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Cooking Narrative

Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

$18.00
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Intellectually engaging and deliciously readable, a stereotype-defying history of how one of the most recognisable symbols of Italian cuisine and national identity is the product of centuries of encounters, dialogue, and exchange.


Is it possible to identify a starting point in history from which everything else unfolds--a single moment that can explain the present and reveal the essence of our identities? According to Massimo Montanari, this is just a myth: by themselves, origins explain very little and historical phenomena can only be understood dynamically--by looking at how events and identities develop and change as a result of encounters and combinations that are often unexpected.


As Montanari shows in this lively, brilliant, and surprising essay, all you need to debunk the "origins myth" is a plate of spaghetti. By tracing the history of the one of Italy's "national dishes"--from Asia to America, from Africa to Europe; from the beginning of agriculture to the Middle Ages and up to the 20th century--he shows that in order to understand who we are (our identity) we almost always need to look beyond ourselves to other cultures, peoples, and traditions.

Skilletheads: A Guide to Collecting and Restoring Cast-Iron Cookware

Skilletheads: A Guide to Collecting and Restoring Cast-Iron Cookware

$24.00
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Part science and part personal preference, collecting and restoring cast-iron cookware is a complex art. For instance, what makes each company's cast iron unique? Do chemicals used during restoration leach into food? When it comes to surface finish, is textured or smooth better?

In Skilletheads, the highly anticipated follow-up to Modern Cast Iron, Ashley L. Jones dives deeper than ever into the world of cast iron. In these pages, which feature over 100 full-color photos, you'll find expert advice on purchasing cast iron from some of the most active collectors in the field today; side-by-side comparisons of the major manufacturers in the US and interviews with each company; and detailed how-to guides for restoring cast iron, including such methods as lye baths, electrolysis tanks, and chemical products, all compiled with input from devoted Skilletheads. And because no book on cast iron is complete without a little cooking, Jones includes 35 mouth-watering recipes contributed by foodies who know cast iron best--everything from Sunday Frittata to Braised Chicken to Skillet S'mores.

Whether you're interested in finding the perfect pan for your kitchen or starting a new hobby restoring cast iron, Skilletheads is here to help.

Slow Noodles

Slow Noodles

$29.00
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A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen.

RECIPE: HOW TO CHANGE CLOTH INTO DIAMOND

Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains.

In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodian refugee who loses everything and everyone--her home, her family, her country--all but the remembered tastes and aromas of her mother's kitchen. She summons the quiet rhythms of 1960s Battambang, her provincial hometown, before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart and killed more than a million Cambodians, many of them ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family. Then, as an immigrant in Saigon, Nguon loses her mother, brothers, and sister and eventually flees to a refugee camp in Thailand. For two decades in exile, she survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture nurse, and weaving silk.

Nguon's irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this lyrical memoir that includes more than twenty family recipes such as sour chicken-lime soup, green papaya pickles, and pâté de foie, as well as Khmer curries, stir-fries, and handmade bánh canh noodles. Through it all, re-creating the dishes from her childhood becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother, whose "slow noodles" approach to healing and cooking prioritized time and care over expediency.

Slow Noodles is an inspiring testament to the power of food to keep alive a refugee's connection to her past and spark hope for a beautiful life.

Small Fires

Small Fires

$24.00
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"An intense, thought-provoking enquiry into the very nature of cooking." -- Nigella Lawson

"One of the most original food books I've ever read, at once intelligent and sensuous, witty, provoking and truly delicious." -- Olivia Laing

A bracingly original, revelatory debut that explores cooking and the kitchen as sources of pleasure, constraint and revolution, by a rising star in food writing

This joyful, revelatory work of memory and meditation both complicates and electrifies life in the kitchen.

Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is there something more revolutionary going on?

In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking -- that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books -- as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.

Small Fires shows us the radical potential of the thing we do every day: the power of small fires burning everywhere.

