About the book
At first glance, Lis Cowey has penned a sweet and tart love letter to family, food and cooking. But in her deft hands this book becomes so much more: an adroitly woven exploration of home, community and the still-burning flames of ancestry. — Redmer Yska
A Feeling for Food began as a letter to two sons leaving home, giving them the recipes of the food they’d grown up with so they could feed themselves, but Lis Cowey soon realised she was giving them another kind of nourishment that was all about who they were, where they’d come from and the adventures awaiting them. For behind every recipe there’s a story about where Lis found it, who cooked it and why, and each story provides a thread linking a table of food in front of her with a table of food in the past made by other hands, or one on the far side of the world. From Great-Granny Nelson’s relish to their uncle Paul’s fluffy pancakes, from the bacon and egg pie that always goes on picnics to the bagels Lis ate in New York and the tarte Tatin in France that she simply had to learn to make, Lis asks Fred and Carlo and her other readers to pay attention as a way to discover their own food stories and fortify themselves body and soul in a big wide hungry world.
