Rebecca Orchant is the co-owner of Pop+Dutch, a sandwich shop and curiosities market in Provincetown, MA, where she has lived year-round with her husband Sean since 2014. Formerly a food editor at The Huffington Post, Orchant also performs burlesque as The Duchess of Sandwich, serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of The Provincetown Commons, and contributes to The Provincetown Independent. She was born and raised in Albuquerque, NM, and earned a BFA in Dramatic Writing from The University of New Mexico. She was a national finalist for the John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play from The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.
Orchant’s book has a scattered structure and often a light tone. However, an engaging seriousness underlies it all. Some moments are disturbing, such as an account of a sexual assault she experienced at a party. There are also many moving meditations about life in these pages throughout… Orchant will make readers appreciate food, family, and friends a bit more, and portrays life in general as a messy, sad, joyous, funny, and annoying mixture. A nourishing and easily digestible chronicle.
In Simmering, Rebecca Orchant is your bestie at a queer dinner party — an irreverent, bisexual, snickering pal who talks about ass while pouring the wine. Every chapter feels like an anecdote shared over a drink (maybe her “Aviation Cocktail,” described as a “mouthful of flowers”). These vignettes about her life, food, sex, and pain are punctuated with truly tempting recipes, but the stories themselves are the real gems of this book, reminding readers of the strange alchemy between eating and remembering. A haunting prose poem about sexual assault and a devastating essay on death are tucked in with a recipe for preparing Cornish hens. The result is not a cookbook but an ode to cooking, a joyful and carnal ritual that bookends our best and worst days. Orchant zooms in on this ritual and gives it the personal examination it deserves.