Cookbook Review: Feed These People

My sister ordered this book for me and had it shipped to us.   She thought there might be a lot of recipes that we could adapt for our new outdoor griddle.   While I’m unsure that that is true, I am positive I love this cookbook!  Even if you’re not a cook, just read this book for the humor.  Hatmaker is hilarious!

About the book:

The debut cookbook from inspiring and hilarious New York Times bestselling author and beloved podcaster Jen Hatmaker, jam-packed with easy recipes, big flavors, and Southern wit.

With five children and a close-knit community of family and friends, bestselling author, podcaster, and inspirational speaker Jen Hatmaker has been sharing her love of cooking and food with her fans for years. Now she’s compiled all her favorite sure-thing recipes into one personal and highly entertaining cookbook, including chapters like “Food for Breakfast (or brunch so you can drink),” “Food for Your Picky Spouse or Spawn,” and “Food for When You Have No More Damns to Give.”

Paired with vibrant photography that’s as bold and lively as Jen herself, all recipes are sure to please, written for ordinary home cooks, and infused with personal notes, asides, and stories in her candid and irreverent style.

About the author:

Jen Hatmaker is the New York Times bestselling author of For the Love and Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, along with twelve other books. She hosts the award-winning “For the Love” podcast, is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, and leader of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week. Jen is a co-founder of Legacy Collective, a giving organization that grants millions of dollars toward sustainable projects around the world. She is a mom to five kids and lives happily just outside Austin, Texas.

To learn more about Jen, visit her website.

What I thought…

For those of you who might find PW (aka Ree) annoying, this is the cookbook for you. As I read Hatmaker’s hednotes and recipe descriptions (some sprinkled with minor profanity), I was truly giggling out loud.   Hatmaker is real.  These recipes are real and delicious and are for regular people. As I read the book in one setting, I kept thinking that Hatmaker was the anti-Pioneer Woman. (I mean that as a complement).

I used to wish that Ruth Reichl was my neighbor. Now I wish Hatmaker was.

The Food:

Duh, it’s a cookbook.   I can’t list every recipe I want to try but I can list some of the highlights:

  • Chorizo—“Never buy the horrid chorizo with eighteen weird ingredients sold in tubes.  It will melt into nothingness over heat”(23).   Her substitute when you can’t find bulk chorizo is to use hot Italian sausage.  I really want to remake some recipes that called for chorizo that I used the tube variety in.  She is dead on that it melts into a gloopy mess.
  • She is mad (mad, I tell you) about sweet jalapenos.
  • Her vegetarian section, “Foods for Hippies,” is for her daughter but the Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burgers are loved by her entire family:  “my feminist, liberal gay vegetarian…my gun-toting, ranch-management-major son…my athletic, competitive, bulked-up son…my uber-sensitive, literal, hamburger-hating baby”(169).
  • Her tartine mini-section (118-123)  is divine because everything is just better on toast, right?
  • She does not feel bad about serving her family Taco Cups (182), Red Curry with Whatever You Have (185), or Taco Soup (192) with everything dumped in from tins.  She doesn’t feel bad b/c it’s from her “Food for When You have No More Damns to Give.”
  • She lists exactly one dessert, crème brulée, because “If I want dessert, I’ll have some chips” (246).  (This reminds me of the one page relegated to desserts in Anthony Bourdain’s Appetites, that for his preferred dessert, stilton.)
  • My favorite section has to be the first one, “Food for Breakfast  (or brunch so you can drink).”  I really don’t know what to list here because I want to make EVERY.SINGLE.RECIPE. here.

I’m not highlighting any one recipe because honestly, you need to buy her damn book.  It’s that good.   (I will say that when I looked up her book club, I was a bit disappointed that it was a subscription service, but you know, if she can get people to pay up, more power to her!)

I’m sure there will be some photos of my finished recipes from her book her soon.  Maybe something for brunch!

I’m linking up with Foodie’s Read.

May 2023 Foodies Read

This is an unusual post for EE because it wasn’t sponsored by anyone….except maybe my sister who bought me this book.   ❤

 

 

3 comments to Cookbook Review: Feed These People

  • This book sounds like a winner! Your sister made a good pick, and I’m looking for it at the library. I’d like to check out her website too.

  • mae

    cookbooks with memories and memoirs with recipes are both fun to read — this sounds like a good one! And the second review of such books i’ve read today. Plus I’m reading a memoir with recipes myself.
    best, mae at maefood.blogspot.com

  • Well I think you sold me. Going to order this one up.