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Bread & Water: Essays
A meditation on the poetics of hunger and the social worlds of cooking
"When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it . . ." --MFK Fisher
When chef and writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith left the city for rural life on a farm in Saskatchewan, she planned to replace cooking and teaching with poetry and prose. But--as begin the best stories--her next adventure didn't quite work that way.
Food trickled into her poems, her essays, her fiction. And water poured into her property in both Saskatchewan and Calgary during two devastating floods.
Bread and Water uses lyrical prose to describe those two fundamental ingredients, and to probe the essential questions on how to live a life. Hobsbawn-Smith uses food to explore the hungers of the human soul: wilder hungers that loiter beyond cravings for love. She kneads ideas of floods and place, grief and loss; the commonalities of refugees and Canadians through common tastes in food; cooking methods, grandmothers and mentors; the politics of local and sustainable food; parenting; male privilege in the restaurant world; and the challenges of aging gracefully.
It is an elegant collection that weaves joy into exploring the quotidian in search for larger meaning.
"When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it . . ." --MFK Fisher
When chef and writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith left the city for rural life on a farm in Saskatchewan, she planned to replace cooking and teaching with poetry and prose. But--as begin the best stories--her next adventure didn't quite work that way.
Food trickled into her poems, her essays, her fiction. And water poured into her property in both Saskatchewan and Calgary during two devastating floods.
Bread and Water uses lyrical prose to describe those two fundamental ingredients, and to probe the essential questions on how to live a life. Hobsbawn-Smith uses food to explore the hungers of the human soul: wilder hungers that loiter beyond cravings for love. She kneads ideas of floods and place, grief and loss; the commonalities of refugees and Canadians through common tastes in food; cooking methods, grandmothers and mentors; the politics of local and sustainable food; parenting; male privilege in the restaurant world; and the challenges of aging gracefully.
It is an elegant collection that weaves joy into exploring the quotidian in search for larger meaning.
- GenresNonfiction
233 pages, Hardcover
Published September 11, 2021
3 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 7, 2022
This was a beautiful collection of life. The author is a chef and this is all about cooking and working and living in Canada. In many ways, it’s about wanting to create but feeling burnt out and rejected by your field. It really resonated and I would definitely read it again someday.
May 23, 2021
I received this book to review via NetGalley.
This is a set of essays, many published elsewhere previously, written by a woman who has been many things: a chef, a restaurant owner, a writer; mother, both married and single; a culinary student and a teacher; resident on farms and in cities and, as these essays are written, back on the farm that was originally set up by her grandparents. The essays are ruminations on life, reflections on choices both good and bad, an exploration of cause and consequence, and a meditation on - as the title suggests - food and water: the place of both in our lives, how they can impact on the way we live, the positives and negatives.
When I read a book like this I think, How can I find more books like this? What category do they come under? I'm not interested in reading just any essays on life; the focus on food and, I suspect, having a female author make these particularly appealing. I'm also not always interested in just reading about food for its own sake - the connection to life more generally, here, as well as the stories behind the growing and making of food, helps make these essays intensely readable and occasionally challenging.
Hobsbawn-Smith is writing these essays having moved back to the Canadian prairie. She reflects on many moments in her life, from horse riding as a teen to the area around her farm becoming a lake for seven years, with stories of her sons growing up in between. Sometimes she recounts stories for their own sake; more often she's thinking about what they mean - how they reflect and connect to other moments in her life, what they show about the importance of family and feeding each other, how she has come to be the person she is today.
I didn't always agree with the conclusions about life that Hobsbawn-Smith reaches; and I suspect that, given the differences between us (age, aspiration, location) she wouldn't have a problem with that. But I do feel challenged - reminded, rather - to consider food more meaningfully, to remember the love that making and giving food can show; to try and take life just a little slower; and to be more aware of where food comes from. Trying to be intensely locavore is something that works if you've got the time and the money, which is something society as a whole needs to struggle with - and it's not something that's particularly doable for me right now. But I can, for example, be more mindful of seasonality.
