Kitchen therapy by Charlotte Hastings wakes all your senses: taste, smell, touch, sight, and hearing. It associates food with memories, such as meaningful times with family or friends. If you are a conscientious cook, this book takes cooking to the next level—the joy of creating a meal and its effect on oneself and others.
Charlotte Hastings writes, ‘Cooking is a doable task, resulting in a complete story and full tummy’. This very doable task appears to be a low priority in some busy lives but beware: It has physical and mental benefits, too.
Kitchen therapy is not only a recipe book. It highlights the therapeutic advantages of being in the kitchen, cooking a meal from A to Z, and the memories it creates.
The book prompts one’s own story with food. My father made me eat peas that had gone cold once (I don’t have a good relationship with peas). I always ate cold Sunday roast meat when I visited my grandmother on a Monday, bringing back mixed emotions. I loved my grandmother, but her cold roast meat was memorably disgusting. Fortunately, I was an au pair in Italy and learned how to cook fabulous food, which changed my life.
Kitchen Therapy has three parts; the easy-to-read layout contributes to this very readable book.
Part one explains kitchen therapy and part two describes its implementation. Both parts are dotted with small “Time to Reflect” areas to inspire you to reflect on your journey with food.
Part three was my personal favourite: the pleasingly illustrated Magic Card section. These are Oracle cards dedicated to food with insightful messages. Each card holds a meaningful recipe for the author and a description of why it has magic.
Whether chocolate and banana cake or tomato soup, the ‘Backstory’, as Charlotte Hastings calls the descriptions, will make your taste buds tingle, and the aromas will flood the senses.
It’s a book you’ll want to dive into frequently, as it offers inspiration for the kitchen and life.
Five stars for Kitchen Therapy