[.ca] Thousand Years Over A Hot Stove (ISBN 0393326276)

This NEEDED to be written:
If you enjoy a coziness factor in your life, you'll benefit from reading this book. It's fun and useful and educational. You'll come away with a new respect for the everyday love offerings dished out by Mom and Grandma and the matriarchs of generations and milleniums past. Little by little they all contribute to the building of a civilization. Wow! Inspiring reading about the over-looked contribution of everyday women and nurturers in our daily lives, and the food they give us. Very entertaining.

Slow down and read this book:
Laura Schenone gives the reader so much powerful insight into the work and the love that goes into food and cooking--A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove is a wonderful way in this fast food nation to sit down with your daughter or your kids or friends and remember what home cooking and home meals are all about. For everyone who ever wanted to stop a crazy day and be comforted by food and family, this book brings it home.

Illuminating history of women:
This ambitious history of women's role in the gathering, testing, production, mixing, and cooking of foods over many centuries taught me a great deal about food's basic role as emotional as well as physical sustenance. Schenone writes clearly and eloquently about the everyday work and lives of women. Schenone's exhaustive research is expertly brought together in a readable and personal tribute to women's lives. For this reason, I have bought the book for several women in my life, including my own mother. It is the kind of book which reminds us of our profound connection to the earth and to the women who have gone before us. It also moves the reader to reassess the contributions of our mothers and grandmothers in our own upbringings. It does that while entertaining the reader, and like a good meal, leaving us wanting more.

A Wonderful Book!:
I found that, not only was Ms. Schenone's book entertaining and educational, it made me feel good about being a woman in a way no other book ever has. As I read the book, I kept thinking how interesting it is that no one has ever looked at the critical contribution that women have made through food, to the success and building of this country, in quite the same light! I enjoy cooking so I found that aspect of the book enjoyable. I also like history and Ms. Schenone's book does a superb job of tying the two together. I liked it so much I sent copies to all of my girl friends as well as female family members. I highly recommend it whether you are a "foodie" or a history buff.

A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove:
I picked this up for my wife at Christmas but began reading it and decided I'd keep it for a while! This is a beautiful book that offers so many images I haven't seen before, and the author's prose is so clean, and yet in many places so lyrical and personal. A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove weaves so many stories about how our mothers and grandmothers and their ancestors kept our cultures and traditions alive and yet also took part in the great events of our times and wrote a different kind of history in our nation. The author's own connection to and respect for her mother and grandmothers is given such warmth and life from the very beginning. When we see what women have done in the colonial days at Plymouth Rock to the Civil War and slavery, to the struggle to feed their families, through the worst of the industrial revolution to what nurses and volunteers did on the battlefields of the First World war, and on and on through the best and worst of the 20th century, Schenone makes such a powerful and honest impression. Anyone who enjoys American history or just food and cooking will lose themselves for hours here. This presents a perspective on the women in our lives and the unfolding of American history that deserves so much more attention--and also lovely personal writing about the author's life and experiences. And the recipes and photos are presented beautifully."