Supper of the Lamb

Supper of the Lamb

$16.00
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From a passionate and talented chef who also happens to be an Episcopalian priest comes this surprising and thought-provoking treatise on everything from prayer to poetry to puff pastry. In The Supper of the Lamb, Capon talks about festal and ferial cooking, emerging as an inspirational voice extolling the benefits and wonders of old-fashioned home cooking in a world of fast food and prepackaged cuisine. This edition includes the original recipes and a new Introduction by Deborah Madison, the founder of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco and author of several cookbooks.
Survival Food

Survival Food

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An intimate and engaging Native food memoir

In these coming-of-age tales set on the Menominee Indian Reservation of the 1980s and 1990s, Thomas Pecore Weso explores the interrelated nature of meals and memories. As he puts it, "I cannot separate foods from the moments in my life when I first tasted them." Weso's stories recall the foods that influenced his youth in northern Wisconsin: subsistence meals from hunted, fished, and gathered sources; the culinary traditions of the German, Polish, and Swedish settler descendants in the area; and the commodity foods distributed by the government--like canned pork, dried beans, and powdered eggs--that made up the bulk of his family's pantry. His mom called this "survival food."

These stories from the author's teen and tween years--some serious, some laugh-out-loud funny--will take readers from Catholic schoolyards to Native foot trails to North Woods bowling alleys, while providing Weso's perspective on the political currents of the era. The book also contains dozens of recipes, from turtle soup and gray squirrel stew to twice-baked cheesy potatoes. This follow-up to Weso's Good Seeds: A Menominee Indian Food Memoir is a hybrid of modern foodways, Indigenous history, and creative nonfiction from a singular storyteller.

2024 Wisconsin Library Association Outstanding Achievement Award

2024 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence

Silver winner of the 2023 Midwest Book Award for Cookbooks/Crafts/Hobbies

Thomas Pecore Weso's Survival Food was selected by the Wisconsin Center for the Book as the Wisconsin entry in the "Great Reads from Great Places" program of the Library of Congress.

"This book is not only about survival food, but about the singular beauty, creativity, and fortitude that comes out of that survival."
--Chef Sean Sherman, author, The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen

"Survival Food is interesting because it's one part cookbook, three parts memoir, one part history, and one part multidisciplinary exploration of its setting, northern Wisconsin."
--James Norton, The Cookbook Test

"Nothing brings people together like good food and good stories. There's an abundance of both in Thomas Pecore Weso's latest memoir. As Weso attests, food can bring back happy, loving memories of times that were far from happy. Even a tray of funeral sandwiches brings a kind of comfort. This is a wonderful, honest portrait of northeastern Wisconsin, enlightening even to those of us who call this area home."
--Jared Santek, Founder & Artistic Director, Write On Door County

"Survival Food provides ample nourishment for the mind and body. . . . The stories, told with humor and affection, are complemented by recipes ranging from mouth-watering instructions for cooking wild asparagus to ever-so-interesting advice for preparing bear stew."
--Lucille Lang Day, author of Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place and coeditor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California

"His grandmother cooked according to Native traditions; his mother, 'a nontraditional college student during my teens, ' resorted to instant meals. His grandfather was town constable and days spent with him brought Weso to the meatloaf, sausage and sauerkraut of German and Polish neighbors. Uncle Buddy's flash car brings buckwheat pancakes to Weso's mind, and he lived for a time near Cheese Box Curve--so called after a truck hauling dairy products overturned. Weso includes a few recipes, but mostly, Survival Food is an entertaining look back at life in Wisconsin's rural north."
--David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express

"Survival Food: North Woods Stories by a Menominee Cook by Thomas Pecore Weso is a posthumous sequel to his celebrated collection of family stories, Good Seeds: A Menominee Food Memoir. . . . Rich with captivating tales that include driving a convertible on logging roads, agreeing on terms before throwing eggs at passing cars, and his grandmother's brief stay in a jailhouse she'd later purchase, Weso's entries offer readers catharsis--demonstrating how to laugh, boast, debate, eat, mourn, and heal."
--Ryan Winn, College of Menominee Nation, Tribal College Journal


Sweet Land of Liberty

Sweet Land of Liberty

$18.00
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A delicious and delightful narrative history of pie in America, from the colonial era through the civil rights movement and beyond.

