memoir

I read The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School a couple of years ago…so while I’m a little rusty in terms of reviewing it, I feel it’s fully deserving of a blog entry.  First of all, I should clarify, I didn’t read it, I listened to it.  The audio version of Kathleen Flinn’s book caught my eye at a bookstore as I was on the eve of a new job that I wasn’t looking forward to starting.  The book looked inspirational, so I splurged and bought it.

I was so glad I did.  First of all, the story was read by Cassandra Campbell who did a wonderful job of reading the story with appropriate emotion, but without exaggerating voices and emotions as some audio book readers are wont to do.  There was something calming and rhythmic about the way that she read the cooking scenes in particular – her descriptions of chopping, slicing, and dicing were downright calming on my commute.

Moreover, the book itself has a perfect balance that many foodie memoirs lack.  Flinn found the right balance of sharing details of her personal life without giving too much intimate information, while still making this a true foodie book. 

After getting laid off from a successful job in London, Flinn decided to pursue her dream of going to Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris.  She had always dreamed of going to Paris and of attending culinary school, and the way in which she pursued it is truly inspiring.  Her path is not always an easy one – not every recipe is successful, but it makes it all the more rewarding when she does master a tecnnique, a sauce, or a dough.  She has a charming way of telling a story, and I was delighted to discover her blog and website while working on this entry – she is equally candid online and her posts remind me why I respect her as a foodie and writer.  Best of all, it seems like there are more Flinn books in the works!

After a long blogging absence that involved a move and a lot of packing and unpacking, I’m back to the blog!  I did take a brief break from moving and unpacking to go see Ruth Reichl on a local stop for her book tour.  She spoke in Portsmouth, NH, at the Music Hall on May 1st to promote her newest book, Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way, which was released in hardcover in April.

I had never been to a book signing event before, so I didn’t know what to antcipate, but I find Reichl to be smart and witty in her books, so I was really eager to hear her speak.  Reichl opened by reading a passage from a previous book, Tender at the Bone, which describes how Reichl’s mother often cooked and served spoiled, strange, and unappetizing foods.  She went on to explain that her mother was truly taste blind, leaving her and her brother to defend favored guests from foods that could make them sick.  Unusual beginnings for someone who is now an editor of Gourmet magazine and a renowned foodie.

Not Becoming My Mother was the product of years of wanting to write about her mother’s mental illness – Reichl’s mother suffered from bipolar disorder.  However, Reichl focused much of her energy talking not about her illness, but about feminism and the times in which her mother grew up.  The title of her book refers to the fact that Reichl’s mother loved her enough to push her not to emulate her mother - she speaks of how smart and driven her mother was – and how bored.  Women of Reichl’s mother’s generation were not encouraged to have ambitions outside of the home. 

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If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I love foodie memoirs.  When I first heard of Adrienne Kane’s book, Cooking and Screaming: Finding My Own Recipe for Recovery, I was especially intrigued. 

As a healthcare worker, I’ve worked with countless stroke survivors.  In my personal life, I love food and writing.  I also see the impact good food or lack thereof has on my patients.  Family members bring food to nurture and comfort recovering patients, and it’s devastating when people can’t or won’t eat or drink. 

Kane’s memoir recalls her persoanal triumph of surviving an AVM (an arterio-venous malformation – symptoms are similar to that of a stroke) at the young age of 21.  Eating, cooking, and writing were all crucial parts of her rehab and recovery.  This book ties together so many of my interests – I couldn’t wait to read her inspring story.

Adrienne Kane is best known as a food blogger and has been featured in magazines and websites prior to the release of her book this past February.  Her book first pulled me in through its structure.  Each chapter begins with a mouth-watering recipe that has personal significance to Kane.  She uses the recipes as natural transitions to tell her life story.  Many foodie memoirs lack structure and this is a real pet peeve when I read them, but that is never an issue with Cooking and Screaming.

