In our culture we have lost our connection to cooking,” says Teresa Lust, author of "A Blissful Feast, Culinary Adventures in Italy’s Piedmont, Maremma, and Le Marche" ( Pegasus Books 2020; $19.19 Amazon hardcover price). The book was The Readable Feast’s 2020 winner for Best of Food Memoir.

Lust, who teaches Italian at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire and also teaches cooking classes, grew up in an Italian-American family, learning to cook from her mother and grandmother, whose recipes were written by hand on little note cards.