Three Many Cooks: One Mom, Two Daughters, Their Shared Stories of Food, Faith, and Family

Accomplished cookbook author Anderson (Perfect One-Dish Dinners, etc.) teams up with her two grown daughters for a warm, gracious extension of their blog, Three Many Cooks, featuring homey tales and easy-preparation recipes. In alternating chapters, the three describe how the young women caught the foodie bug from their mother, a Southern-bred trailer-house only child who became a caterer, then a test cook for Cook’s Illustrated magazine in the 1980s while her husband went to Yale Divinity School. As Anderson gradually mastered the cooking trade and began writing her own cookbooks (each with the word “perfect” in the title), her girls were the “guinea pigs” for many of her tasting experiments- failed versions ended up in their lunch boxes, and one summer in Maine the family had to endure Pam’s “new status as a serial crustacean killer” as she created recipes for her How to Cook Lobster Perfectly. The daughters write that they grew to respect the craft of cooking more as they traveled, married, and started their own households, and all three authors express (rather repetitively) the shared values of work ethic and “the gift of thrift.” The recipes are certainly well tested, and the message plainspoken and unfussy. (Apr.)