I began reading Company a few months ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Upon return, my impressions hold up: This buzzy cookbook simmers cozily with very fine food writing and a particular Midwestern nonchalance that has my heart. Amy Thielen—a two-time James Beard Award winner and author of a memoir, Give a Girl a Knife—focuses here on comfort-food-forward menus for gatherings of six to 20 people, from “Saturday Night” to “Casual Walkabouts.” Nota bene: I am not, and probably never will be, a person who enjoys throwing dinner parties. But when Thielen says, “I probably shouldn’t say this . . . but when you’re having people over, the food doesn’t really matter,” I’m listening. (I’m still not ready to have even six people over, but I’m listening.) When she details “anti-hero appetizers,” such as warm bean dip or pickles, I’m leaning in. When she gets into “two weeks of Christmas, starting with the sweets,” I’m hungry but wary, until she describes herself as a “cackling enabler,” and I’m fully in again. When, in “a lazy summer’s day lunch,” she includes Black Currant Finger Jell-O and says, “You can just cut off a hunk of the Jell-O with a knife and walk around the house with it as you pick up clutter,” I’m utterly smitten.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
