Passed down through generations, written on index cards, posted to the web at the bottom of a meandering story about a blogger\u2019s family hike \u2014 a recipe is much more than a step-by-step guide to creating a delectable dish.<\/p>\n
Lynn Z. Bloom, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Aetna Chair of Writing emerita, unwraps all the symbolism in something so ostensibly simple in her latest book, \u201cRecipe,\u201d part of the Bloomsbury Publishing \u201cObject Lessons\u201d series in which writers explore \u201cthe hidden lives of ordinary things.\u201d<\/p>\n
A fan of the \u201ctop-flight\u201d series of \u201cshort, quirky, unusual\u201d books, Bloom challenged herself to write a proposal that would be accepted in the highly selective series. \u201cI\u2019ve always liked to cook, everybody likes to eat, everybody in my family cooks, it\u2019s fun to do,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I thought I would write a proposal based on unusual ways to look at the process of how most home cooks do what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was thrilled to learn her pitch was accepted as the pandemic and lockdowns took hold and people the world over ramped up their home cooking, spawning terms like procrastibaking. \u201cThis was the perfect thing to write where I could not think of disease, death, or disaster,\u201d says Bloom. \u201cI wanted it to be a happy book.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bloom taught at UConn from 1988 to 2015. She\u2019s written more than 25 books, including an in-depth biography of famed child-rearing expert Dr. Benjamin Spock, who taught her about precision: \u201cIf you don\u2019t write clearly, someone could die.\u201d This book, she says, is perhaps the most universal.<\/p>\n