Thursday, January 16, 2020

Books from the Backlog - The Comfort Food Diaries

Today I'm linking up with Carole from Carole's Random Life of Books for Books from the Backlog.  I really enjoy the chance to feature a book that's been hiding in the piles of books for far too long!


Goodreads: The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish to Mend a Broken Heart by Emily Nunn

Blurb:  In the tradition of Elizabeth Gilbert and Ruth Reichl, former New Yorker editor Emily Nunn chronicles her journey to heal old wounds and find comfort in the face of loss through travel, home-cooked food, and the company of friends and family.
One life-changing night, still reeling from her beloved brother's sudden death a few weeks earlier, Emily Nunn was dumped by her handsome architect fiance and evicted from the apartment they shared, losing in the same moment all sense of family, home, and financial security. After a few glasses of wine, heartbroken and lost, Emily, an avid cook and professional food writer, poured her heart out on Facebook. The next morning she woke up with a terrible hangover and a feeling she'd made a terrible mistake, only to discover she had more friends than she knew, many of whom invited her to come visit and cook with them while she put her life back together. Thus began the Comfort Food Tour.
Searching for a way forward, Emily travels the country, cooking and staying with relatives and friends, among them renowned chefs Mark Bittman and Ina Garten. She also travels back to revisit scenes from her dysfunctional Southern upbringing, dominated by her dramatic, unpredictable mother and her silent, disengaged father. Her wonderfully idiosyncratic aunts and uncles and cousins come to life in these pages, all part of the rich Southern story in which past and present are indistinguishable, food is a source of connection and identity, and a good story is often preferred to a not-so-pleasant truth. But truth, pleasant or not, is what Emily Nunn craves, and with it comes an acceptance of the losses she has endured, and a sense of hope for the future.
In the salty snap of a single Virginia ham biscuit, in the sour tang of Grandmother's Lemon Cake, Nunn experiences the healing power of comfort food, and offers up dozens of recipes for the wonderful meals that saved her life. With the biting humor of David Sedaris and the emotional honesty of Cheryl Strayed, Nunn delivers a moving account of her descent into darkness and her gradual, hard-won return to the living.

Why It Needs to Come Off the Shelf:  I've actually already read this but I remember nothing about it other then I wanted to try some of the recipes which is why I ended up with a physical copy (I had an eARC) of the book.  So I should probably did that.

9 comments:

  1. I’m generally not a fan of foodie memoirs but this sounds like something I’d read, thanks for sharing!

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  2. I'm always in for a book that includes food. It would be lovely for you to try out the recipes and post about them.

    (BTW, I love the idea of Books from the Backlog. I've just added it to my master list of memes.)

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  3. I love the sound of this one, Katherine! I bet the recipes are wonderful. I couldn't imagine having to deal with so many terrible things at the same time. I love how food brings people together.

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  4. I like the sound of this one. I can totally relate to the concept.

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  5. Nice to have it on your shelf anyway and you can't beat home cooked food.

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  6. I have a small number of books I need to re-read for the same reason...I can't remember anything about them!

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  7. This sounds like a worthwhile memoir. I hope you do enjoy it when you re-read it. Maybe it will start coming back to you as you read it again. :-)

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  9. I'm intrigued about this story of hers. Gonna look it up. Love how she had support and was invited to cook with those shoulders to lean on.

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