Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes & StoriesSinger is the daughter of legendary farm-to-table pioneer Alice Waters, and she grew up in an environment where food was the sustenance, overriding aesthetic and emotional glue of the family. “I only have recollections of things centered around food,” says Singer, whose writing is sensual in the way it captures the smells, tastes, sounds and textures of meals in their home in Berkeley, Calif.
Singer has her PhD in art history from Cambridge, writes art criticism for Frieze and the Wall Street Journal Magazine and is co-owner of a sustainable garment and housewares line, called Permanent Collection. “My mother believes, as do I, that the best cooks are artists. They are people who have considerable regard for the gestalt of an experience: the lighting, the tablecloth, the smell of the room. All those things are invisible from the food itself, but intrinsic to the entire experience.
In a phone interview from her home in San Francisco, Singer says it is not lost on her that the title of the book has been weirdly prophetic. She, like the rest of us, is quite literally always home, which she says has given her even more time to reflect on how food has been that reliable constant that got them through the best, and most difficult times.
“The way my mother communicated with me was through food,” she says. “It was rocky for me when my parents were getting divorced. I was only 13 … but she continued to make very special things for me, my lunch, the breakfast before I’d leave for school, or the meal we shared together each evening. The ritual, and the clear effort she put into preparing our food, was a way of speaking her unconditional love to me beyond language.
I'll keep that in mind for when it's balmy