From Finicky to Foodie and Back Again: Confessions of a Baby Boomer and What She Ate

Look at her.

She looks like such a nice, dutiful little girl with her neatly folded hands and her little braids with the bows and her crooked bangs (cut by her father), but, don't let that fool you.  That little girl was a very finicky little girl when it came to food and could case major scenes if forced to eat something that "looked funny."

She wasn't just finicky.  She was VERY finicky.

As the audience used to ask in unison on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" when he made a pronouncement like that: 

"How finicky was she?"

And like Johnny Carson, I will reply:

• She was so finicky that she wouldn't eat steak because she had to chew it too many times
• She was so finicky that she wouldn't eat spaghetti sauce on her spaghetti, just melted butter
• She was so finicky that when she went to camp she worried more about the fact that she would have to try at least one bite of what was served than that she couldn't swim and might possibly drown
• She was so finicky that her salad was plain iceberg lettuce
• She was so finicky that she wanted her peanut butter toast cut into "fairy cakes" (I think the Brits call them "soldiers")
• She was so finicky that she cried if cooked carrots were anywhere in her vicinity

You get the idea.  She was really, really finicky.  And as I sit here sipping my glass of gruner veltliner and nibbling on a little piece of taleggio and a baguette, with some baby gherkins and fig jam on the side, I can confess that little girl was yours truly.

So what happened?  How did that little finicky little girl turn into a foodie who thinks nothing of crunching away on squid tentacles or relishing a nice bowl of pho with beef tendon?

I tackled some of my childhood finicky food preferences back in 2013 with "A Baby Boomer's Food Memories," where I shared some of my mother's recipes too, so I won't repeat myself here, though I will remind you just how finicky I was. 

I don't know how it happened but I did not trust food.  Or maybe it was my mother.  She liked to make casseroles and those are anathema to someone with food fears.  When I would ask her what was in it she would say, "Oh, butter and flour and meat and other good things."  I was suspicious that she would sneak something I didn't like into it, to say the least (which she often did), so I just said, "I'll have a tuna sandwich."  And when I say tuna sandwich, I am not talking about tuna SALAD.  Oh, no...that would include onions and mayonnaise (I only ate Miracle Whip in those days) and, horror of horrors, possibly mustard.  No, my tuna sandwich was plain albacore tuna laid out on bread that had been spread lightly with Miracle Whip.  Or if my mother was feeling particularly motherly, she would serve it to me on toast that was buttered on both sides.  Yum.

So besides tuna sandwiches, what else would I eat?

• Cottage cheese (I liked to stir a little milk into it to make it more like soup)
• Kraft dinner with pieces of bacon mixed into it (most people call this Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, but we always called it Kraft dinner - I guess because it WAS dinner)
• Soft-boiled eggs with a dollop of butter 
• Peanut butter on toast
• Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup (made with milk, not water, and sometimes my mother would float pieces of peanut butter toast in the soup - I know it sounds weird but it's actually delicious.  Peanut butter is one of those things that goes with everything! See there was a bit of the foodie already starting to creep out though I can't quite explain why tomato soup was OK but tomato sauce on my spaghetti was not)
• Grilled cheese sandwiches
• Fish sticks
• Hamburger with just ketchup
• Likewise hotdog with just ketchup (I abhorred yellow mustard and actually still do - if I was presented with a sandwich with mustard on it I would go hungry rather than eat it because once that yellow goop gets on the bread, there is no getting it off no matter what you do!)
• Potatoes in any incarnation
• Chicken and turkey (but only the dark meat)
• Jello and anything sweet (but no coconut)
• TV dinners if the vegetable was corn.

(Speaking of TV dinners, I don't think anyone these days realizes what a big deal TV dinners were when they were invented back in the 50's.  I think my mother must have died and gone to heaven, even though she was a really good cook and cooked most things from scratch.  But when you have a finicky kid like I was, she just had to put one of those babies in the oven, then set it on the TV tray and put me in front of the TV and she was done.  Yes, we had TV trays).

