A Food Lover Finds Love

Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover’s Courtship, with Recipes by Amanda Hesser

 

A writer and a food writer meet. She once cooked with Julia Child and he likes pizza and cheap beer. What happens when they fall in love? A book.

I loved this book and could not put it down. Hesser’s story is a story of finding love with someone who has a completely different relationship to food than her own. She learns to compromise and to appreciate food even more. Hesser finds that relationships are about bringing two lives together. My only complaint is that she comes across as a food snob, granted she is a food writer, while in other chapters she claims that her relationship with Mr. Latte is making her appreciate the company meals bring not just the food. She criticizes foodies but she is also one and won’t admit it. She appreciates fine food but she also has a whole chapter about food on a airplane. I found it ridiculous that she thinks it is normal to pack a gourmet meal for a flight. Yeah right, even the top chefs like to eat junk.

But otherwise it is a very romantic story for food lover’s. It is a quick read and since reading the book I cannot find another book that grabs me like this one

 

Bonus: Every chapter comes with recipes. Most are very simple.

 

A Pleasant Misnomer

 

 

I recently finished Marusya Bociurkiw’s Comfort Food For Breakups: The Memoir of A Hungry Girl. I loved it and could not put it down. Contrary to the title, it is not about breakups but instead about the relationships with friends, family, and lovers. She demonstrates how closely people relate life events to food and how our relationships with humans are similar to our relationship with food. Sometimes you have to stop eating certain dishes and other times you only eat dishes because they are passed down. Every chapter was either an ingredient or a dish and her relationship to it.

 

“In my family, it’s not necessary to lay a place setting for the dead. They’re always with us, encouraging us to eat, and love, live better.” (pg. 60)

 

Note: The book was very difficult to find in the library and bookstore. I requested mine through my public library’s inter-library loan and it came all the way to Iowa from Klamath Falls, Oregon. I recommend trying to track it because her stories are worth it.

I feel bad about…

this book.

On my recent (and disastrous) trip to Minneapolis I listened (yeah, for books on CD) to Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. I returned it promptly after returning to Iowa City.

I do not have enough desire to write much more, so here is a list:

1) The book was funny and insightful.

2) There is too much whining. Maybe it is because Ephron aims the book toward older women and I am younger but it seemed to be too much whining about life. Positivity please.

3) Each chapter is a stand-alone story. Each chapter gives different insight into the life of a single older woman. The things women think about and the things we worry about daily.

4) Moral of the story = love and independence.

The Historians Food Memoir

 

Opincar, Abe. Fried Butter: A Food Memoir. New York: Soho Press, Inc., 2003.

 

 

Abe Opincar’s Fried Butter is not the first food memoir but came 5 years before Eat, Pray, Loveand other books that heightened the status of food. While Opincar may not be writing of long lost love or soul searching as openly as other authors do, his writing is refreshing. He does not whine. He appreciates his life and all of its obstacles. He pines for the sadness in life over the happiness because that is where he grew the most. His writing is not just a story of his life. Opincar intertwines a history of food. Each chapter is about a dish or an ingredient. He explains the history of items while revealing a story of himself. He does not seem to be longing for anything in life. Except for the ingredients and the memories attached to each.

Opincar’s story is not riveting or a page-turner because of suspense or compassion. Instead, his stories provide the reader with something they can relate to. Turning the page means learning more about oneself than about Opincar.

I especially appreciate Opincar’s stories because he is Jewish and he inserts anecdotes that I can appreciate. He picks up the Jewish relationship between spirituality and food.

I do not recommend Fried Butter for people looking for a good memoir of life and adventure. I do recommend it for people who appreciate food for its history, the memories it creates, for the emotion and for food itself. It is a simple story of a man who has seen the world but holds all his memories in ingredients not in material items or places. I particularly like the chapter on turmeric and how you can use replacements for ingredients in recipes but somehow it is not like the real thing. There are certain things in life that you can have replacements of and never know that it is different from the real thing until you have the real one.

 

One of my favorite quotes: “Either there is a G-d, of Judaism is the cruelest joke that’s ever been pulled on any people in the history of the world!” (123).

 

 

Of course reading this book has now added more titles onto my “To Read” list….

Now go to your local public library and put those tax dollars to work.

 

 

“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.” – M.F.K. Fisher

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry

“The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School” by  Kathleen Flinn

                     

I just finished “The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry” by Kathleen Flinn.

Flinn’s story is more positive and less whiny than Kim Sunée’s “Trail of Crumbs.”

The story is about Flinn’s stint in Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute. I like her memoir because it is about grasping what you want, following your dreams under your own terms and accepting whatever comes your way. On the other hand, Sunée complains about her life choices even though she was living in France and experiencing the high life. Instead, Flinn gives up everything to live off savings in order to follow a dream. Flinn’s lesson is to set aside all your dreams to pursue love and to pursue your dreams as passionately as your love.  Her story is that dreams take time and the whole purpose in life is the journey towards your dream, not only working for your dreams.

 

I recommend this memoir, over ”Trail of Crumbs.” (But I recommend both). My only complaint is the recipes at the end of every chapter are complicated and fancy. So make a visit to your local library.

 

Here is a NPR  article on the book: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15732097

 

 Here are my favorite excerpts: (Spoilers, so don’t read on if you don’t want to be spoiled)

 

 “I have learned something that’s not about cooking I felt, for a time. I had it all when I was working at my corporate job in London. But I lacked something critical – I had told myself I was too busy for a relationship. Now I have the one who loves me as powerfully and passionately as I love them. My life, it turns out, was missing its essential ingredient…The chefs will have to wait. My hearts has waited too long already” (169).

 

 “I think of the chef from Le Doyen, trying to find a balance with everything, even things that would not seem to work together. As a girl, I studied ballet. I remember the times that learning all those techniques seemed like just repetitive, boring work. But the point of it all was that in the end, the work should appear effortless. It takes time and patience to make la danse work. But when it does, it is marvelous” (229).

 

 “As in cooking, living requires that you taste, taste, taste as you go along- you can’t wait until the dish of life is done… How many tears did I cry because I didn’t know what I wanted? “The sharper your knife,” as Chef Savard had said, “the less you cry.” For me, it also means to cut those things that get in the way of your passion and of living your life the way it’s meant to be lived” (373-374).

 

David and I have a question….

Katinka Lot (11:01:45 PM): mild?

DMG048 (11:02:17 PM): major

Katinka Lot (11:02:48 PM): what is inbetween mild and major?

Katinka Lot (11:02:49 PM): spicy?

DMG048 (11:03:14 PM): good question

Please ponder this and respond. We were discussing my newly developed aversion to books. He said I might have a mild one. I said “mild?” And then the question appeared.

This is just a page holder. Don’t worry a more exciting post about my exciting weekend will be created after my hectic Tuesday. (a lot of adverbs there).