Leah Eskin

Slices of Life: A food writer cooks through many a conundrum

Running press, 2014

“Smart, honest, literate, funny – very funny – and packed with recipes for happy days and calamitous ones, Slices of Life is bound to find a place in your heart and your kitchen.”
—Dorie Greenspan, author of Around My French Table

 “This book bubbles over with Leah's love of food, and her belief in the profound importance of eating—and cooking—together with family and friends. The recipes are great, too!”
—Ted Allen, host of the Food Network's Chopped

“Leah Eskin's writing is like her food--honest, heartfelt, and tremendously appealing. She writes about the challenges of modern family life with wit and good humor, and firmly believes that good food will make any day better.”
—Jack Bishop, editorial director of PBS’s America's Test Kitchen

“I feel like I’ve discovered a treasured writer who I didn’t know existed, on par with Laurie Colwin and M.F.K. Fisher. For me, reading Eskin’s essays is like taking a graduate course in creative writing. I keep studying her sentences, dissecting her use of personal pronouns and marveling at her choice of words.”

–Andrea Weigl, The News Observer

 “For charm, you can’t beat Leah Eskin’s memoir and cookbook, Slices of Life. [Eskin] brings an irreverent humor, cool precision, and gustatory gusto to her accounts of American family life.” 
— Betsy Andrews, Saveur

“Leah Eskin's recipes are seamlessly interwoven into her reminiscences, vignettes of domestic life, and culinary aperçus, and the result is as charming as it is practical.”
—Colman Andrews, editorial director of TheDailyMeal.com

 “A recipe is always better when preceded by a story. And here's a whole cookbook of recipes preceded by stories. I'd be anxious enough to try these recipes (hello Emergency Cherry Pie and Cheerful Risotto and Beach House Spaghetti and Cowboy Cookies), but now I'm desperate to. The only thing bad about this cookbook is you can't decide what to make first.
—Elizabeth Berg, author of Tapestry of Fortunes

“This heartfelt diary filled with touching bites of everyday life, whisked together with do-able daily recipes that really work, make this book a must-read. It’s filled with accounts of real life problems and dilemmas, made easier to swallow by combating them with food and cooking. But bring a tissue, you’ll feel so much joy reading this, you’ll cry.
—Gale Gand, James Beard award-winning pastry chef, cookbook author, and television personality

"My father, himself an Italian Jew, used Edda Servi Machlin's recipes as a bridge to his culinary and personal roots. Machlin's life inspired this beautiful novel by Leah Eskin: a survival story and a cultural archive. It honors a nearly vanished world through narrative and recipes, showing how memory, food, and storytelling can resist erasure." 
—Yotam Ottolenghi, author of Jerusalem: A Cookbook and Ottolenghi Comfort 

"A tale of survival, faith, and family. Leah Eskin writes beautifully, powerfully, and with an exquisite tenderness." 
—Achy Obejas, author of Days of Awe and The Tower of the Antilles 

"Edda Servi Machlin was an icon of Jewish food writing and almost mythical in stature. Eskin's novel illuminates the very human stories of love, longing, family, and food that made Servi Machlin so remarkable. It is a delicious delight to read." 
—Leah Koenig, author of Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome's Jewish Kitchen 

"Is it a disconnect to call a novel about an Italian Jewish girl and her family's surviving Mussolini's atrocities and the Holocaust 'charming'? Author Leah Eskin has portrayed Edda Servi Machlin's story with humor, elegance, delicious recipes, and always a deep humanity. I ate it up." 

—Betsy Andrews, co-author of Coastal: 130 Recipes from a California Road Trip

“Leah Eskin has woven her passion for food and history into a delicious and moving tale of Jewish survival. Her book will inspire readers from all backgrounds to cook, and to persevere.”

—Gabriella Gershenson, James Beard Award-winning food writer