Food memoirs

Culture, Media, General
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I’m not a big fan of cookbooks (although I just enjoyed the Downton Abbey one), but I love food-related memoirs. Two I’ve enjoyed lately are:

A Fork in the Road: Tales of Food, Pleasure, and Discovery on the Road by James Oseland, et al.
Lots of fascinating stories and authors who I didn’t know about.

On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, With Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu
Made a good companion to the Noodles episode from the show Confucius Was a Foodie.

Anyone else have some favorites they’d like to recommend? Thanks.

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“Butter”. I read a galley version and can’t recall the name of the author. It also has a lot of historical material on the sociological and economic importance of this sublime form of dairy. Similarly, “Salt”, which IIRC was a bestseller, is a fascinating read, though it isn’t a personal memoir.

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Is it Butter: A Rich History by Elaine Khosrova?

Thanks for the suggestions!

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Mark Kurlansky also wrote about oysters and cod in addition to salt.

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Yes, that’s the butter book. If memory serves, it has some recipes too but as I said, the version I read wasn’t the final one. Someone in my yarn group is a librarian. A few years ago, she brought back a heap of freebies from a book convention and gave away the ones that didn’t interest her. I also took one on cannibalism but mislaid it somewhere and haven’t yet read it.

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Yuck - think I’d pass on the cannibalism one!

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This year I really enjoyed Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi. And an old favorite is Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl, about her time as the New York Times restaurant critic.

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We randomly stumbled across a book at the library that a couple in our family has already enjoyed. Super Sushi Ramen Express by Booth. A memoir of a 3 month eating trip in Japan with his family.

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Here’s another I’m enjoying:

The Book of Eating: Adventures in Professional Gluttony by Adam Platt.

He has a nice self-deprecating style, and the stories of his global upbringing are fascinating. It’s a good mixture of food and travel memories.

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Ugh I had that book out for like 1.5 months but I couldn’t get to it so it went back to the library, unread. Thanks for the reminder.

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It’s possible that I have a shelf full of non-cookbook food reads! :grin:
-Setting the Table (Danny Meyer)
-Garlic and Sapphires, Delicious, and Save Me the Plums (all by Ruth Reichel, haven’t gotten to SMTP yet)
-Heat (Bill Buford)
-Service Included (Phoebe Damrosch)
-Eating My Words (Mimi Sheraton)
-Born Round (Frank Bruni)

And one that I haven’t read yet but I’ve had on loan for too long from a friend… Shark’s Fin and Szechuan Pepper by Fuschia Dunlop.