Vent some steam with catharsis cookbooks

Anyone who has ever pounded a chicken breast with a mallet or who has kneaded a loaf of dough knows that cooking can be a conduit for releasing negative emotions. Some cookbooks capitalize on this catharsis including 2020’s Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Butter, Sugar, and Women’s Voices (which had a touch of controversy), but that’s not the only one. More recently we have Steamed: A Catharsis Cookbook for Getting Dinner and Your Feelings On the Table by Rachel Levin and Tara Duggan. There are other books in this highly niche genre, as NPR’s Neda Ulaby explains in her look at the ‘catharsis cookbook’ trend. Certainly over the last year we have thrown ourselves into baking and cooking as ways to maintain our sanity and nourish our minds as well as our bodies.

Reading the article got me wondering about what other cookbooks have dealt with emotions, either positive or negative. A quick browse through the EYB Library led me to Relaxed Cooking with Curtis Stone: Recipes to Put You in My Favorite Mood by Curtis Stone, Food for Mood: Dietary and Lifestyle Interventions for Anxiety, Depression, and Other Mood Disorders by Matt Stone, and Good Mood Food: Simple Healthy Homecooking by Donal Skehan. There are several more books with ‘mood’ in the title as well.

On an upbeat note, there are nearly 500 books in the EYB Library with the word “happy” or “happiness” in the title. Who can argue with Maida Heatter that Happiness Is Baking? Marian Keyes’ book Saved by Cake: Over 80 Ways to Bake Yourself Happy is another in a long line of books that opine that baking sweet treats is a path to a sweeter outlook on life. While baking books seems to be more prominent in the ‘happy’ genre, plenty of general cookbooks land there as well, such as Giada De Laurentiis’ Happy Cooking: Make Every Meal Count…Without Stressing Out and Melissa Hemsley’s Eat Happy: 30-Minute Feelgood Food.

My happy place is in the kitchen, whether baking up a batch of sweet treats or creating a delicious meal for family and friends. I do not need a cookbook that focuses on catharsis in order to achieve it, although some of the books in the genre are entertaining. For me, every cookbook in my collection offers a chance to release negative energy and bring forth good vibes. I have told friends that cooking and baking is akin to therapy for me, and that is one reason I enjoy my cookbook collection so much. Just like Michel Richard, I am Happy in the Kitchen (and yes, I do have that cookbook).