A lovely book, The School of Essential Ingredients was written about Lillian's students in her Monday night cooking class. Like her students, Lillian has a story of her own, a sad one, that led her to the opening of her upscale restaurant and the weekly cooking classes. Erica Bauermeister does such a great job of describing the current scenes and the back stories of the eight students that the reader feels like a part of the group...or maybe like a fly on the wall who can see and hear and taste everything with clarity.
Being a teacher may be one reason I enjoyed the book so much. Every term there's a new cast of characters, each with a history and reason for being there. In some ways, students are always the same, and in other ways they're very different from each other. Lillian's students were old and young, married and single, sad and glad. Through the preparation and consumption of food, memories are evoked, friendships are born, and lives are changed. The reader gets to see snapshots of the students' former lives, and the author's sketches of their individual pasts are so well written that I could see Chloe's disrespectful boyfriend becoming angry at her attempts at cooking, feel the tension in the room when Helen told Carl of her affair, and sense Ian's pleasure in preparing the tiramisu for Antonia.
In our book club, we chose favorite characters. This was hard, for we liked them all. My choice was Isabelle, probably because of her comments about her adult daughters not understanding her decisions. Then there was the line about getting a crick in her neck from looking up at her sweet boy as he sat on her roof and talked about his new love interest. I liked Claire, the young mother, and could well empathize with the demands of a growing family on one's time and psyche. And lest I forget, I liked little Chloe and felt like saying, "You go, Girl!" when she found the strength to leave the lout she was living with.
The truth is that all of the characters were interesting people whose past had fed into their present and made them who they were. In the end, everything is resolved, and all is well for the moment. Isn't that just like life itself? Everyone is interesting, everyone has a story, and things are the way they are for the moment. Who knows what's next on the horizon?
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Popular Highlights in this book
“Sometimes, niña, our greatest gifts grow from what we are not given.”Highlighted by 1,020 Kindle readers- “We’re all just ingredients, Tom. What matters is the grace with which you cook the meal.”Highlighted by 713 Kindle readers
- You could learn everything about a couple just watching the kitchen choreography as they prepared dinner.Highlighted by 356 Kindle readers
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A delicious treat for readers
Erica Bauermeister’s novel, The School of Essential Ingredients, is a wonderful, captivating and delicious exploration of what takes place during the Monday night cooking classes at Lillian’s restaurant.Bauermeister skillfully develops the story, moving from the present to the past and then back again, giving the reader a soupçon of this character’s backstory, a morsel from that character’s past before moving back to the main course. As the participants spend their time slicing and chopping, mixing and pureeing, they learn about each other, but more importantly about themselves: who they were, who they are, who they can be. And with her distinctive creative skill, Bauermeister brings all those individual components together for a wholly satisfying conclusion.Ideally The School of Essential Ingredients should be read while drinking a mug of Abuelita’s Hot Chocolate with a few biscotti on the side—food for the body, food for the soul. Bon appétit!
Top reviews from other countries
Sailee Joshi
Erica gave words to thoughts that I never could have been able to
Reviewed in India on June 15, 2021Alexandra
Reading this makes you smell all the lovely flavours in the air :)
Reviewed in Germany on October 25, 2019
