blog comment-conversations. Behind each of the recipes included is this question: “Which recipe embodies your life and times and your own personal America? If you could leave one recipe to your family, which one would it be?”
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