Tag Archives: memoir

Book Review — Fat Girl by Judith Moore

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 Title: FAT GIRL — A TRUE STORY

Author: Judith Moore

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Be forewarned, all ye who enter here. This book is sad, sad, sad, sad, sad.

This book is SAD. Heartbreaking. Tragic. And yet, Judith Moore emerges from the other side, apparently intact.

“I will tell the story of my family and the food we ate. We were an unhappy family. With the exception of my father’s maternal grandparents and a woman who worked for them and my adorable and generous gay uncle, nobody much loved anybody…. Unhappy families, though, still have to eat. For my father and for me, who are this story’s primary fatsos, food was the source of some of our greatest pleasure and most terrible pain.”

When she was in first grade her mother told her that nobody wanted to be friends with a fat girl. Her mother also constantly told her how disgusted she was by her. Constantly.

How does a person survive that?? I can’t imagine.

Moore doesn’t try to conjure up psychobabble about any of it. She told her story frankly, honestly, and made herself ill reliving it.

The only attempt at analyzing her childhood comes at the end. “Would love have done me any good? Love, I think, would not have made me thin. Plus, by the time I thought of ‘love’ as an answer, it was too late for love. I was too fat for love. Even when I was slender, I was fat.”

Here’s my suggestion. Read this book, then go thank your parents for not being like Judith Moore’s.

Happy thoughts … happy, happy, happy thoughts. What’s your favorite happy memory? Where’s your happy place?

Book Review — Insatiable by Gael Greene

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Title: INSATIABLE — TALES FROM A LIFE OF DELICIOUS EXCESS

Author: Gael Greene

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Let me say right up front that Ms Greene is a horndog. A brilliantly funny, articulate, interesting horndog. But a horndog nonetheless. So if that bothers you, do not — I repeat, do NOT — read this book.

That said, I sure wish I could have been her roommate in 1952 Paris where she fled to escape “the Velveeta cocoon” of her Detroit.

She was the food critic for New York magazine for many years. She knew every restaurant, every chef, and every tidbit of gossip. It’s the ultimate sensual memoir — men and food. Perhaps she has written a ‘menoir.’ Sorry.

She shares her dalliances with Elvis, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, among others (many others!) along with recipes for things like Infidelity Soup with Turkey and Winter Vegetables. No Fried Egg Sandwich recipe, however.

I was delighted to see a section where she talked about the changing times and habits and smack-dab in the middle of this book about excess, there was this description of a 445-calorie lunch …

Lunch was breathtaking to look at and delicious, too: a perfect poached egg crowned with tomato coulis and snippets of chive, and beside it, slivered chicken riding in an artichoke heart on a cool pale green sea of cucumber puree. A concerto of texture, color, and taste. Okay, I thought. Nice lunch. But there was still more. A second plate, a statement in beige: thinnest slices of duck in a rich pepper-studded sauce, with sautéed apples.

“Can it be cream?” I asked. No, Michel insisted, looking wounded that I would suggest such perfidy. What looked suspiciously like a cream sauce was the result of whisking zero-calorie white cheese with duck stock and water in a blender.

“But surely the apples are sautéed in butter?”

“Absolument non,” Michel cried. “It is my pan of Teflon that does that.”

Dessert was yet another still life: a trembling little mold of delicate coffee custard capped with a crunch of espresso ice, beribboned with candied orange peel and a punctuation of ripe currants. I’d eaten a total of precisely 445 calories.

Delicous to read, eh? And I love when people — complete strangers — validate my theories!

She’s very funny, too. Here are a couple of my favorite lines:

• All my life, people have assumed I am an only child. No, I am not an only child. I just act as if I were the only child. I am left-handed. That’s enough to overcome.

• Still freshly hatched and an ingénue in the world of the grape, I was not used to drinking from a flute. The fragile crystal in my bridal trousseau included saucer goblets for champagne. (I’d grown up with the myth that a perfect breast would fit into a champagne goblet, and mine were embarrassingly Burgundy balloons. Certainly the flute banished that conundrum.)

Much of this book will appeal to those true foodies who know NYC, restaurants and chefs, but the name-dropping was lost on me and got a bit boring. But did I mention she was a horndog?

