Flavors from Home
Winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best Charity/ Fundraising Cookbook in North America.
In Flavors from Home, Aimee Zaring shares fascinating and moving stories of courage, perseverance, and self-reinvention from Kentucky's resettled refugees. As these individuals and their families struggle to adapt to a new culture, the kitchen often becomes one of the few places where they are able to return "home." Preparing native cuisine is one way they can find comfort in an unfamiliar land, retain their customs, reconnect with their past, and preserve a sense of identity.
Featuring more than forty recipes from around the globe, Flavors from Home reaches across the table to explore the universal language of food.
Praise for Flavors ....
Zaring should be commended for transcending language and cultural barriers to document the international language of all people―food and cooking.
— Maggie Green,
author of The Kentucky Fresh Cookbook
In Flavors from Home, Aimee Zaring has crafted not just a book of delicious recipes, but a beautiful meditation on exile, place, and cultural identity. The moving stories of these cooks and their recipes are a feast for the spirit.
— Jason Howard,
author of A Few Honest Words
Food is best served with a healthy portion of love and personality.That's exactly what Aimee Zaring's scrumptious book, Flavors from Home, delivers. In addition to accessible culinary instruction on an array of global recipes, readers receive the vivid life histories of the cooks themselves. What comes through most poignantly is the resilience and hope of these cooks―people who change the place they've come to as much as they are changed by it.
— Neela Vaswani, author of You Have Given Me a Country
We hope that the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky will read this book to better understand the positive changes being made by these refugees. It will appeal to everyone with a love of food and/or an interest in evolving culture.
— Paul & Angela Knipple, authors of The World in a Skillet: A Food Lover’s Tour of the New American South
Through the author’s entry into the kitchen and foodways of a representative cross section of our diverse refugee population, we truly are made to feel ‘at home’ with our new neighbors….This book plays a vital role in breaking down barriers. The universal language of food and the sharing in the breaking of bread, provide an ‘in’ for those unfamiliar with refugee resettlement who might be curious about all the newcomers in town but are unsure how to connect.
— Sophie Maier,
Immigrant Services Librarian,
Louisville Free Public Library
In this beautifully written and completely original book, Zaring has done much more than interview refugees and collect their recipes. Instead, she has managed to articulate what binds us all together as people hungry for good food, community, and places to call home. Flavors from Home is an important and delightful book that will make you realize that we all have much more in common than we think, will shine light on culture and history that we don’t often hear about, and will make your mouth water. Delicious in every way.
— Silas House, Poet Laureate of Kentucky (2023-2025) and award-winning author
Available online and locally.
Available online and locally.
Part of the proceeds from this book have helped support the efforts of Kentucky Refugee Ministries and Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services.
