essential ingredients

The School of Essential Ingredients is the first novel by Erica Bauermeister, which I picked up in paperback at my library's on-going book sale. Lillian owns a small restaurant in a quiet neighborhood, tucked into a old house with a front porch and small gardens in the yard, where she mixes flowers with herbs she uses in the kitchen. Once a week, Lillian hosts a cooking class, on Mondays when the restaurant is closed. The story opens with Lillian, and why she got into cooking, what she thinks it did for her, and how she thinks that it may help others to connect or re-connect with people, feelings, memories, and their own sense.

Each of the following chapters is focused on one of her students in this particular class, what their history is, what they bring to the class and its explorations of flavor, memory, confidence, and connectedness. Lillian sees food as more than sustenance, she sees it as one of the essential ingredients in life. The point seems to be, that there are a number of things that we as human do throughout our lives, maybe even most of our lives (such as work) which are really essential to human life. What we need is food, water, air, and in some or most cases shelter, clothes, and to procreate. That's it. Of that short list, only food gives us the opportunity to dazzle all of our senses, or perhaps just comfort them.

The cooking class is not really about food--although the descriptions of the food and the cooking are well done, and help form the backbone on which this sweet story is about. This story is about the people in it, and how slowing down and allowing their senses to indulge can help unlock other feelings they may not have been allowing themselves to have.

It was an interesting, and sensual look at what simple pleasures can do for us, and how they may not be so simple after all. This is a great first book, and I bet was popular with the book club folks, and cooking clutch folks as well.