The golden silver palate -- The best fried chicken -- Pie lady -- Gogo's meatballs -- Love, lunch, and meatball grinders -- Fancy food -- Confessions of a Marsha Jordan Girl -- My father's pantry -- Carbonara quest -- Sausage on wheels -- Dinner for one -- Party like it's 1959 -- Soft food -- One potato, two -- Allure -- How to butcher a pig -- Risi e bisi -- Five ways of looking at the tomato -- How to smoke a salmon -- The summer of Omelets -- IKEA life -- How to cook fish when you really don't like fish -- Three potato -- With thanks to the chicken -- Let us now praise the English muffin -- Comfort food II -- Tomato pie.

In this warm collection of personal essays and recipes, best-selling author Ann Hood nourishes both our bodies and our souls. From her Italian American childhood through singlehood, raising and feeding a growing family, divorce, and a new marriage to food writer Michael Ruhlman, Ann Hood has long appreciated the power of a good meal. Growing up, she tasted love in her grandmother's tomato sauce and dreamed of her mother's special-occasion Fancy Lady Sandwiches. Later, the kitchen became the heart of Hood's own home. She cooked pork roast to warm her first apartment, used two cups of dried basil for her first attempt at making pesto, taught her children how to make their favorite potatoes, found hope in her daughter's omelet after a divorce, and fell in love again--with both her husband and his foolproof chicken stock. Hood tracks her lifelong journey in the kitchen with twenty-seven heartfelt essays, each accompanied by a recipe (or a few). In "Carbonara Quest," searching for the perfect spaghetti helped her cope with lonely nights as a flight attendant. In the award-winning essay "The Golden Silver Palate," she recounts the history of her fail-safe dinner party recipe for Chicken Marbella--and how it did fail her when she was falling in love. Hood's simple, comforting recipes also include her mother's famous meatballs, hearty Italian Beef Stew, classic Indiana Fried Chicken, the perfect grilled cheese, and a deliciously summery peach pie. With Hood's signature humor and tenderness, Kitchen Yarns spills tales of loss and starting from scratch, family love and feasts with friends, and how the perfect meal is one that tastes like home.

In a collection of personal essays-- each accompanied by a recipe (or two)-- Hood describes her Italian American childhood, detailing how the kitchen became the heart of her own home. Tracking her lifelong journey in the kitchen, she spills tales of loss and starting from scratch, family love and feasts with friends, and how the perfect meal is one that tastes like home. -- adapted from jacket.