Do you know any horndogs? (No names, please!) Do they make you blush or make you laugh? Would you subscribe to the 400-calorie meal idea if they all were described like Michel’s?

INSATIABLE — TALES FROM A LIFE OF DELICIOUS EXCESS

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Book Review

Title: INSATIABLE — TALES FROM A LIFE OF DELICIOUS EXCESS

Author: Gael Greene

→ Devour it

Nibble till it’s gone

Spit it out

Let me say right up front that Ms Greene is a horndog. A brilliantly funny, articulate, interesting horndog. But a horndog nonetheless. So if that bothers you, do not — I repeat, do NOT — read this book.

That said, I sure wish I could have been her roommate in 1952 Paris where she fled to escape “the Velveeta cocoon” of her Detroit.

She was the food critic for New York Magazine for many years. She knew every restaurant, every chef, and every tidbit of gossip. It’s the ultimate sensual memoir — men and food. Perhaps she has written a ‘menoir.’ Sorry.

She shares her dalliances with Elvis, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, among others (many others!) along with recipes for things like Infidelity Soup with Turkey and Winter Vegetables. No Fried Egg Sandwich recipe, or Make My Day-villed Eggs, however. Sorry again.

I was delighted to see a section where she talked about the changing times and habits and smack-dab in the middle of this book about excess, there was this description of a 445-calorie lunch …

Lunch was breathtaking to look at and delicious, too: a perfect poached egg crowned with tomato coulis and snippets of chive, and beside it, slivered chicken riding in an artichoke heart on a cool pale green sea of cucumber puree. A concerto of texture, color, and taste. Okay, I thought. Nice lunch. But there was still more. A second plate, a statement in beige: thinnest slices of duck in a rich pepper-studded sauce, with sautéed apples.

“Can it be cream?” I asked. No, Michel insisted, looking wounded that I would suggest such perfidy. What looked suspiciously like a cream sauce was the result of whisking zero-calorie white cheese with duck stock and water in a blender.

“But surely the apples are sautéed in butter?”

“Absolument non,” Michel cried. “It is my pan of Teflon that does that.”

Dessert was yet another still life: a trembling little mold of delicate coffee custard capped with a crunch of espresso ice, beribboned with candied orange peel and a punctuation of ripe currants. I’d eaten a total of precisely 445 calories.

Delicous to read, eh? And I love when people — complete strangers — validate my theories!

She’s very funny, too. Here are a couple of my favorite lines:

• All my life, people have assumed I am an only child. No, I am not an only child. I just act as if I were the only child. I am left-handed. That’s enough to overcome.

• Still freshly hatched and an ingénue in the world of the grape, I was not used to drinking from a flute. The fragile crystal in my bridal trousseau included saucer goblets for champagne. (I’d grown up with the myth that a perfect breast would fit into a champagne goblet, and mine were embarrassingly Burgundy balloons. Certainly the flute banished that conundrum.)

Much of this book will appeal to those true foodies who know NYC, restaurants and chefs, but the name-dropping was lost on me and got a bit boring. But did I mention she was a horndog?

Do you know any horndogs? Do they make you blush or make you laugh? Would you subscribe to the 400-calorie meal idea if they all were described like Michel’s?

MY FOOTPRINT — CARRYING THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

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Book Review

Title: MY FOOTPRINT — CARRYING THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

Author: Jeff Garlin

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You might know Jeff Garlin from his role on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Or as the voice of The Captain in Wall-e.

Or as Buttercup the Unicorn in Toy Story 3.

But I saw him on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

He was talking about the book he wrote about his food addiction. In a hilarious segment, Jon teased him about his ADD, marveling that he could concentrate long enough to write a book when his attention span was barely long enough to finish his donut.

But Garlin said he hadn’t had fast food or sugar in over a year, which I thought was quite an accomplishment. So I picked up his book.

I always find memoirs fascinating, especially when they illuminate lives that are so different from mine. Of course, he’s a famous actor and comedian living the high life in Los Angeles, so that’s not much different from my suburban Midwestern bloggy life. What’s really different is this idea of being addicted to food. No matter how much I read about it, it still baffles me.

