How to Celebrate Everything

June 20, 2016
Rosenstrach, a meal-planning maven, popular blogger, and bestselling author (Dinner: A Love Story), expands her family mealtime focus by providing a “blueprint for starting rituals and optimizing celebrations.” She offers practical planning tips and more than 100 recipes for routinely creating celebrations where “food is at the heart” of family bonding and tradition. Organized around themes and events, Rosenstrach identifies four major ritual groupings: holidays we didn’t invent, family rituals, birthdays, and family dinners. Featured recipes are proven kid friendly and presented with humorous mommy angst and nostalgic commentary. A pre-trick-or-treat Halloween party showcases franks and baked beans from scratch and a chicken chorizo chili. In “Thanksgiving Traditions,” there’s a full menu, as well as her mother’s “Seven Things to Remember When Roasting a Bird.” Holiday recipes include potato latkes with seven toppings. There are sleep-over breakfasts featuring pancakes, fritters, and popovers, along with Sunday dinner favorites such as salmon and potatoes with yogurt sauce. A “Master Party Chart” provides a useful template for planning birthday themes, crafts, games, food, cake, and party favors. Recipes are far from over-the-top, but Rosenstrach inspires, reminding us that the real celebration is family itself.

July 1, 2016

Author and blogger Rosenstrach (Dinner) focuses her latest effort on what to eat during the celebrations and everyday routines that become treasured family memories. Those familiar with Rosenstrach's blog, dinneralovestory.com, will find the format of the book to be similar. Simple, kid-friendly recipes are interspersed with personal anecdotes, advice, and lessons the author has learned in her time as a mother and home chef. For the most part, the recipes are updates of home cooking classics, streamlined and easy to prepare for both small and large gatherings. Some feature unexpected yet accessible ingredients that add a bit of sophistication to common meals such as hamburgers, roast chicken, and potato salad. The layout is uncluttered, and the directions easy to follow. In Rosenstrach's parlance, everyday family routines become "rituals," events made to be honored with a special dish or dessert. VERDICT This well-designed cookbook comes with a side helping of lifestyle inspiration. Fans of both mommy- and food-blogging will find something of interest here.--Rebecca Brody, Westfield State Univ., MA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016
Rosenstrach's latest book, like her first two and her blog (Dinner: A Love Story), is equal parts food memoir, lifestyle guide, and cookbook. With characteristic warmth and humor, she urges readers to ritualize and celebrate the small moments in family life by sharing stories from her own. Daily walks to the school bus stop with her two daughters, sleepovers with friends, or a trip to the orthodontist all become opportunities to serve up love, comfort, and community, along with good food that makes memories. Rosenstrach is a skilled storyteller and introduces each occasion with an engaging essay before offering up the much-loved recipes that inspired itbrown butter apple birthday pie for the daughter who eschews cake, interfaith brisket and ham sliders on challah rolls for the family's December holiday party, or grilled picnic chicken that recalls childhood summers (Rosenstrach's own and her children's) spent playing outdoors with cousins. This book is a delicious and delightful ode to the ways family and food intertwine, reinforcing each other.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)