Secure A Copy Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures At The Table Drafted By Ruth Reichl Released As Hardcover
traces the rise of American foodie culture in thess Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck through her time as a food critic for the Los Angeles Times, also weaving in personal history from a Berkeley coop with her first husband to a home in the California hills with her second after affairs and a sticky divorce.
Throughout she describes meals in mouthwatering detail, like this Thai dish: “The hotpink soup was dotted with lacy green leaves of cilantro, like little bursts of breeze behind the heat.
I took another spoonful of soup and tasted citrus, as if lemons had once gone gliding through and left their ghosts behind, ” I would be embarrassed to read this in a public place, but it's a mindless read and I have a hard time resisting descriptions of food, This is a good breakup book so far: all the romantic relationships Reichl describes crumble, and her writing is too cheesy for me to feel like she's a real person see: Made From Scratch, the Sandra Lee memoirs, so it's pleasantly cathartic.
Plus recipes!
I shouldn't speak too soon, though, Maybe she'll meet some amazing guy she's still with in an inspirational "I needed to let myself be ready for myself" sort of way, and I'll want to throw the book at the wall.
UPDATE:
Finished, Blegh. When it comes to stories of hardship, I have a hard time relating to people whose escapism manifests itself in trips to Bangkok, Barcelona, Paris, etc, Given the chance, that would be my desired means of escapism, but in the mean time I'm stuck with,movies and books like this,
P. S.
This book convinced me that I never, ever want to eat brains, I read this book on one part of a flight, and ended up in tears on the plane, Oh, she is such a beautiful writer, and just the type of writer that I love, Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, I kept reading sections to my foodie husband, and it was just a delight to, on top of that, read about berkeley and boonville and truckee, . . living in oakland, my husband cooked at the boonville hotel, and my parents live in tahoe,
Her love stories are so beautifully honest, and reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Marion Winick, Her stories of trying to get pregnant, and her attempts to adopt left me in tears, Now, do I loan this book out, or keep it close in my bookshelf, . . A constant theme through restaurant critic Ruth Reichls memoirs Comfort Me With Apples is of food and cooking being therapeutic: it helps her go through difficult times, both professional and personal.
Chocolate cake for when she can't figure whether to stay with the husband she is still so deeply attached to, or move in with her lover, Crab cakes for when she can't decide if she should take up a new job or not, Mushroom soup to help her and her mother get over the death of Reichls father,
Set in the lates beginning inand extending over part of the following decade, Comfort Me With Apples forms Reichls memories of those years.
The reviews, the interesting restaurants she not only ate at but in some cases got to help set up, The chefs, the experimentation, the excitement about new techniques, new ingredients, new cuisines,
For me, the food aspect of this book was what made me give it the two, Had it not been for the food, I'd have left it at one star, Because when I'm reading a book by a food critic, by someone for whom food is such an important part of lifeI want to read about food.
I am not even slightly interested in whom she slept with, why she and her husbandwhom she was so very devoted to, she can't stop dwelling on itcheated on each other repeatedly, or how sex with Michael felt.
Puhleez. Sadly, these very intimate reminiscences of Reichls are what form the bulk of the book the food interrupts these only now and then, and then only briefly, before Reichl plunges into more personal stuff all over again.
On the plus side, there are interesting little glimpses into the food scene in thes ands, and how very different it is from today a food critic who has no idea what balsamic vinegar is Or Szechuan peppercorns Unimaginable today.
Similarly, a lot of the food Reichl describesand the recipesare often markedly different from modern cooking: theres very little of the contrasting textures and flavours, the freshness provided by salads and vegetables and herbs that we expect in Western food today.
Instead, there's an emphasis on creamy, buttery, cheesy stuff that I personally didn't find especially appealing there's a recipe for a Swiss pumpkin, invented by Reichl herself, which really put me off.
The next time I want to read a book by an American food writer, I shall probably turn to Michael Pollan or Jeffrey Steingarten: I prefer their idea of what a good food book needs in addition to the food per se.
The history of food, the politics of food, the sociology, as Reichl mentions at one point in her book, Not the intimate details of the writers love life,
This followup to Reichl's first memoir, Tender At the Bone, is as lush as its predecessor, if a little sickening as a comforting marriage splinters, a self is reinvented, and a longedfor child is gained and lost.
Though she's wellknown for writing about food, Ruth Reichl is just as adept at writing about the self, particularly when the self is caught in unfamiliar, transitional phases.
In the beginning of Comfort Me With Apples, Reichl finds herself embroiled in one extramarital affair after the other, The breakdown of her marriage is sketched for the reader, rather than drawn out in excruciating detail, but that sketch is evocative and, indeed, excruciating anyway, It's very clear to the reader what Reichl is giving up, and how hard it is for her to make the decision to give it up,
Also palpable, though never stated outright, is her bemusement at being swept into the L, A. food world of celebrity chefs and movie, Perhaps that feeling comes from having read Tender At the Bone,
The part of Comfort Me With Apples that will stay with me the longest is the part about Reichl's adopted daughter, Gavi, I can't imagine withstanding a loss like that, Indeed, I had no idea there was any such thing in Reichl's life, She tells the story of her daughter with the aweinspiring level of selfknowledge that seems to be a characteristic of her memoirs,
Ruth Reichl knows food, but Ruth Reichl also knows herself every strength and weakness, every grace and meanness and she's not afraid to show us each aspect of her personality.
Ruth Reichl wrote a trio of memoirs, I read the first which was about her growing up years with her parents, Comfort Me With Apples is the second in this trio, This covers the period
in her life, her marriage, beginning of her career, infidelities, divorce, remarriage, and a heartbreaking attempt at adoption of a little girl, Her writing style just draws you in and I found it really hard to put this book down, I felt she was very honest and didn't gloss over the things that put her in a bad light, or the parts that brought back heartbreak, I am definitely going to be checking out the third and final in this trio and soon, Excellent read. .