So growing up, that was about the extent of my food repertoire.

And, yes.  If I didn't like what my mother made for dinner, she would fix me something different, one of my acceptable foods.

Now I can just hear you parents out there thinking what a spoiled child I must have been and you certainly wouldn't do that for your child.  My mother would prepare the meal for the family, and then if I objected to the menu, make something special for me.  I probably was spoiled in many ways, but I don't think that is one of them.  My experience has been that most parents force their children to at least try the food that is put in front of them, that they eat what the rest of the family eats or go without.  Some parents even make their kids sit at the table until they eat what is put before them even if it takes hours.  And if that is what you believe is the best way to raise your child, then that is your right, but I am also going to say that it is also the quickest way to create food issues for your children. 

I applaud my mother for not making a big deal about food and what I ate.

The way I see it is, the best way to create an aversion to certain foods, or saddle your children with food issues, is to make them eat what they don't want to eat. You have no idea what a casserole looks like to a little kid. Certain foods would literally make me gag and that was not creating a very relaxing dinner table.

Yes, I was a finicky little girl and my mother catered to me, but I grew up to be a woman who has no food issues and eats just about everything.  I was never a model, but I was in the normal body weight range for most of my life (and if you want to know why I am now no longer in the normal range, read my post "My Menopause")!  But I digress.

Though I didn't appreciate it at the time, I believe the fact that my mother catered to me in that way also made me feel very loved and looked after, which in turn led to the confidence I would need to go out and make my own way in the world.  And looking back, being a mother myself, I know she didn't mind doing it, because she was able to show her love.  My mother was not a particularly outwardly affectionate woman, but she showed her love in ways like that.

So how did that little girl who cried if there was mustard on her sandwich or considered iceberg lettuce "eating her vegetables" turn into a foodie?

After years of spending massive amounts of time trying to avoid most foods and causing a scene while I was doing it, I had an epiphany my senior year in college.  I realized my finickyness was affecting my life.  I mean, it is a bit embarrassing to ask at a Thai restaurant if I could have a cheese sandwich.  

But I do have to give myself a bit of slack.  It's not all my fault.  I didn't exactly come from a foodie background.  I grew up in the Midwest and a town that would hardly be called a fine dining town.  Howard Johnsons was my parents idea of fine dining and even then we were not allowed to order anything special to drink or dessert, because that was extra and my Dad only wanted to pay for the entrees.  He would have a heart attack if he knew what we pay for wine these days when we dine out.  Sometimes the wine is a bigger part of the bill than the food!  It was also not a town with a lot of diversity in the food options nor were my parents very adventurous. Let me just say that my mother once told me she had tried "Thigh" food.  I think she was almost 80 at the time.  I didn't have the heart to correct her pronunciation.

So when I moved to San Francisco after college, I vowed that I would no longer be finicky but rather I would eat EVERYTHING. 

Though San Francisco is a town renowned for its food, when I lived there I was, shall we say, a bit cash deficient and thus not really able to avail myself of all of the fine dining the town had to offer. But I was still able to hone my love of Chinese food in that City's famous Chinatown, eat Chicken Kiev at a local Russian mom and pop, try kimchi in Korea Town and expand my hamburger orders to include onions and tomatoes.  I was getting there.

Then when I moved to the Monterey Bay Area where I was married and raised my family, it was all about seafood - sand dabs, abalone, sushi and calamari were favorites. 

But it wasn't until I moved to Seattle over ten years ago, that I became a real foodie.

Seattle is the premiere food capital of the Pacific Northwest (sorry, Portland), and I embraced it with a passion. 

I discovered that I loved not only eating food, but reading about the restaurants serving the food and the "celebrity chefs' who were making it.  The city was awash in new restaurants, and I read every review and attempted to go to every restaurant.  I even made a list of the best restaurants A-Z and started my quest to sample them all in order.  (However, by the time I got to the "F's," I realized that more and more new restaurants were opening with names that began with letters before "F," so I changed my strategy to restaurants by neighborhood).

