Synopses & Reviews
There were three things food writer Robin Davis promised she would never do: she would never move back to Ohio, she would never get married, and she would never join an organized religion. Never say never—today, Davis is a recent transplant to the Midwest wife and stepmother, and converted Catholic. In
Recipe for Joy, she shares her stories of food, faith, and family life, and discovers that “food” is the language she can speak when stepping into unfamiliar territory.
Recipe for Joy tells Davis’s story of recognizing God’s plan, doubting it, and then discovering why God’s plan is her newfound path. The stories in Recipe for Joy are grouped by themes based on the courses of a meal, and each chapter ends with a recipe inspired by the theme. Recipe for Joy reveals that food and faith can go hand in hand and that God uses people (and some really good meals) to bring us into a closer relationship with God.
Review
"I found this to be a book that plumbed my heart in ways few books have. It spoke to me as a daughter, to me as a mother, to me as a fellow woman. You deserve this book. You will walk away from it changed."
- Sarah Reinhard, SnoringScholar.com
Review
"This was great read that makes me consider that maybe I do like memoirs when they’re told as expertly and entertainingly and heart-wrenchingly as this one."
- Sarah Reinhard, Snoring Scholar
Review
"With an honest dose of humor about facing life and living all the way through,
Recipe for Joy is a strong addition to memoir and spirituality collections with a focus on the Catholic faith."
- James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review
About the Author
Robin Davis is a senior writer and editor at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Prior to joining the staff at Kenyon, Robin was the food editor at the
Columbus Dispatch for 11 years. She also hosted
Dispatch Kitchen cooking segments and specials on the local CBS affiliate, WBNS-TV. Before coming to Columbus, Robin was a restaurant critic and food writer for the
San Francisco Chronicle. She came to San Francisco by way of Los Angeles, where she worked as an assistant editor at
Bon Appetit magazine. Robin has a bachelor of arts in English and psychology from the University of Dayton. She also has an associate's degree in culinary arts from the California Culinary Academy. She is the author of five books, most recently a memoir titled
Recipe For Joy: A Stepmom’s Story of Finding Faith, Following Love and Feeding a Family (Loyola Press, 2013). Her other titles include
Wookiee Cookies (Chronicle Books, 1997),
Infusions (Chronicle Books, 1998),
The North Market Cookbook (American Foodways, 2008) and
Graeter’s: An Irresistible History (History Press, 2010).
Her Web site is FoodCookEat.com.