Another fascinating book by the author of “A Hastiness of Cooks," winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2020 for the Best in Culinary History category for both the U.S. and the world.
“Stoves and Suitcases addresses the rootlessness of travel, the solitude but also the ecstasy, the freedom of reinvention, discovery of self and of others. Timeless themes. I thought of a female Odysseus. Ghosts of the old explorers live in Cynthia D. Bertelsen, adventurers who left the familiar behind to see what they could see. For the author, home isn’t a place: it’s a feeling, a new culture, a newly discovered food, another stamp on her passport. She is a citizen of the world. She is also one helluva terrific writer, and this is one helluva terrific book.” ~ Leo Racicot, author of Alone in the Yard: Buddhist, Beat and Otherwise
Take a girl with an iffy start in life. Mix in wanderlust and cooking. Add a dollop of yearning for home and belonging. Knead in a pinch of self-discovery. Let rise and ripen. The result is award-winning author Cynthia D. Bertelsen’s Stoves & Suitcases, a reflective saga that begins in an incubator. Where the author first discovers the world’s culinary diversity as nurses fed her sweetened-condensed milk formula. Later, cookbooks pique her wanderlust and her longing to be elsewhere. A semester abroad in Mexico and a stint in the Peace Corps in Paraguay ignite those embers of wanderlust. That fire never stops burning. Years of living and working and cooking in the developing world follow, with long-term sojourns in Honduras, Haiti, Morocco, and Burkina Faso. And travel to many other corners of the Earth. Stoves & Suitcases weaves an age-old tale of leaving home to find home. (Contains over 100 recipes.)
For me, stoves became something akin to altars, something almost holy, places of communion where I could prepare meals and share the fruits of my labors with others. ~ Cynthia D. Bertelsen