With corresponding recipes for each chapter and sidebars of quirky facts throughout, this book--winner of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Award for Best Literary or Historical Food Writing--​is an entertaining, informative, and utterly charming food history for bakers, dessert lovers, and history aficionados alike.

Ultimately, the story of pie is the story of America itself, and it's time to dig in.

From the pumpkin pie gracing the Thanksgiving table to the apple pie at the Fourth of July picnic, nearly every American shares a certain nostalgia for a simple circle of crust and filling. But America's history with pie has not always been so sweet.

After all, it was a slice of cherry pie at the Woolworth's lunch counter on a cool February afternoon that helped to spark the Greensboro sit-ins and ignited a wave of anti-segregation protests across the South during the civil rights movement. Molasses pie, meanwhile, captures the legacies of racial trauma and oppression passed down from America's history of slavery, and Jell-O pie exemplifies the pressures and contradictions of gender roles in an evolving modern society.

We all know the warm comfort of the so-called "All-American" apple pie . . . but just how did pie become the symbol of a nation?

In Sweet Land of Liberty: A History of America in 11 Pies, award-winning food writer Rossi Anastopoulo cracks open our relationship to pie with wit and good humor. For centuries, pie has been a malleable icon, co-opted for new social and political purposes. Anastopoulo traces the pies woven into our history, following the evolution of our country across centuries of innovation and change.

Includes Illustrations

Sweet Land of Liberty

Sweet Land of Liberty

$27.00
More Info
A delicious and delightful narrative history of pie in America, from the colonial era through the civil rights movement and beyond.

With corresponding recipes for each chapter and sidebars of quirky facts throughout, this book--winner of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Award for Best Literary or Historical Food Writing--​is an entertaining, informative, and utterly charming food history for bakers, dessert lovers, and history aficionados alike.

Ultimately, the story of pie is the story of America itself, and it's time to dig in.

From the pumpkin pie gracing the Thanksgiving table to the apple pie at the Fourth of July picnic, nearly every American shares a certain nostalgia for a simple circle of crust and filling. But America's history with pie has not always been so sweet.

After all, it was a slice of cherry pie at the Woolworth's lunch counter on a cool February afternoon that helped to spark the Greensboro sit-ins and ignited a wave of anti-segregation protests across the South during the civil rights movement. Molasses pie, meanwhile, captures the legacies of racial trauma and oppression passed down from America's history of slavery, and Jell-O pie exemplifies the pressures and contradictions of gender roles in an evolving modern society.

We all know the warm comfort of the so-called "All-American" apple pie . . . but just how did pie become the symbol of a nation?

In Sweet Land of Liberty: A History of America in 11 Pies, award-winning food writer Rossi Anastopoulo cracks open our relationship to pie with wit and good humor. For centuries, pie has been a malleable icon, co-opted for new social and political purposes. Anastopoulo traces the pies woven into our history, following the evolution of our country across centuries of innovation and change.

Includes Illustrations

Table 4 at The River Cafe

Table 4 at The River Cafe

$36.00
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Inspired by her podcast Ruthie's Table 4, award-winning chef Ruthie Rogers, the cofounder of London's celebrated The River Cafe, presents a lively array of compelling interviews about food by a dazzling roster of celebrities including David Beckham, Martha Stewart, and Mel Brooks.

Since its 2021 launch, the acclaimed podcast Ruthie's Table 4 has welcomed an extraordinary range of high-profile guests including Tina Fey, Austin Butler, Jamie Oliver, and Paul McCartney. Talking about food unlocks something within them, stories and emotions never before shared. Now the show's host, Ruth Rogers CBE, the chef and cofounder of London's renowned The River Cafe, presents a collection based on her interviews with the actors, singers, politicians, athletes, and artists who have appeared on the podcast. Table 4 at the River Cafe is a celebration of food and how its preparation and enjoyment nourishes, unites, and enlightens.

Table in Paris: The Cafés, Bistros, and Brasseries of the World's Most Romantic City

Table in Paris: The Cafés, Bistros, and Brasseries of the World's Most Romantic City

$27.50
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A visual exploration of the Paris dining scene, with stories, guides, and recommendations from everyday patrons and famous aficionados alike

Paris is a city like no other, beloved by travelers the world over for its incomparable architecture, atmosphere, arts, and, of course, food. The restaurants of Paris are rich with history, culture, and flavor. Whether you're a frequent visitor to the City of Light with memories of your favorite meals or an armchair traveler dreaming of the cuisine you could discover there, A Table in Paris will take you on a delicious visual journey through the arrondissements that you'll never forget. In his signature loose and evocative style, artist John Donohue has rendered an incredible sampling of the iconic institutions, hidden gems, and everything in between that make the Paris dining scene one of a kind.
Guided by recommendations from a breadth of locals, visitors, and experts, you'll discover the places one must visit and the dishes one must sample in pursuit of the perfect Parisian meal. The book also offers space for your Paris dining bucket list, food memories or dreams from each arrondissement, and notes on the establishments featured. Restaurants hold a powerful place in our hearts, and A Table in Paris is a must-have for anyone with epicurean visions of Paris in theirs.

Tales from the Wine Floor

Tales from the Wine Floor

$24.95
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Unlike most books on wine nowadays, Tales from the Wine Floor is geared toward true beginners--those who enjoy wine but lack the most basic understanding of it. This book offers an easy-to-digest crash course on wine and ready-reference written by a Sommelier. The author explains the intricacies of wine to the average Joe (or Joanne) in a way that is easy to understand and highly entertaining. Here is an easy reference Q&A based on real questions (often absurd or hysterically funny) asked by regular, wine-drinking people and the answers the author gives them in his job as "The Wine Guy." Among the questions and answers that comprise this book are: What Are Sulfites? Why Does the Same Wine Sometimes Taste Different? How Do I order Wine at a Restaurant? How Do I Host a Wine Tasting at Home? And, Why is Champagne Served on a Funny-Shaped Glass? Illustrated with amusing drawings by New Yorker cartoonist John O'Brien, novice wine enthusiasts will find Tales from the Wine Floor informative, easily accessible, and a delight to read.
Tart

Tart

$28.99
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An Instant Sunday Times (London) Bestseller
A New York Times Best Nonfiction Book of Summer 2025
A Vogue Best Book of 2025 So Far
A Service95 Must-Read Book of 2025

A hilarious, hot, and steamy account of coming of age in and out of the kitchen, from the anonymous chef and columnist, Slutty Cheff.

"It's the two best things in the world: food and sex."

When Slutty Cheff finds herself bored and fed-up with her 9-5 job in corporate marketing, she turns to the only thing that she really likes to do: cooking. So she quits her job, swaps emails for emulsions, and sets off to pursue her dreams of becoming a chef.

The world of London's fine dining restaurants is so much more than she imagined: it's more challenging, and more exciting too. There are the exhausting lows of sixty-hour work weeks in windowless kitchens, and the shock of stepping into the changing room as the only woman. There are the thrilling highs of a busy night, when service is running smoothly; electrifying run-ins with hot bartenders and even hotter chefs; and, always, the exhilaration of cycling hands-free through a city that is still sleeping, on a morning where anything can happen.

This is a story about searching for your purpose, and experiencing and embracing life to the fullest along the way. The pleasure and the chaos too...

An exquisite mix of raw Anthony Bourdain-style honesty with the sharp wit of Lena Dunham's Girls, Tart is THE book for those who like to eat and f**k.

This Must Be the Place: Dispatches & Food from the Home Front

This Must Be the Place: Dispatches & Food from the Home Front

$32.00
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Rachael Ray presents 125+ recipes straight from her home kitchen in upstate New York, with personal stories on loss, gratitude, and the special memories that make a house a home.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FOOD NETWORK

"I wanted to write this book because for the first time in my fifty-two years, everyone on the planet was going through the same thing at the same time. We were all feeling the same fear, heartsickness, worry, and sadness, but due to the nature of the virus, it was hard to connect. I connect through cooking, and I noticed that's what many others were doing as well. We took to the kitchen to share something of ourselves--and cooking became the discipline, diversion, and devotion that got us through."

You may think you know Rachael Ray after decades of TV appearances and dozens of books, but 2020 changed us all and it changed her, too--her life and her direction. During the early months of the pandemic in upstate New York, far away from her New York City television studio, Rachael Ray and her husband, John, went to work in their home kitchen hosting the only cooking show on broadcast TV. At her kitchen counter, with the help of her iPhone cameraman (John), Rachael produced more than 125 meals--everything from humble dishes composed of simple pantry items (One-Pot Chickpea Pasta or Stupid Good, Silly Easy Sausage Tray Bake) to more complex recipes that satisfy a craving or celebrate a moment (Porcini and Greens Risotto or Moroccan Chicken Tagine).

This Must Be the Place captures the words, recipes, and images that will forever shape this time for Rachael and her family, offering readers inspiration to rethink and rebuild what home means to them now.

Truffle Hound

Truffle Hound

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A captivating exploration into the secretive and sensuous world of truffles, the elusive food that has captured hearts, imaginations, and palates worldwide-now in paperback.

The scent of one freshly unearthed white truffle in Barolo was all it took to lead Rowan Jacobsen down a rabbit hole into a world of secretive hunts, misty woods, black-market deals, obsessive chefs, quixotic scientists, muddy dogs, maddening smells, and some of the most memorable meals ever created.

Truffles attract dreamers, schemers, and sensualists. People spend years training dogs to find them underground. They plant forests of oaks and wait a decade for truffles to appear. They pay $6,000 a pound to possess them. They turn into quivering puddles in their presence. Why?

Truffle Hound is the fascinating account of Rowan's quest to find out, a journey that would lead him from Italy to Istria, Hungary, Spain, England, and North America. Both an entertaining odyssey and a manifesto, Truffle Hound demystifies truffles-and then remystifies them, freeing them from their gilded cage and returning them to their roots as a sacred offering from the forest. It helps people understand why they respond so strongly to that crazy smell, shows them there's more to truffles than they ever imagined, and gives them all the tools they need to take their own truffle love to the next level. Deeply informed, unabashedly passionate, rakishly readable, Truffle Hound will spark America's next great culinary passion.

Undercooked: How I Let Food Become My Life Navigator and How Maybe That's a Dumb Way to Live

Undercooked: How I Let Food Become My Life Navigator and How Maybe That's a Dumb Way to Live

$28.00
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A collection of hilarious essays about how food became one man's obsession and coping mechanism, and how it came to rule--and sometimes ruin--his relationships, from the Cobra Kai actor, stand-up comic, and host of Food Network's Raid the Fridge

"When most people say they have an unhealthy relationship with food, they mean they eat too much of it or too little. When I say I have an unhealthy relationship with food, I mean it's what gives my life meaning. That's a really dumb way to live your life, as the stories in this book will attest to."

Despite an impressive résumé as an actor and writer, Dan Ahdoot realized that food has been the through line in the most important moments of his life. Growing up as a middle child, Ahdoot struggled to find his place in the family until he and his father discovered their shared love for la gourmandise. But when the tragic death of his brother pushed his parents to strengthen their Jewish faith and adopt a strictly kosher diet, Ahdoot and his father lost that savored connection.