Moving to Seattle, I became a fervent foodie (and if you want to know which restaurants are my favorites, you will have to check back on this blog) and embraced all things foodie with a passion!

I also threw myself into food-oriented TV programs. I am an avid viewer of "Top Chef" and have also watched all of Gordon Ramsay's TV shows from "Hell's Kitchen" to "Master Chef.  I read Marco Pierre White's memoir (he was the first enfant terrible of the kitchen), as well as all of Tony Bourdain's books (I watch all of his TV shows too).  I even paid extra for the VIP tickets so I could meet Tony when he did a show here in Seattle (he was very nice).

I "starred" on an episode of "Check Please," a PBS program that plays in several cities across the country.  The Chicago version can even claim a young Senator named Barack Obama (check You Tube). The gist of the show is that you and two others choose your favorite restaurant. Everyone goes to each other's restaurant choice, and then we get together with the host of the program to be filmed as we talk about our experiences.

(Here it is if you care to watch it).
 

And there I was expounding about food. And watching myself, realizing I was doing it insufferably so.

So as with most passions, it is easy to overdo it.

The finicky little girl who only liked her spaghetti with butter on it, had turned into a true foodie who could rave about her calamari steak, but as you can see, she had also turned into a huge, insufferable food snob!  I mean I am even saying on the show in front of millions of people that I don't like to dine in a restaurant with children!

If I were to revise that list of how finicky I was when I was a little girl to a list of how finicky I am today, it would look  something like this:

• I am so finicky that I send my steak back if it's not perfectly medium rare (even though I know I risk the chef spitting on my food)
• I am so finicky that if I want pasta, I don't even eat spaghetti anymore - more like lobster ravioli or braised monk fish on a bed of spiralized zucchini
• I am so finicky that when I am at a high end restaurant I am disappointed if they don't give me an amuse bouche
• I am so finicky that I won't order wine if the restaurant doesn't have a nice Oregon Pinot Gris or Pinot Blanc
• I am so finicky that haven't set foot in a Denny's in over 10 years
• I am so finicky that I refuse to be seated in a restaurant near the door, bathrooms or kitchen
• And I could go on, but I won't

And I am not proud of all of that. 

I have also turned into a person who chefs don't even like.

I read an article recently where Seattle chefs shared food terms that are overused and they hate to hear:

"Foodie" is right up there but how about these?

• Veggie
• Like butta
• Sando (for sandwich)
• Food porn
• Foodgasm
• Yummy
• "Chef" as a verb (as in "cheffing)
• Ethnic food (as in throwing all food that isn't European into that category)
• Umami (using that to describe any flavor your don't understand)
• Sexy
• Mouthfeel

There's more, but I will let you read the article for yourself. 

My point here is that I have used over half of those words myself and finding out that, if a famous chef heard me say any of those words to describe the food I was eating, he or she would describe me as an idiot, has made me rethink this whole foodie thing, er, I mean this thing about food snobbism.

I may eat everything and actually savor all kinds of great food that I would never have touched as a child, I may love to read restaurant reviews and talk about my dining experiences, I may know what buerre blanc and veloute are, but in so doing, I have gone in the other direction and my newfound passion has turned me into a finicky snob about food. 

I have reverted back to that finicky little girl.

However, there is hope.

The difference between me now and that little finicky girl who expected her mother to cater to her finicky nature is that the adult Rosy realizes she can be a pain in the butt about her passion for fine dining, so from this day forward I vow to continue to enjoy good food, dine in fine restaurants and review them (watch for the occasional restaurant review in my Friday "Week in Reviews" posts), but I am going to watch my language and stop showing off. 

I may know all about galettes, aguilettes and semi freddo, but I don't need to be snooty about it.  I don't want to be that kind of person. You know the type.. describing her meal and acting all shocked and snobby that you didn't know what she was talking about ("You don't know what bucatini is?  Well, bless your little heart!") or telling her that you are not a big fan of chicken feet and her looking all sorry for you, not to mention your nodding off because she was boring you to death. 

