Book Review | ‘Life at the Dumpling’ by Trisha Cole
A Pandemic-Inspired Cornucopia of a Life Well Lived
Despite the obvious misery of the pandemic, if you had the luck, privilege, and health to make it through, it also provided opportunity. It forced us to slow, to focus on how our houses must be homes. It opened up the hours to do what we never allowed ourselves the time to do, whether to bake bread (put the pan in pandemic?) or engage our arts-and-crafts-y sides we tend to under-prioritize in a world of pressing deadlines.
In Trisha Cole’s case, it gave her time to crank out a family-and-friends newsletter, typed and handwritten and illustrated in a charming way that will create warm feelings of nostalgia for those of us who still pore over falling-apart copies of the Moosewood Cookbook. Which is only fitting, as the newsletters offered recipes, poems, encouraging quotes, word search games, fashion tips from Cole’s teen girls, and more. And now the book Life at the Dumpling compiles the first 20 newsletters, originally penned and shipped from March 2020 to March 2023.
Reading through them back-to-back almost suggests there’s a parallel, full novel to be written and this is the cultural/kitchen-centered handbook to that work. It is certainly a life well lived, as one might expect from Cole, who has had a career in communications/media focused with hospitality clients. Living in Los Angeles, she cheerleads for a California-centric cornucopia of delights, from Gjusta to Julia Child to Sunday Suppers at Lucques. Not that the book is hyper-localized, as Cole and her family manage a significant amount of travel, too (it doesn’t hurt that there’s a generational home in Baja). She even manages to detoxify social media, lauding “my inspirational drug of choice, Instagram,” at one point. (Obviously it’s not X/Twitter.)
Somehow she pulls off the trick of all that positivity while remaining charming. Part of it is the hit-and-run nature of the book’s layout — nothing goes on long enough for it to wear on you — and the sequencing tends to provide perfect counterpoint. A plea for generosity of spirit is easier to sign up for when you’re offered a delicious-sounding recipe for little strawberry hand pies on the very next page. Who isn’t easier to motivate if their belly is full?
Overall, it’s Cole’s prevailing sense of gratitude that keeps the book from becoming merely a lifestyle trifle. Take the book’s title itself, with a very crucial hyphen in the cover’s layout, so it reads “Life at the Dump-ling.” When purchasing the house 15 years ago, Cole’s husband, Bruce, realized the neglected, long-on-the-market spot was a hidden gem, not a dump but a dumpling. “But like a good dumpling, it envelops us all,” Cole writes, “and the filling inside is made of the best ingredients, lots of spice, texture, and umami.”
While the pandemic made it easy for many of us to resort to navel-gazing, especially given we didn’t get to hang out with others to gaze at any of their parts, in the January 2022 chapter, Cole writes, “How can we make it less about us? How can we make people comfortable? How can we be softer, more empathetic, kinder? A resolution? Sure.” This collection becomes an extended invitation to comfort and to kindness. Along the way, you’ll learn you should eat the seeds (even avocados? Who knew?), how to concoct a holiday old fashioned, and what 11 words are for soup in different languages. And speaking of soup, why not a surprisingly easy recipe for vichyssoise? And as Cole suggests, take it to Shakespeare in the Park. Just don’t forget your chopped chives to sprinkle atop.
This review originally appeared in the California Review of Books.
