Sarah Lewis

This book is a bop and I loved it. I read it as an ebook, but spent the whole time imagining Em Grosland narrating it. (I have a love-hate relationship with Audible Exclusives and also with Wil Wheaton as a narrator.)

I couldn't STAND Snowfall for a good chunk of the book. Quite a bit of the plot was overly simplistic and utterly unrealistic.

However, this had such a good redemption arc that I forgive everything else. (Also, laugh-out-loud writing moments. Those also make me more magnanimous.)

I'm not a keto adherent, but I like to try recipes from different dietary styles to up my hospitality power. This slim cookbook is reasonably well designed but the recipes are underwhelming.

It's pretty clear just from flipping through them that most of the recipes are slight variants of maybe five or six core recipes. They are generally based on mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, eggs, and almond flour.

In order to give it a fair shake, I made three recipes that seemed representative: a mozzarella-and-egg “pasta” that cooks (briefly!) in water, a mozzarella-cream cheese-and-egg “pasta” that bakes in the oven, and almond flour-based Garlic Knots.

The Garlic Knots were surprisingly decent. They looked... sad. Like little puddles. (My tween son, not knowing they were keto: “Maybe you should have used more flour, Mom...”) But they were tasty enough that I'd consider making them again. (And the tween son ate five of them, which is not exactly a testament to gourmet appeal but tells you they aren't nasty.)

The “pastas,” on the other hand, were simply wrong. They were vaguely pasta-shaped, and sure, you can put a sauce on them and it looks pasta-ish, but the textures were awful. If I had to pick one adjective, I'd go with “squishy.” The boiled pasta soaked up water so even after draining it, it tasted like watery cheese—not a flavor I can say I've ever encountered before and do not want to ever again. The baked one tasted like a sad omelette (because that's pretty much what it was).

In terms of cookbook features, there's a good table of contents, which is helpful since the recipes are not in any discernible order. (There's no index, but since there are only a few dozen recipes, and most of them are similar, I'm not sure it would be all that useful.)

There are photos for many of the recipes, which is generally a good thing, but I'm not convinced they are all photos of the actual recipes. I'd bet significant money that the cover photo is a (very attractive) stock photo—there isn't even a recipe for spaghetti, because there's no way these weird pasta recipes would produce something firm enough to make it through an extruder.

The recipes are also inconsistent in terms of ingredient units. Sometimes the (almost inevitable) mozzarella is listed in cups, sometimes in ounces. Cream cheese vacillates between ounces and tablespoons. This gives a “collected from the internet” vibe (though there's no attribution) and increases the odds of mistakes when switching between recipes. I'd prefer ingredients be given with both volume and weight measurements, but even settling on one or the other would be better than the mishmash.

At this point, I'm not even sure what to do with this book. If I feel like making the garlic knots again, I'll probably go with a highly rated recipe like this one (which looks similar but a little more intentional). Given that two of the three recipes I tried were so unappealing, I'm not sure I can even donate this book in good conscience.

I loved Sanae's writing style, journey, and thoughtful reflection. I also love how she takes simple shapes and turns them into elegant projects, no pattern required.

Not everyone likes this approach. I imagine it appeals more to people who like to wing it, “throw things together” when they cook, etc. I am one of those people. I hate prepping for projects, and cutting out fabric while trying to keep the pattern aligned is my least favorite part of sewing. (And let's not even talk about patterns that have to be printed and assembled!)

Obviously there are times when you do absolutely need a pattern. However, this book is more geared towards sewing as therapy, mindfulness, grounded in simplicity, accepting wobbles, letting go of perfectionism... the “go with the flow” flexibility of the projects perfectly suits the narrative of the book, and I'm looking forward to making some of them. (Just as soon as I finish the three other craft projects I'm in the middle of.

Incredibly well-written and also probably the most depressing book I've ever read.