I talk all the time about the two kinds of people in the world … famous actors and me. No, not really. Rather, those people who eat to live (me) and those people who live to eat (him).

Around the same time I finished reading this book, but before I’d written about it, I stumbled upon an article about a 42-year-old woman in New Jersey whose goal in life is to be the fattest woman ever. She weighs 450 pounds and wants to get up to 1,000 pounds. She has a normal weight husband and two kids, whose weights they don’t discuss.

I’m not going to link to the article because it’s disgusting and ugly and I don’t want to attract the bad karma that doing so will bring. The point, however, is they spend $750 per WEEK at the grocery store fueling her feeding frenzy.

In the same way I find extreme eating contests vile, I also find it reprehensible that in a world of starving people and food insecurity right here is the good ‘ol US of A, someone is eating more than their share. Waaaaay more than their share.

Now the reason this comes back to Jeff Garlin’s book is that in addition to wanting to lose weight and get healthier, he also wanted to reduce his environmental footprint. Exactly the opposite of what this freak show woman in NJ is doing.

I found the juxtaposition jarring and oddly timed.

Garlin’s book was an illuminating read (although I still don’t truly understand food addiction). Plus, it had another weird coincidence, which I loved. Garlin and his son run into Eddie Van Halen and his son, Wolfgang, whose mother is Valerie Bertinelli whose weight loss memoir I also read. It’s like we’re all one big formerly fat dysfunctional family now! Or something.

MY FOOTPRINT was a fun read. He’s a comedian, after all. He was talking about eating healthier. “Finally, on the third day, you feel so different. That’s actually an understatement. You feel great and have so much energy that it’s like there is a rocket up your ass. I know a rocket up your ass doesn’t sound so wonderful. But it’s a special ass rocket that’s comfortable and gives you lots of energy.”

Garlin goes to the Pritikin Center every year or so — truly, the ultimate fat camp — and he credits it with saving his life. When he first went in 2003, he weighed 320 pounds and his cholesterol was over 1,000, where they stop measuring it. (By comparison, over 200 is considered unhealthy.)

But he has some funny stories about being there, like the Tanning Family from Philadelphia. “Tanning isn’t their name, it’s what they do. It’s all they do. Every day, all day, they lie by the pool: the father, the mother, and their two grown sons. After a couple of days they look like they’re starring in a minstrel show.”

Garlin’s a good and humble guy. He appreciates all his success and doesn’t take it for granted. He shows his flaws, which isn’t always the case with celebrities. He’s also learned some things on his journey that we can all relate to.

“That’s when I realize … there is no ending to this story. There is no ‘I lost my seventy pounds and my house is completely green.’ It’s an ongoing process; there is no endgame. It’s like success; you think that at some point you make it and then it’s easy. Nope. The hard work never goes away. In some ways it’s harder. No coasting. I know when I lose weight and get fit it will be hard enough to maintain that, let alone improve. The same with being green. I assume the challenges will just keep on coming. But I hope I’ll be up to it.”

I suspect this new philosophy of his is what made him turn the corner this time and start seeing some success in his quest for better health.

I just hope he doesn’t have to meet the lady from New Jersey. Heck, I hope nobody has to meet her!

Any thoughts about food addiction? Any thoughts about reducing your environmental footprint? Any thoughts about Curb Your Enthusiasm or Wall*E or Toy Story 3?

IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

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Book Review

Title: IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME — MY ADVENTURES IN LIFE AND FOOD

Author: Moira Hodgson

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Moira Hodgson is the restaurant critic for the New York Observer and also writes cookbooks. But this is a memoir of her life as it relates to food. Her father was in the British Foreign Service so throughout her childhood she lived in far-flung places like Saigon, Berlin, New York, Mexico, and Morocco. The anecdotes of her encounters with exotic food are entertaining and the book is sprinkled with unusual recipes, “Elephant’s Foot” and “Angels on Horseback” are two I’d like to try.

I’m amazed by restaurant critics who don’t have weight problems. “At the end of six months, despite eating out every night and most lunchtimes, I had lost nearly ten pounds. In all that time of free food, although I tasted everything that was put before me, I don’t believe I actually consumed an entire meal.”

Entertaining and charming.

What’s your favorite exotic food or recipe?