The Year of Miracles

"Bridget Jones' self-effacing wittiness, Julia Child's companionable forgiveness and Sylvia Plath's poetic prose." —NPR

From the author of Midnight Chicken Ella Risbridger, a month-by-month chronicle of writing and recipes that explores joy and healing through food.

This cookbook is about a year in the kitchen (and in the garden under the fire-escape steps). A year of grief and hope and change; of cardamom-cinnamon chicken rice, chimichurri courgettes, quadruple carb soup, blackberry miso birthday cake, and sticky toffee Guinness brownie pudding. A year of loss, and every kind of romance, and fried jam sandwiches. A year of seedlings and pancakes. A year of falling in love. A year of recipes. A year, in other words, of minor miracles.

In Ella Risbridger's first book Midnight Chicken, she showed readers how food can serve as a light in our darkest days. Now, in The Year of Miracles, Ella shares her story of recovering from loss with the help of good food and good friends. The book celebrates making a fancy dinner even if you're just eating it with a spoon in front of the tv; having people over to dinner without overthinking it; finding late night snacks to ease you to sleep; and having seconds—of everything. Above all, it a powerful testament to how cooking can help us get up and start again in the face of unimaginable hurt.

With tender vulnerability, mesmerizing prose, and delectable recipes, The Year of Miracles is a touching, unforgettable book on finding hope through food.

Ella Risbridger is a writer, editor, anthologizer, and the author of Midnight Chicken. In a former life she was a beauty columnist for the i, a cancer columnist for the Pool, a sometime journalist for lots of places (Guardian, Observer, Prospect, Grazia, Stylist), a poet and a carer. She now lives and works in south-east London, where she has too many books and thinks a lot about getting a cat.