Suzan Colón and Food Memoirs

Listening to Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl read by Bernadette Dunne is truly a treat. I fell in love with Ruth and wish she was cooking for me. She always makes everything sound like so much fun just to be around her. This is her third memoir, the first being Tender at the Bones and then the second Comfort Me with Apples. All are real treats. This latest is about her job at the New York Times as their new food editor. She comes from New York City originally, but has been in the Los Angeles area since college days. She decides to disguise herself from the restaurant staff as she previews the restaurants she will be writing on in her food column. She likes to compare the service she gets as an unknown with all the attention she gets as "The Food Critic". Her husband is so ready to move to New York, after the L.A. riots and all the bad news in California, wanting to change his news job with CBS into the Big Apple news team. And he gets his wish, encouraging Ruth along. I love to read about those amazing husbands who want their wives to work, thrive and succeed. At least that is the way Ms. Reichl tells her story. Like Julia Child in My Life in France and Julie Powell in Julie and Julia. The husbands are the heroes. It must be the romance in me. I loved this book, absolutely loved this book.

Then I followed it with another great food memoir, Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipes for Hope in Hard Times by Suzan Colón, also on audio, this time read by the author. Another New Yorker, Suzan has lost her great job in magazine publishing, and her 401K has hit rock bottom and it is hard to live on one salary. Luckily she is married and she has a Cobra medical insurance account. She looks back to her family for the inspiration for the book, and gets it perfect. All New Yorkers, all struggling, it's her Nana that is the hero in this book. She has saved her recipes from the depression and Suzan reads over the recipes and her diary entries and her essays and discovers the resolve of Nana to survive and to thrive. I think the opening line is about making soup for the family when times are hard. I think she likes cooking for her husband Nathan, and creating a warm home for him to come home to. Normally her schedule would have her getting home at eight, and who wants to cook then. It's a tender love story, of family, faith, and love, of course I want to share this with other people. Now, to get a copy for our library here. On the back of the book in the review, the writer said it is reminiscent of How to Cook a Wolf  by Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. Now to get my hands on that.