\n\tAuthor: Caroline Eden<\/p>\n
\n\tDuring my recent visit to Scotland, while walking the cobblestoned streets beneath moody skies and with a grumbling stomach, I dipped into a nearby bookshop to whet my appetite before heading to dinner \u2014 and discovered a book offering a sort of charcuterie board of travel morsels: Caroline Eden\u2019s 2024 release, \u201cCold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Journeys.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe book invites readers into Eden\u2019s Edinburgh basement kitchen to recall where she went and what she ate in Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the course of a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe title refers to the part of the kitchen often used for preparing cold dishes, like salads, preserves and such. But in Eden\u2019s hands, it becomes a metaphor for freezing memories.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe book is a slice of life, a scrapbook of scrumptious crumbs that make up a medley of a meal: Recipes, descriptions and reflections \u2014 arranged seasonally.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt is presented with three chapters per season, starting with winter, spring and summer, then ending in my personal favorite: autumn. Each segment pairs a place with a dish.<\/p>\n
\n\tEden, an award-winning travel writer, is best known for her color-themed travel trilogy \u2014 \u201cBlack Sea,\u201d \u201cRed Sands\u201d and most recently, \u201cGreen Mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tShe understands how food anchors us; how we truly are what we eat. What we feed our bellies shapes our sense of place long after our suitcases \u2014 and we \u2014 roll away.<\/p>\n
\n\tOne moment that stayed with me was Eden\u2019s detailed description of the Uzbek melon in the beginning of the book, honoring winter \u2014 its sticky sweetness, its lingering scent.<\/p>\n
\n\tI have tasted it in Uzbekistan while journeying there myself, and the fruit is as she describes: dense, perfumed and indulgent. That single taste can lodge a landscape in the mind.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn \u201cCold Kitchen,\u201d a dish becomes a way to mark time. A menu gives us a moment to sit with grief \u2014 to remember someone or somewhere. It allows us to take a second taste from our own history, a portal into a past version of ourselves.<\/p>\n
\n\tPicking up this memoir in Edinburgh felt just like reaching for the perfect fruit from an orchard \u2014 something local, ripe and firm, yet delicate to sink into. Truly food for thought.<\/p>\n
\n\tThough Eden\u2019s kitchen is \u201ccold\u201d by name, it radiates warmth.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Author: Caroline Eden
During my recent visit to Scotland, while walking the cobblestoned streets beneath moody…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-32571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}