No, I don't want to be that person. I certainly don't want to shame people about their food preferences, just as I wouldn't have liked it very much if people had made fun of me when I was young because I had never tried pizza (it looked funny).  Well, they did, but I got over it. 

Food is like art.  It's a matter of taste.

So for those of you out there who consider yourselves food experts, or god forbid, foodies, this is a cautionary tale.  Realize that not everyone knows what rillettes are, and more importantly, not everyone even cares. Gauge your audience, realize everyone is not as gung ho about food as you and stop showing off. No matter how passionate you might be about something, nobody likes a show off, even when it comes to food! 

And, finally, there is a little irony in all of this. 

Despite my food snobbism, in weak moments or when I am depressed or late at night when no one is looking, I revert to my childhood.  That finicky little girl who didn't like much in the way of food, whose mother catered to her, is still in there.  When I am craving something to eat, I don't whip up a cheese soufflé or a fancy omelet or potatoes lyonnaise. OK, sorry, a fancy potato dish.  

No, in those quiet, soulful moments, there is nothing like a piece of toast with peanut butter on it (cut into "fairy cakes, of course) to dip into some cream of tomato soup or a soft-boiled egg mashed up with a dollop of butter or a toasted tuna sandwich buttered on both sides to make me feel better.

Those comfort foods from my past take me back to that finicky little girl back home again being cared for by her mother. 

And nothing served to me in even the best restaurants in the world can compare to that.

 

That's it for this week!

 

Thanks for reading!

 

See you Friday 

 

for my review of

 

"Denial"

 and 

  The Week in Reviews

(What to See or Read and What to Avoid)

 and the latest on

"My 1001 Movies I Must See Before  

 I Die Project." 

 

 

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"Straight Outta Compton" and The Week in Reviews

[I review the new movie "Straight Outta Compton" and two feel-good DVDs "Cupcakes" and "Razzle Dazzle." The Book of the Week is "Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family and Forgiveness."  I also bring you up to date on "My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project" with "The Evil Dead."]

Straight Outta Compton

A true-to-life biopic about the rise to fame of the rap group N.W.A that revolutionized the world of music in the mid-80's.

Like many bands, N.W.A. (and, if you don't know what those initials stand for, I will let you click on the link to find out - I ain't sayin it) started out with a group of friends writing songs and making music together in a garage in the late 80's.  Here the garage is in the mean streets of Compton, California, where young black men are routinely harassed by the police and confronted daily with the harsh realities of poverty, gangs and discrimination.  With what's been going on in this country of late, this film seems particularly relevant. Some things never change.

Out of that culture came rage and out of that rage came N.W.A., Gangsta Rap and West Coast Hip Hop, a group and set of music sub-genres that changed the face of music forever, making Dr. Dre (real name: Andre Romelle Young), Ice-Cube (real name: O'Shea Jackson)  and Eazy-E (real name: Eric Lynn Wright) big stars. (Arabian Prince (Kim Renard Nazel) was the other original member and they were later joined by DJ Yeller (Antoine Carraby) and MC Ren (Lorenzo Jerald Patterson). 

Eazy-E, wonderfully played by Jason Mitchell, formed the group and started Ruthless Records. They pressed and marketed their first song "Boyz-n-the-Hood" themselves. The popularity of that song brought the group to the attention of Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) who, seeing their potential, became their manager and brokered their first album, "Straight Outta Compton" with Priority Records, a company whose biggest star at that time was the California Raisins. 

The album took off and the band toured amidst many protests about the language and content of their music.  In Detroit, a riot ensued when they played their song "F**k the Police," after the police security detail specifically told them not to.  They were arrested but that only served to heighten their "gangsta" image and popularity.

