My Recent Reading Diet

Plus, an essay I wrote about baking while child free (scroll to the end)

My mom and the birthday cake I made (recipe at link at the bottom!)

In late October, on the recommendation of Money with Katie, I started reading Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom.

After the election, for obvious mental health related reasons, I had to put it down.

I wanted something that would make me feel better. Enter food memoirs.

Through the Stir the Pot newsletter, I heard about Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir by Lola Milholland.

It’s about Milholland’s life living in group settings—hippie communal homes with her parents when she was a kid through the house she shares now as an adult with her brother, partner, and friends.

The narrative was absorbing and entertaining, but the most soothing thing was all the examples she shares of different ways to live communally.

Most of us are very fused to all the “shoulds” about lifestyle: college, marriage, kids, house in the burbs, compact SUV in the driveway, Disneyland, etc., etc.

Milholland takes a very different and inspiring approach to how to make a life centered on community and meaning.

But the book never shies away from hard facts.

I learned that the top five landowners in the United States own more property that all Black Americans combined, for example.

She writes about her uncle’s lifelong crusade against the military industrial complex, especially as it pertains to the base and weapons depot near his home in the Pacific Northwest.

The memoir covers COVID times, and she writes about some of her own choices and behaviors that had negative consequences for her housemates with refreshing openness and self-awareness.

I cried multiple times reading this book, but ultimately it stoked my dreams of one day living in a group situation myself.

I have often fantasized about the commune I start and the days I spend not looking at screens but cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner for my community.

When I was finished, I still wasn’t ready to return to Vulture Capitalism, so I dove into Ina Garden’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, a title that I joked to friends should actually be Be Wealthy When the Luck Happens.

I stand by this assessment, but after I made peace with the breeziness with which Ina describes things like buying an apartment in Paris and renovating her home in the Hamptons, I was able to enjoy the book.

Ina is fun and funny character and I could stand to learn a thing or two about her willingness to say no, trust herself, and take risks.

But I was disappointed that she didn’t write more about her decision not to be a parent.

As a child-free homebody who loves cooking, I’ve always looked to Ina as a role model of sorts. She made me feel like it was OK to love what is essentially homemaking in the absence of kids, like I’m still worthy of making a home for me and Dan.

It brings me to something I want to share with you: An essay I recently wrote for Edible Philly about baking and family.

It’s called Big Love, Little Cakes and I hope you’ll give it a read. (You’ll also find recipes for a few of my favorite mini cakes!)

Let me know what you think.