"AHomemadeLife" news and stories

'A Homemade Life - Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table'
Recipes by Molly Wizenberg
Simon & Schuster -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

Molly Wizenberg, the woman behind award-winning blog Orangette, has become a literary heroine of the food blogosphere, with a writing voice suffused with a clear-eyed intelligence about -- and tender affection for -- food. Her fans adore her simple and complicated recipes alike, since they come with a side of her lush but earthbound prose: "Lately, I've been thinking a lot about cake. This is not an unusual condition for me, but it happens particularly often when I'm feeling frazzled or tired or harried, right around the same time that I start listening to the easy listening station on the car radio and feeling genuinely soothed by it."

Since Molly (whose old-timey photos we also admire) just announced a break from blogging to help her husband start his new restaurant, those seeking a fix could do worse than her new book, 'A Homemade Life.' A memoir shot through with recipes, it tells how she fell in love via her blog (with a New Yorker, and she lives in Seattle, but we won't go there), chronicles the food-loving life of her late father, and has all the hallmarks of a bang-up cooking memoir.

See what we tested, whether you should buy it, and Molly's incredible French toast recipe after the jump.