A few caveats before we get started, Reese writes in the introduction. First, although, like most people, I think about money, I’ve always been able to clothe my children and pay the mortgage and if I couldn’t whether I bought or made creme fraiche–or bread, to use a less absurd example–would make no difference. It is frivolous and deluded to think it would. I just wanted to address and answer some middle-class home economics questions that nagged my Michael Pollan-reading, price-checking, overthinking self. This is not a book about how to scrape by on a budget and it is not a book about how to go off the grid.

Well, thank god for that. As faithful followers of my Goodreads reviews well know, I, too, read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and when I finished it I said out loud, “Well, what the hell can I eat then?”

Here instead is an examination of the art of the possible in the kitchen, with recipes graded by three scales: Make it or buy it?, Hassle, and Cost comparison. She starts with peanut butter (Make it or buy it?: Make it.) and goes on to truffles (Hassle: Actually, yes. These are a hassle.) to mozzarella (Cost comparison: If you have a good source for the proper milk (like a couple of goats) this is a bargain….

Smart and funny, and worth reading for the chapter on raising chickens alone. I’m going to try her bread recipe.

Book Review Monday Chatter Jennifer Reese Make the Bread Buy the Butter