The guys enjoyed the money and the glamour, but as these things do a rift formed in the band. Ice-Cube (played by O'Shea Jackson Jr.) became suspicious of Heller's business practices and his seeming favoritism toward Eazy and acrimoniously left to pursue a solo career. Likewise, Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) eventually questioned the money and joined forces with Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor) to form Death Row Records where he produced records for up and coming rap stars Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg.

Left on his own without Ice or Dre, Eazy started to unravel and realized Heller did not have his best interests at heart and his health deteriorated.  But he was eventually able to make up with Ice-Cube and Dr. Dre and they all start talking about reviving N.W.A.  Alas, that was not to be.

You don't need to be a fan of rap music to enjoy this film.  This has all of the same elements as some of the best biopics about bands ("Love and Mercy," "Jersey Boys"). The band forms in someone's garage, the band cuts a record, the band makes it big, then the band falls apart, one of the members hits the skids and then they all reunite. 

 

That is not to make light of the power of this film or the environment that produced N.W.A or the impact the group had on the music world. It's to say that this film is a classic.  It has the power of "everyman," or should I say "everyband."  Everyone can relate to these guys and their drive to "be somebody."  They were no different from any young guys wanting to be creative and have some power in life, except they were young black men trying to make it in a world punctuated by the beating of Rodney King and L.A. riots.

 

This was a time when my kids were teens and pre-teens and though they were young suburban white kids, they embraced the music because this music was new and loud and shook the walls of propriety.  We Baby Boomers had Jimi Hendrix and The Doors. My kids had Ice-Cube and Dr. Dre.  And now I finally know the lyrics they were listening to.  Yikes.

 

Directed by F. Gary Gray, with an outstanding script by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff and produced by Dr. Dre, Ice-Cube and Eazy-E's widow Tomica Woods-Wright, this is an engrossing recreation of the times that inspired gangsta rap and it pulls no punches.  The young actors are brilliant and uncanny look-alikes of the real artists, which is particularly no surprise for the Ice-Cube character, since he is played by the real Ice-Cube's son.  The music and performances are right on and the set decoration creates the world that grew N.W.A.

 

Rosy the Reviewer says...another great biopic and another Best Film of the year for me.

***DVDS***

You Might Have Missed

(And Some You Will Be Glad You Did)

Cupcakes  (2013)

 

Six friends in Tel Aviv record a song on a mobile phone and find, to their shock, that it is the Israeli entry in the UniverSong Competition.

A group of friends are obsessed with the UniverSong competition, a sort of "Israel's Got Talent" and Eurovision combo.  They get together every year to watch the competition together. When Anat's love leaves her, the friends write her a song to cheer her up.  The song gets entered in the UniverSong competition and starts to get a lot of press. None of them really wants to do it but eventually each comes up with a reason to venture outside their comfort zones: Kerin, the timid blogger; Anat, the baker and mother whose husband left her; Efrat, the aspiring musician; Yael, the former beauty queen turned lawyer; Dana, the overworked political aid; and Ofer, a gay kindergarten teacher with a closeted boyfriend.

The UniverSong (based on the popular Eurovision contest) competition seeks the most popular song from across the globe and the various countries vote.  So even though the friends are reluctant to do this, the UniverSong machine kicks in trying to mold them into an ABBA-like group (ABBA won Eurovision), but eventually they realize they are being exploited and not being true to themselves. 

This is a musical comedy with fun songs and performances that is as sweet a confection as, well, cupcakes, but not sickeningly so. The soundtrack uses songs that have won Univision contests in the past including the freakish American win one year with "You Light Up My Life."

This is director Eytan Fox's satire on Eurovision.  Fox is a celebrated Israeli director who was born in New York City but moved to Israel when he was two. Eurovison is not very well-known to American audiences but it is a big deal in other countries.  Fox remembers his family and friends gathering together to watch when Israel first entered in 1973.  This is his take on remembering what it used to be like in Israel when neighbors all knew and helped each other.  He laments that it's not like that in Israel anymore.  But this is also a statement on how silly the Eurovision competition has become and how when something is sweet and pure (cupcakes), it's not long until someone tries to pervert it for their own gain. 

Rosy the Reviewer says...this is feel good movie about the power of friendship.  If you liked "Mama Mia," you might like this.




Razzle Dazzle (2007)

Mr. Jonathan (Ben Miller) is a politically active dance teacher who wants to do something important with his dance troupe but he also wants to win the Sanosafe Troupe Spectacular competition.

Mr. Jonathan has interesting ideas about how to choreograph meaningful dances. He wants to highlight political causes so in rehearsal he asks his girls how they would move if they were enslaved by a multinational corporation or if they were ants being oppressed and forced to make sneakers.  You get the idea. 

His biggest competition is Miss Elizabeth (Jane Hall) who wants to win at any cost.  She's not quite Abby Lee Miller but close and, yes, there are Dance Moms, one particularly obsessed with her daughter winning. Justine (Kerry Armstrong) is living out her own dance ambitions through her daughter, Tennille.  Other pushy Moms bribe judges and go to outrageous lengths for their children to get ahead.  These Dance Moms make the "Dance Moms" on TV look like saints.

The office manager (Denise Roberts) for Mr. Jonathan's dance school runs the Happy Valley Foster Home and decides who to foster by whether they can dance or not and the mostly mute goth costumer, Marianne (Tara Morice), has some questionable ideas such as employing a gas mask on one of the children that makes her pass out.

Mr. Jonathan can't stand that Miss Elizabeth keeps winning all of the competitions with her standard routines, in his eyes, boring and meaningless.  He decides that his winning piece will be about Afghan women under the Taliban, not a popular idea with the Moms.

Mr. Jonathan's bid to win is being filmed by a documentary crew so we are in mockumentary mode in the Christopher Guest tradition.  Think "This is Spinal Tap," meets Australian Dance Moms.  We see the rehearsals, the preparations and the private moments as they prepare for the big competition.

This is a funny faux documentary written and directed by Darren Ashton, and it's a biting but delightful send up of dance teachers and competitions. It's the age old story of the underdogs overcoming adversity to win but in a fun way.

Rosy the Reviewer says...if you are a Christopher Guest fan and like "Dance Moms" or "So You Think You Can Dance," you will love this little film.

***My 1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project***

294 to go!

The Evil Dead (1981)

Five college students travel to a cabin in the woods of Tennessee only to discover their little vacation involves demons. 

 

A shaky camera moves ominously fast across a swamp and a forest floor.

 

Next we see five college students - Ashley (Bruce Campbell), Scotty, Cheryl, Linda and Shelly in a car singing and kidding around and wearing really terrible early 80's clothes.  We know they are college students because one of them is wearing a sweatshirt that says "Michigan State." As they head to the cabin, they cross a bridge with a sign that says, "Dangerous Bridge," and one wheel of the car sinks into the weak boards of the bridge.  Not a good sign.  Either is the ominous music.

 

They make their way down a heavily wooded road accompanied by eerie music until they get to a rundown cabin where a porch swing is banging against the wall of the cabin.  They struggle to find the keys to open the door.

 

"Don't go in there!" (That's me talking to the screen from my armchair).

 

They inspect the cabin and settle in for the night but not before a clock stops working, a strange force takes control of one of the girl's hands while she is writing and a trap door starts to open by itself.

 

I would say those are all things that would make me say, "Time to leave."

 

When the door to the cellar opens to the sound of symphonic music and cymbals, one of the guys decides it's a good idea to go down there.  Huh?

 

"Don't go down there!" (Me again).

 

But of course he does.  When he doesn't come back, Ashley goes looking for him and encounters a closed door.

 

"Don't go in there." (I can't help it).

 

But of course he does.  Turns out Scotty has found a recording of a past occupant of the cabin, a professor who was studying "The Book of the Dead."  They play the recording and the professor says in the recording that his wife had become possessed and then he recites an incantation.

 

Well, folks, that incantation was not good. All hell breaks out now as one by one, the students turn into demons and make Ashley's night a living hell.

 

Horror films work on our basic fears:  dark basements, locked doors, the occult, unexplained noises, thunder and lightning, fog, dark woods - and it's all here along with incredible blood and gore.  However, there is a scene where one of the girls is raped by a tree and that doesn't really fall into my basic fears category.

 

In 1979 a group of Detroit friends raised $375,000 to make a horror film about five college students possessed by demons.  They wanted to make a film that was "the ultimate experience in grueling terror."  I'm not so sure about the terror part because it was so over the top it was laughable at times, but it was certainly gory.  Stands as one of the early "Don't go in there" films that inspired others.

Why it's a Must See:  "This 'ultimate experience in grueling horror,' as it immodeslty bills itself in the end credits, changed the history of its genre.  Sam Raimi took the gore of Italian horror movies and mixed it with a proudly juvenile sense of humor -- making its teenage heroes so vapidly wholesome that we cannot wait...for them to die or be zombiefied.  Such self-consciousness would subsequently come to dominate screen horror...Today, it is hard to see anything but comedy...but we must remember that in 1982 the film had the same terrifying effect on audiences as The Blair Witch Project seventeen years later..."

---"1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die"

 

Rosy the Reviewer says...girls as ghouls and gratuitous gore.  Glorious. If you liked "The Blair Witch Project," this one is kinda like that so you might like it, but again, this one is very campy and very gory.

***Book of the Week***

Life from Scratch by Sasha Martin (2015)

 

A food blogger with an unhappy childhood seeks to cook a meal from every country in the world as a way to heal.

Growing up with an eccentric mother who eventually couldn't take care of Martin and her brother, Martin lived in a series of foster homes and eventually under the guardianship of her mother's friends, who moved to Europe, where Martin spent her formative years. She did not adapt well to her new family and changing environments, and when a tragedy entered her young life, it fell apart.  But the one thing that was a constant was her memories of cooking with her mother and her love of food. 

Later in life when she had reconnected with her mother, but was at loose ends after the birth of her child and haunted by her past, seeing the movie "Babette's Feast" and a gift of spice jars from around the world gave her the idea to cook food from every country in the world.  She embarked on that journey, eventually starting a popular food blog, "Global Table Adventure."  She gained some peace from that, learning to reach out and enjoy a sense of community.

"Though I may not have secured a new future, I'd secured something much better by filling those empty spice jars nearly four years ago. Cooking the world has opened my eyes to other ways of being, loving, and mothering.  Most importantly, it has taught me to savor the present moment...There's an ease to not knowing what will come next -- an ease I never could have felt before."

This book joins the many with recipes interspersed among the text. 
However, what sets this apart is her quest to prepare and eat a meal from every country and sharing many of those recipes. "Kabeli Palau" from Afghanistan; Bulgarian "Kompot;" Samoan Chocolate & Orange Coconut Rice Pudding." She shares her search for the sometimes strange ingredients and her successes and failures with the recipes. That quest and blogging about it helped her to express herself and to heal her sadness and regrets about the past and is the strongest part of the book. Unfortunately, it doesn't start until two-thirds of the way through.  I hate to say it, but some of the earlier parts of the book lumber a bit under Martin's rather slow-paced and sometimes melodramatic narrative.

However, I totally relate to her project and how her blog helped her at a time of change and stress. My blog has also helped me as I make my way through my "1001 Movies I Must See Before I Die Project" and this strange realm called retirement.

So this is a strong entry in the memoir plus recipes genre and the self-help world of food as healer.  Hopefully it will spur others to find an interesting project that will help them express themselves and find a sense of community and peace.

Rosy the Reviewer says...if you like your memoirs with recipes, you will probably like this book.  Now stop me before cooking my way around the world becomes my next big project!

Thanks for Reading!

That's it for this week.

See you Tuesday for

"Make Someone Happy"

 

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