Kane’s story is honest without feeling like a gory tell-all.  Her writing style is fluid and natural, and you quickly feel like a friend is sharing a personal story.  She tells of her failures and triumphs and, in the process, elicits empathy and an understanding of the real healing power that food can have.  As a new graduate, Kane was a dancer and an aspiring teacher.  Yet, before she had the opportunity to begin her career, she endured an AVM and was in a coma for three weeks.  She awoke to significant physical impairments as well as milder speech and cognitive defecits. 

Kane’s first foray back into the kitchen was where she began to rediscover herself – despite having the full use of only one hand.  Her perseverance leads her from the therapy kitchen to her home kitchen to a catering job, and on to a blog and a book.  I was incredibly interested by the direction her life took, and incredibly inspired and awed.  Her book is a great read and I can’t wait to try her recipes.  I’m hoping a cookbook is released soon!

Some people remember what they were wearing on important days of their lives, others remember the music or sounds in the background.  Ruth Reichl remembers what she was eating – in vivid detail.

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table is Reichl’s first memoir; a very personal account of a fascinating upbringing and early adulthood.  She shares honestly about growing up with a mother who had a mental illness, a mother who cooked and served questionable foods.  Moldy food seems like an unlikely start for  a gourmand, but Reichl was clearly born to be a foodie.  It is clear in reading this memoir that every important event in Reichl’s life led to where she is today.   She tells tales of her travels where she tried new and exotic foods, and stories of family and friends showing her the do’s and dont’s of cooking.  Even her stories about being virtually abandoned at  a French boarding school in Montreal (despite little previous knowledge of the French language) led Reichl to new food discoveries and helped her to refine her palate. 

All of the stories in this memoir are tied seamlessly together with a singular theme – food.  Reichl describes food in a way that makes you salivate – even when she is describing a dish that she ate over 3o years ago.  It is fascinating and inspiring to me that Reichl did not seek out a career in food, she attended school and pursued other vocations before seemingly falling into a field where she was meant to stay.

As in Reichl’s other books, Reichl writes with equal measures of honesty, humor, and humility.  And, like her other books, she shares the recipes that were special to her in this time in her life.  Tender at the Bone is an easy and enjoyable read for anyone who loves food  and fascinating memoirs.

I genuinely wanted to like Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (other editions are titled Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and, more simply Julie and Julia) by Julie Powell.  I was intrigued by her “Project:” to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1.  It’s an enormous undertaking (especially with a full-time job to contend with as well), and it makes you consider how much cooking has changed in the forty-some-odd years since Child’s book was first published – the techniques, the ingredients (coming by kidneys and bone marrow isn’t so easy these days), and the time and effort most of us put into our meals.

Unfortunately, the Project is just a thread that barely ties Powell’s book together.  She uses the book as a sounding board to share fictionalized stories about her friend’s drunken sexcapades, true stories about her own marriage, and anything else that she feels like talking about – everything from her political leanings to her apartment’s plumbing problems to her laments about her depressing dead-end job.  In between reading e-mails from friends, yelling at her husband, and trying to sleep with another married man, there are some tales of Powell actually cooking some of Child’s recipes.  I wouldn’t even have minded the rest of her stories, but some of them were kind of offensive (and I think I’m usually pretty open-minded)  and most of them weren’t as funny as the book cover would have you believe.  Furthermore, Powell invents a lot of stories about Paul and Julia Child, which seemed unnecessary given the amount of information available on them.  It seems to be a weak attempt to draw parallels between her life and Child’s.

That said, the portions where Powell is actually cooking are interesting.  She places a cooking icon in a modern-day world and we get to see how relevant Child and her recipes are today.  It also causes one to give though to how different food and food television might be if it weren’t for Child.  Some of Powell’s adventures really are amusing - attempting to euthanize a lobster, poaching eggs in red wine and watching them turn blue, or figuring out how to get the bone marrow out of a large animal thigh bone.  The book is a quick read – I probably would have given up on it, but I was able to finish it quickly and move on to other foodie adventures.

Powell’s book is being released as a movie (also titled Julie and Julia)  this August, starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep (the movie will purportedly follow Julia and Paul’s lives more truthfully than the book does).  Powell also has another book due in August, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession.