First published 2009
Molly Wizenberg loses her father to cancer and cannot return to her graduate studies in Seattle. She travels to Paris, where childhood memories with her father come flooding back through morning walks and pain au chocolat. Instead of working on her dissertation, she explores chocolate shops and outdoor markets. One evening in the Luxembourg Gardens, reading cookbooks until darkness falls, she realizes her true calling lies in the kitchen, not academia. Back home, she starts a food blog called Orangette as a simple hobby, writing long letters about meals and markets. The blog attracts devoted international readers who follow her cooking adventures and thoughts each week. Among them is a curly-haired composer from New York who falls for the redhead blogger. Their email exchanges grow into a long-distance romance. Wizenberg weaves together stories spanning from her Oklahoma childhood, where her mother's pound cake anchored summer picnics, to cooking eggs for her dying father. Food becomes the thread connecting her memories, relationships, and future. The memoir centers entirely around her kitchen, where recipes and life stories blend together.
Genres: autobiography, memoir, biography-memoir, cooking, food-writing
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, second-chance
Setting: New York, Oklahoma, Paris, Seattle
Period: 21st-century
336 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: death