Save Me the Plums

Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir
by Ruth Reichl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this memoir which was mostly bright and breezy tales about the fabulousness of working at Gourmet. The ending, when the magazine folds, was sad but felt like a brave front. It was like the version of the you would tell an acquaintance about your life falling apart. This probably wouldn't have bothered me (after all I'm not even an acquaintance of Reichl's) except that her earlier book My Kitchen Year was so much deeper and more affecting. Reichl is a great story-teller though and both books are worth reading.
Linking up with Weekend Cooking. This is one of my #10booksofsummer titles.

Review: My Kitchen Year

My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was more like a diary than a cookbook, but it was beautiful and inspirational and filled with a ton of recipes that I want to make. When Gourmet Magazine was suddenly shut down then editor Ruth Reichl was set adrift. This book tells the story of how she cooked her way back to herself. Each entry begins with a tweet (if you don't follow @ruthreichl on twitter you should, her tweets are like little poems often about food) and then talks about what was happening in her world and how it lead to the food she made. Reichl is a New Yorker and the food in this book is as diverse and jumbled as the city itself. Thai noodles, matzo brei, and corn muffins (toasted on the griddle in a NYC coffee shop -- the only thing better is a blueberry muffin done this way).

Review: Delicious!

Delicious! by Ruth Reichl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have read and enjoyed Reichl's memoirs but I was a bit worried how her first foray into fiction would go. My concern was unfounded as this is a wonderful novel about food, and family, and history, and NYC, and becoming yourself, and more food.

Billie is a young woman running from her youth into an unknown future who ends up with a dream job at a food magazine (probably a fictionalized version of Gourmet) that leads her down paths she never expected when the dream starts to unravel. She discovers a WWII vintage correspondence between a young girl and James Beard which leads her to make some additional discoveries about her own life. This novel is touching but not overly sappy and full of great lines.

"...when the magazine lost its last librarian, it lost its soul" (p.144)  

"When you spend all day among old papers, the people come alive for you and you begin to see the present through different eyes. ... You begin to understand that time is no more than a trick of the mind; some days I'm convinced that my young self is still here, somewhere, just walking down a different street." (p. 217) 

"That's one of the best things about writing letters you know: you get to be the person you wish you were." (p.363)

The book ends with a recipe that I can't wait to try as soon as the weather cools off enough to turn on the stove. This book counts toward the Foodies Read 2014 Challenge and the Postal Reading 2014 Challenge.