By Ari Mostow | Staff Writer
What would have been a convenient and delicious instructional guide for making chicken soup was unfortunately spoiled by a several paragraph preamble about the cookbook author’s dead grandmother. According to sources, the recipe section details, in graphically boring language, how the author’s “bubby” used to make her this same chicken soup when she was sick and how she would always “sprinkle it with love.”
The grandmother, whom none of the customers reading the cookbook had any relation to, was apparently “the kindest woman you’ve ever met” and “always made the ‘house’ feel like a ‘home’” – all irrelevant details with no discernable bearing on the proper making of the dish.
One particularly annoying section, according to readers, details this one time when the author was in third grade and went over to her grandma’s house for a few days while her mom and dad were out of town. Readers are advised to skip over this story, too, as it has nothing to do with the preparation or cooking of the soup.
Public opinion on the cookbook anecdote is divided into two main camps: some say there should not have been the anecdote at all, while others say it would have been fine if it were much shorter. “I just want to enjoy a nice bowl of soup, no emotional commitment,” said Jason Spitz of Cincinnati, Ohio, who bought the cookbook expecting a more straightforward dining experience. “She’s not my grandma, why should I care?”
Others, however, have argued that there needs to be more compassion: “It’s important to care about other human beings,” said Sheila Sporelli, another purchaser of the cookbook. “So how dare this author for not considering the time she’s wasting from our dinner time to yap about her dead grandma?”
The cookbook, titled Recipes from my Grandmother, currently has 1.5 stars on Amazon. The family has since disavowed the author. ♦