Flavors from Home by Aimee Zaring

I won a copy of Flavors from Home by Aimee Zaring in a contest sponsored by the publisher, The University Press of Kentucky. I very much enjoyed reading the stories of the refugees in Flavors from Home. Zaring told their stories in an engaging, compassionate, and fair way. While at times, Zaring seems to lean a little heavily on how much the refugees appreciate their new lives in America, she also presents the refugees as productive members of society.  She tops each refugees story with a recipe from their homeland. As a vegan, I can't imagine eating, let alone fixing, most of the recipes in this book, but there are a few I will likely adapt to vegan recipes, or at least try to. The refugees' life stories and their relationship to the food of their homelands reminded me just how intricately food is woven into our identities. Flavors from Home demonstrates the power of food to bridge the divide between people turning strangers into friends and friends into family.


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