Seattle Classics and Molly Wizenberg

A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg offers heart-warming vignettes from Molly's life and loves: Paris, Seattle, her family, her life pre-Brandon and her life post-Brandon. Molly met her husband, Brandon, via her food blog Orangette. With little conflict or challenges, this book offers feel-good stories about how good food can be a cornerstone to a life of love and happiness. I undoubtedly enjoy the central theme, however recognize there are many other facets of life that food and sharing food do not address. While this book was entertaining and a quick read, the substance does not delve deeper than a surface happiness to life, love and food.

With that said, there is little to critique in A Homemade Life. The content is not complex and the writing style is enjoyabe and light-hearted. The chapters each contain separate short stories. As a food-lover, I liked the recipes offered at the end of each chapter and Molly's ability to introduce the reader to her life's consistencies and new changes through recipes attained at different times in her life.

To wrap up my family's visit to Seattle after graduation, I took them to Delancey, Molly Wizenberg and her husband's restaurant in Ballard. My cousins, Anniliese and Peter, do not stray far from a diet of white starches and simple cheese. After mac n' cheese, one of their most prominent staples is pizza! What a coincidence! Delancey boasts to be Seattle's king of woodfire pizza.

We started with two salads, one of which is featured in A Homemade Life: The Spring Salad with radicchio, feta, radishes, avocados and a beautifully elegant vinaigrette. Simple, delicious flavors. Secondly, the Jersey salad with housemade Italian dressing had freshly shaved parmesan cheese over crispy romaine and red cabbage, carrots and homemade croutons.

We were ordered a Whidbey Island red wine to accompany the pizza.

For the main course, we ordered three pizzas from their regular menu and the pizza of the day featuring fresh porcini mushrooms. We ordered the Four Cheese, of which I can only remember three at the moment: asiago, romano, parmesan. The Prosciutto and classic Pepperoni satisfied the boys' meat cravings. The simplicity of flavors was constant for all menu items: sauce or herbs, a cheese, and a topping like meat or mushrooms. Cooked with yeast bubbles in the crust, the wood fire mastery added a smokey aurora to this simple pies.

My Aunt Susan works for the School of Design at Ohio State. A trained architect, she has an eye for inviting, spaces, innovative shape and calming light. All of these are featured in Delancey's inviting interior. The unique wine bottle shelves added attractive, geographic art to the wall. The high ceilings, large windows with natural light and low hanging simple light features added clarity of space to the environment, a characteristic necessary for the often-crowded Delancey interior.

Although, the dessert menu at Delancey is far more impressive than any I've seen at a pizza place, we decided to seek out another Seattle classic: Molly Moon's Ice Cream! Again, my aunt was impressed with the design and spaces in Molly Moon's. Now that I compare these photos in this post, the two interiors are strikingly similar.