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Author: Mae Bunseng Taing

This book is a courageous and poignant memoir of a young man’s daring escape from Cambodia’s genocidal regime.

Forced from his home by the Khmer Rouge, teenager Mae Taing struggles to endure years of backbreaking work, constant starvation, and ruthless cruelty from his captors — supposed freedom fighters who turned against their own people. Mae risks torture and death to escape into the dark tropical jungles, trekking across a relentless wilderness crawling with soldiers, according to a review on goodreads.com.

This gripping and inspiring memoir is a testament to the human spirit’s capacity to endure and prevail in spite of great adversity.

Author: Caroline Eden

During my recent visit to Scotland, while walking the cobblestoned streets beneath moody skies and with a grumbling stomach, I dipped into a nearby bookshop to whet my appetite before heading to dinner — and discovered a book offering a sort of charcuterie board of travel morsels: Caroline Eden’s 2024 release, “Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Journeys.”

The book invites readers into Eden’s Edinburgh basement kitchen to recall where she went and what she ate in Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the course of a year. 

The title refers to the part of the kitchen often used for preparing cold dishes, like salads, preserves and such. But in Eden’s hands, it becomes a metaphor for freezing memories.

The book is a slice of life, a scrapbook of scrumptious crumbs that make up a medley of a meal: Recipes, descriptions and reflections — arranged seasonally.

It is presented with three chapters per season, starting with winter, spring and summer, then ending in my personal favorite: autumn. Each segment pairs a place with a dish.

Eden, an award-winning travel writer, is best known for her color-themed travel trilogy — “Black Sea,” “Red Sands” and most recently, “Green Mountains.”

She understands how food anchors us; how we truly are what we eat. What we feed our bellies shapes our sense of place long after our suitcases — and we — roll away.

One moment that stayed with me was Eden’s detailed description of the Uzbek melon in the beginning of the book, honoring winter — its sticky sweetness, its lingering scent.

I have tasted it in Uzbekistan while journeying there myself, and the fruit is as she describes: dense, perfumed and indulgent. That single taste can lodge a landscape in the mind.

In “Cold Kitchen,” a dish becomes a way to mark time. A menu gives us a moment to sit with grief — to remember someone or somewhere. It allows us to take a second taste from our own history, a portal into a past version of ourselves.

Picking up this memoir in Edinburgh felt just like reaching for the perfect fruit from an orchard — something local, ripe and firm, yet delicate to sink into. Truly food for thought.

Though Eden’s kitchen is “cold” by name, it radiates warmth.