To fill the absence left by his brother and father, Ahdoot began to obsess over food and make it central in all his relationships. This, he admits, is probably crazy, but it makes for good stories. From breaking up with girlfriends over dietary restrictions, to hunting just off the Long Island Expressway, to savoring his grandmother's magical food that was his only tactile connection to his family's home country of Iran, to jetting off to Italy to dine at the one of the world's best restaurants, only to send the risotto back, Ahdoot's droll observations on his unconventional adventures bring an absurdly funny yet heartfelt look at what happens when you let your stomach be your guide.

Warming Up Julia Child

Warming Up Julia Child

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A Pulitzer prize-finalist peels back the curtain on an unexplored part of Julia Child's life--the formidable team of six she collaborated with to shape her legendary career.

Julia Child's monumental Mastering the Art of French Cooking and iconic television show The French Chef required a team of innovators to bring out her unique presence and personality. Warming Up Julia Child is behind-the-scenes look at this supporting team, revealing how the savvy of these helpers, collaborators, and supporters contributed to Julia's overwhelming success.

Julia is the central subject, but Helen Horowitz has her share the stage with those who aided her work. She reveals that the most important element in Julia Child's ultimate success was her unusual capacity for forming fruitful alliances, whether it was Paul Child, Simone Beck, Avis DeVoto, Judith Jones and William Koshland (at Knopf), and Ruth Lockwood (at WGBH). Without the contribution of these six collaborators Julia could never have accomplished what she did.

Filled with vivid correspondance, fascinating characters, and the iconic joie de vivre that makes us come back to Julia again and again, Warming Up Julia Child is essential reading for anyone who adores Julia and her legacy.

Warming Up Julia Child

Warming Up Julia Child

$27.95
More Info
A Pulitzer prize-finalist peels back the curtain on an unexplored part of Julia Child's life--the formidable team of six she collaborated with to shape her legendary career.

Julia Child's monumental Mastering the Art of French Cooking and iconic television show The French Chef required a team of innovators to bring out her unique presence and personality. Warming Up Julia Child is behind-the-scenes look at this supporting team, revealing how the savvy of these helpers, collaborators, and supporters contributed to Julia's overwhelming success.

Julia is the central subject, but Helen Horowitz has her share the stage with those who aided her work. She reveals that the most important element in Julia Child's ultimate success was her unusual capacity for forming fruitful alliances, whether it was Paul Child, Simone Beck, Avis DeVoto, Judith Jones and William Koshland (at Knopf), and Ruth Lockwood (at WGBH). Without the contribution of these six collaborators Julia could never have accomplished what she did.

Filled with vivid correspondance, fascinating characters, and the iconic joie de vivre that makes us come back to Julia again and again, Warming Up Julia Child is essential reading for anyone who adores Julia and her legacy.

Way of Chai

Way of Chai

$22.00
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In this celebration of the comfort and community to be found in a warm, well-made cup of chai, Kevin Wilson offers readers his famous chai recipes alongside meditations on how to live a simple yet full life.

Dubbed "the CEO of Chai" by Bon Appétit magazine, Kevin Wilson is an expert on all things chai. When Wilson was a teenager, his family in Sri Lanka applied to come to America, but his was the only visa approved. A world away from his country and so many of his loved ones, he stayed connected to his culture and his family through chai. One day Wilson made a TikTok about how to make the perfect cup of chai--carefully crushing cardamom, cloves, peppercorns, and cinnamon bark, boiling them in milk, adding tea leaves, and stirring until he saw what he describes as "the color of a happy brown boy." The video went viral and earned Wilson many fans who come for the useful guidance on how to make chai but stay for his wise meditations on how the perfect "cuppa" can soothe and sustain us--even in the most trying of times. In this book, Wilson shares his most popular recipes and introduces readers to making chai as a spiritual practice that involves patience and attunement to meld just the right combination of spices.
In The Way of Chai Wilson beautifully describes how something as simple as a well-made cup of tea can bring us solace amid our struggles. While a steaming cup of chai can't solve everything, it can help us tap into the power of patience, clarity, and intention.