Athena Calderone and a wife's happy witness--a review of "Cook Beautiful"

I have been introduced to the multi-hyphenate Athena Calderone (interior designer, model, social media influencer) who prides herself first and foremost as a wife and mother. She relays this in her debut cookbook "Cook Beautiful", a James Beard nominee for photography. A slender Italian-American bartending in an NYC club, she met and fell in love with a DJ named Victor, married him at 22 and had a baby at 24. While all her friends are doing the career track, she had a baby Jivan at her hip. She embraced the path that was open to her--the home, motherhood and tending on her nest, which became many and sometimes in different places as her husband would become THE Victor Calderone, celebrity DJ and producer to the stars like Madonna. She states that while she studied interiors to make their homes lovely and inviting, it was in the kitchen where she found great fulfilment--as hosting parties that she cooked for became her creative as well as social outlet.

And she was blessed for her decision. Over time she would develop and curate Eye-Swoon, a lifestyle website with recipes for effortlessly elegant homes and appetizing dishes. She would amass collaborators who are food stylists, chefs, photographers who would share their recipes and tips and ultimately guide her consciousness already pre-built with design saviness. Her mental store of tips to making visually enticing yet achievable feasts would be a unique selling point of this book--swoonworthy advice on presentation given per recipe and lush pictures of her and of course the dish, something that doesn't happen in every cookbook it seems, but that is precisely her motto: to appeal to the senses. Indeed in this content-driven world, her eye-candy life and culinary creations are necessary currency but what I liked about her particularly is that her training was not from the male-heavy culinary school machine where women were really a minority still (though in pastry school, they are not). I mean that her aesthetic and philosophy is more tailored to the small-scale which is really where most women ought to learn from as they will cook for homes and not in restaurants. Thus, it is more intimate, more personal. It is more Julia Child than Alice Waters and more talk about family than sustainability.

Athena seems to have shown for me that when one answers the call of wifehod and motherhood, you have answered the wisest call indeed. Like the dictum "to first have God then you will have all things beside." She became an interior designer, stylist, influencer, ...and now AUTHOR! she delights because she is first a "mama, wife". In my opinion, no one is not blessed by answering motherhood and wifehood.

In the front pictures, there beams her with her son and husband by the beach. In the back where the credits run, she lists and thanks Jivan the joy of her life, for making her wiser, slower...then earlier thanks to Victor "the love of her life and (her) best friend" for cleaning her kitchen messes and for encouraging her in her pursuits. Then she says: Thank you for looking at me like I am magic! Oh, if all wives would realize that when they make a lovely home and lovely meals and keeping themselves fit and pretty as Athena does, their husbands would follow Victor's lead too! And this is all the dream of a man just as it is the dream of a woman--to be adored. The latter is adored for she adored first in the way she makes the man's home and belly heavenly.

Athena may seem to have a glamorous life indeed, "a modern girl's Martha Stewart." In her cookbook launch, she hosted a dinner in a Jason Wu gown with Jason Wu in attendance and, of course, the tablescape was hers and was gorgeous. But at the heart of it, as she thanks her mother for her eye and admiration of beauty, it seems she is simply reveling on the rituals that had sustained her as a youth. Sundays, she said, the Italian-American clan of hers gathers in their place in Long Island. The cooking was comforting--pasta (all was called "macaroni" no matter the shape), cheeses and sauces. She loved those moments. I think having them and being of the same heritage as her husband made it natural for them to extend it to their adopted family of creatives who may have less of these experiences. Then she makes them striking--an aha! moment or ingredient added--which is her way of putting her artist's stamp into it...

There is something beautifully Catholic to this as Catholic cultures like Italians, Polish, Irish, Spanish and Filipinos do like feasting and regular family gatherings. They have artful decorations, welcoming sensibilities and comforting rituals (teas and tucks, embroideries and embraces). Athena, bred in a like environment, seems to just have added her personal panache to add even more value to what is already known to be good. I am not simply referring to her food (which she suggests plentiful herbs, spritzed if they are delicate, to maintain freshness, or flat plates to showcase a salad better, or to curve into an S certain elements while anchoring in the corners another to oomph). She had also suggested to consider that seasons carry a rhythm of their own in the food prep arena, with summers suggesting grilled goodies, and fall and winter, braises and stews. I am referring to her priorities.

For the career-forward friends that she may have been contemporaries with, I doubt that they can speak of the same blissful accomplishments as she has as a mother and wife.