There's plenty more to domestic life than simply stirring up a stew. If the kitchen is the heart of the home, it is in the kitchen that we know exactly who we are - and what makes us different from other people. This book explores that difference. Using material drawn from diaries, notebooks and sketchesbooks, which Elisabeth Luard has kept over the years, she takes the reader into the kitchens of the peasant housewives of Eastern Europe, give us a flavour of life above the Arctic Circle, create the aromas of the souks of Istanbul, Jerusalem and Marrakech, and explore the wild with the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand and Australia. Along the way she looks for answers to universal questions. What exactly is it that makes us know who we are and where we come from? Why do we refer to our neighbours by the foods they eat? Why do we welcome strangers by inviting them to break bread with us - and mistrust them a little if they refuse? How can a Bosnian housewife tell her neighbour is a Croatian by the scent of her stew? This title is a companion volume to, and follows the format of Family Life.