These essays were deeply enjoyable to read, both on an intellectual-challenge and -stimulation level and also as prose in and of itself. Hobsbawn-Smith writes beautifully of food, and nature, and experience; she has an entire essay of her love for a temperamental oven, which is a delight. She made me remember that food is more than fuel, that life can be lived slowly, and that doing so is worthwhile.
This is a set of essays, many published elsewhere previously, written by a woman who has been many things: a chef, a restaurant owner, a writer; mother, both married and single; a culinary student and a teacher; resident on farms and in cities and, as these essays are written, back on the farm that was originally set up by her grandparents. The essays are ruminations on life, reflections on choices both good and bad, an exploration of cause and consequence, and a meditation on - as the title suggests - food and water: the place of both in our lives, how they can impact on the way we live, the positives and negatives.
When I read a book like this I think, How can I find more books like this? What category do they come under? I'm not interested in reading just any essays on life; the focus on food and, I suspect, having a female author make these particularly appealing. I'm also not always interested in just reading about food for its own sake - the connection to life more generally, here, as well as the stories behind the growing and making of food, helps make these essays intensely readable and occasionally challenging.
Hobsbawn-Smith is writing these essays having moved back to the Canadian prairie. She reflects on many moments in her life, from horse riding as a teen to the area around her farm becoming a lake for seven years, with stories of her sons growing up in between. Sometimes she recounts stories for their own sake; more often she's thinking about what they mean - how they reflect and connect to other moments in her life, what they show about the importance of family and feeding each other, how she has come to be the person she is today.
I didn't always agree with the conclusions about life that Hobsbawn-Smith reaches; and I suspect that, given the differences between us (age, aspiration, location) she wouldn't have a problem with that. But I do feel challenged - reminded, rather - to consider food more meaningfully, to remember the love that making and giving food can show; to try and take life just a little slower; and to be more aware of where food comes from. Trying to be intensely locavore is something that works if you've got the time and the money, which is something society as a whole needs to struggle with - and it's not something that's particularly doable for me right now. But I can, for example, be more mindful of seasonality.
These essays were deeply enjoyable to read, both on an intellectual-challenge and -stimulation level and also as prose in and of itself. Hobsbawn-Smith writes beautifully of food, and nature, and experience; she has an entire essay of her love for a temperamental oven, which is a delight. She made me remember that food is more than fuel, that life can be lived slowly, and that doing so is worthwhile.
August 5, 2025
A solid 3.75! I love that there’s someone writing this sort of material in western Canada and doing it so well.
February 19, 2022
If you enjoy reading the little stories on food bloggers recipe pages, before the recipes are shown, then this is the book for you.
It had a lyrical quality to the writing. Thoughts of food, how we congregate around it and how it is a part of our lives are the themes in these musings.
This book is like a leisurely stroll with no end point in mind. Great for casual reading.
It had a lyrical quality to the writing. Thoughts of food, how we congregate around it and how it is a part of our lives are the themes in these musings.
This book is like a leisurely stroll with no end point in mind. Great for casual reading.
October 29, 2021
I swear I could smell the aromas wafting from the pages.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I turned 61 this July. OMG. At the start of Covid, my lengthy career had been subtracted from my life as greed + entitlement placed me on the chopping block and fired me out into the aether, forcing a late (mid) life reinvention. Fortunately for me, I write. At 61, my life experiences are all I have—I must share them.
Thankfully, Hobsbawn-Smith has chosen to share as well. A remarkable thing happens when you aren’t born into privilege and entitlement—you must become well-rounded. It torments you from time to time as it can feel rudderless, but it’s not.
