The Promise Kitchen

The Promise Kitchen

This book has been sitting on my ereader for a long time.  Now I’m upset that I didn’t read it sooner.

Shelby is a young single mother who follows food blogger Mallory and loves to make her recipes.  She wants to be a chef but that would require her to leave her daughter with her mother in southern Georgia and move to Atlanta to work and go to school.

The newspaper Mallory writes for has just moved totally online and she has thrown herself into creating a new, indispensable, digital persona.

Shelby and Mallory cross paths at the grocery where Shelby gets a job.  Their lives start to intersect more and more until the day when they are bound together by an accident.

The writing in this book was very beautifully done and pulled me in immediately.  I loved the contrast between the poor, rural Shelby who dreams of a better life and urban Mallory.  One of the themes in the book that haven’t seen written about much in foodie fiction was the accessibility of foodie culture.  Shelby decides which of the meals that she will make based on what is available and affordable at her local grocery store.  She talks about how she understands that Mallory feels that all the produce needs to be organic but that isn’t possible for her.  When Shelby tries to get a job in a deli at the grocery store, she wears her best clothes for the interview but realizes that they are shabby compared to the affluent people she sees there.  The grocery store in question just rebranded as an upscale store, losing some neighborhood clients in the process.

Overall, I wasn’t as invested in the story by the end as I was in the beginning.  I wasn’t a fan of the romance angle for Mallory or of the accident plot that seemed like it wasn’t necessary.  However, I think that the well done characterizations of Shelby and the secondary characters is still enough to recommend this book.

There are recipes in the back of this book like there are in a lot of books that feature food.  But guys, I actually made one of the recipes.  I know, shocking, right.  I think that reading all the people who link up at the Foodies Read pages is getting to me.

There was a recipe for Pimento Cheese.  I eat 99% vegan at home but back in time I really did love some pimento cheese.  I decided to try to veganize it.  I used vegan mayo and Daiya cheddar shreds.  I love Just Mayo’s vegan mayo but I actually hate Daiya fake cheese.  I think they taste like wax.  There wasn’t another cheddar selection in the store though so I gave it a try.

It was amazing!  Totally had the right taste and texture.  I can’t take attractive food pictures to save my life and I contend that there is nothing that can make pimento cheese photogenic anyway, but here it is.