“Bread + Water” is a collection of essays from Hobsbawn-Smith’s life, but it’s not; it’s much more. It is a memoir inviting readers into a life full of love, challenge, understanding, kindness, and hope. It shares Hobsbawn-Smith’s beautifully visceral vulnerability, with the words singing off every page with her effortless command of vocabulary, not a single word out of place. With each page turned, whether riding in the vestibule of a railcar or searching for a beloved pet, I could not help but feel I was inside the page myself. When the author writes about food, I swear I could smell the aromas wafting from the pages, causing my mouth to water.
Mothers nurture us, nourish us, and help us become who we are, but in a misogynistic-ally conditioned world, must overcome much, at one time allowed to be cooks, not chefs—unfair, cruel, needing to change by starting a dialogue.
I thank Hobsbawn-Smith for sharing her journey, in this glorious story with love emanating every step, run, ride, along the way.
I turned 61 in July. Hobsbawn-Smith and I are in the same demographic as we drive down the grid roads of life, tires crackling, what’s behind us simmering in the rear-view mirror is a warm broth as we reduce the regret and work toward reinventing whatever comes next, trying to make the world a little better along the way.
I am not a good cook or even a cook at all, but I leave the author an open invitation to dine with me the next time she’s in Vancouver. I’ll try; all she has to do is enjoy. I’m no James Barber.
“Bread + Water” will leave readers, all readers, pondering what matters in life: love, kindness, humanity, and the necessity to respect the planet we are revolving on together.
WRITTEN: October 29, 2021
How did the book make me feel/think?
I turned 61 this July. OMG. At the start of Covid, my lengthy career had been subtracted from my life as greed + entitlement placed me on the chopping block and fired me out into the aether, forcing a late (mid) life reinvention. Fortunately for me, I write. At 61, my life experiences are all I have—I must share them.
Thankfully, Hobsbawn-Smith has chosen to share as well. A remarkable thing happens when you aren’t born into privilege and entitlement—you must become well-rounded. It torments you from time to time as it can feel rudderless, but it’s not.
“Bread + Water” is a collection of essays from Hobsbawn-Smith’s life, but it’s not; it’s much more. It is a memoir inviting readers into a life full of love, challenge, understanding, kindness, and hope. It shares Hobsbawn-Smith’s beautifully visceral vulnerability, with the words singing off every page with her effortless command of vocabulary, not a single word out of place. With each page turned, whether riding in the vestibule of a railcar or searching for a beloved pet, I could not help but feel I was inside the page myself. When the author writes about food, I swear I could smell the aromas wafting from the pages, causing my mouth to water.
Mothers nurture us, nourish us, and help us become who we are, but in a misogynistic-ally conditioned world, must overcome much, at one time allowed to be cooks, not chefs—unfair, cruel, needing to change by starting a dialogue.
I thank Hobsbawn-Smith for sharing her journey, in this glorious story with love emanating every step, run, ride, along the way.
I turned 61 in July. Hobsbawn-Smith and I are in the same demographic as we drive down the grid roads of life, tires crackling, what’s behind us simmering in the rear-view mirror is a warm broth as we reduce the regret and work toward reinventing whatever comes next, trying to make the world a little better along the way.
I am not a good cook or even a cook at all, but I leave the author an open invitation to dine with me the next time she’s in Vancouver. I’ll try; all she has to do is enjoy. I’m no James Barber.
“Bread + Water” will leave readers, all readers, pondering what matters in life: love, kindness, humanity, and the necessity to respect the planet we are revolving on together.
WRITTEN: October 29, 2021
September 25, 2021
This is a beautiful lyrical book. I was drawn in by the cooking but found that I loved everything else too. The way that dee writes about her experiences and how food has shaped her is lovely. I love how she talks about "no hurrying an oven" and how everything is shaped differently in cooking by different hands. I liked how she talks about her sons and how they came to love cooking and call her for advice.
Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!
Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!
September 20, 2021
No mere cookbook, here is the reason for the devotion to bread, to a life away from the noise. It meditates on all those moments important to sustaining our humanity. It is lyrical, a b little profound and so alluring. I loved every word, every waking day in a place of comfort and found desire.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews