Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life

by Kim Severson

Book Overview

From the prominent New York Times food writer, a memoir recounting the tough life lessons she learned from a generation of female cooks-including Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, Rachael... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159448757X
• ISBN13: 9781594487576
• Release Date: April 2010
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

I Liked This Book

This is no mind-shattering, earth-changing story, but it was a very pleasant read. I felt the author was completely candid and told the story the way it was from her perspective. It's often the little things that are life-altering and it's the little things that really matter most in lives and relationships. Many readers will be drawn to the book by the celebrity chefs named, but it's a tale that I think most of us can relate to on some level. So much of our lives are spent trying to figure out what matters, learning who we really are and finding what we feel passionate about. It's a book that I wouldn't hesitate to hand to a houseguest who wanted something to read.

Spoon Fed

I liked and recommend this book. Kim Severson's autobiography is frank and moving. An alcoholic and drug user from her teen years, she relates how her writing about food and meeting eight important cooks, working with some of them, befriending some of them, saved her. She came from a family with an Italian mother, a Norwegian father, and five children. All of them ate meals together, usually in the kitchen. Her mother cooked and the family ate! Kim started writing, and stopped drinking and using drugs. She worked in Alaska for a while, then came to the Bay Area, and stayed in the states. She interviewed and learned from some of the nation's most famous cooks, did food reviews, and absorbed attitudes and behavior from them. A lesbian, she has a brother who is also homosexual. They support each other, and she eventually found peace in her life and with her family, who also love, support, and accept her and the family she has made for herself. It's a touching and interesting memoir, and has a lot of insight into the way cooks, from our mothers to Rachel Ray, have affected our food and behavior and the way we live.

Rare and well-done.

If you can ignore the ridiculously exaggerated sub-title, "How Eight Cooks Saved My Life," you will find much to enjoy in this pastiche of memoir and interviews. For those of us whose passion for cooking has surpassed the hobby stage into something approaching addiction, these interviews add a uniquely personal note to one's previous knowledge of these stars of the culinary world. Ruth Reichl and Rachael Ray are presented as the genuinely nice people they appear to be from their writings and TV appearances, while Marcella Hazan - well, no surprise there, either. Inspiring is the word that describes the feeling derived from the majority of the chapters, but inspiring is too weak an adjective for Ms. Severson's article about Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock. We cookbook collectors often say that a particular recipe is "alone worth the price of the cookbook." In my opinion, it is this chapter that is uniquely precious and memorable. The memoir sections are skillfully interwoven throughout the book. In the hands of a lesser author, what could have been clumsy and intrusive is, instead, the "connective tissue" that ties the interviews of these unique individuals together. Well done!

Delicious and refreshingly honest.....

Kim Severson serves up a modern tale of learning to become her authentic-self through life-lessons of those people whom she admires, who just happen to be cooks/chefs. Ms. Severson is a food writer for the New York Times and in this food memoir, "Spoon Fed" she uses her interviews with 8 cooks to weave a very personal tale of becoming an adult, being gay, alcoholism and substance abuse, discovering her passion for writing about food, walking those tricky roads of familial relationships (especially with her mother) and so much more. And like the saying goes; "if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs"! I found Ms. Severson's story to be refreshingly honest as well as, heart warming. "Spoon Fed" is an enjoyable book. It's a fast read but that does not mean that it will leave you empty. On the contrary, "Spoon Fed" is a full meal and more. Ms. Severson includes wonderful recipes at the end of each chapter that are touchstones to each story as well as delicious. I have to admit, that this book is right up my ally and I am a bit biased. Being a native of New Orleans, cooking and food are also my passion in life. I found a kinship with this author and enjoyed her voice, sense of humor and her crazy world of, "food, glorious food"! But you do not have to be a foodie or a chef to enjoy this book. It is a wonderful story of growing-up and embracing your true self, no matter where you come from or what you do for a living, we are all just human. Ms. Severson's life and story shows that we may take different roads but we all pretty much end up at the same place, back to ourselves.

Kim had it in her all along...

What attracted me to this book was Kim Severson's choice of the eight women who saved her life. Ranging from notable critics and chefs, (as well as her Mom) to the youngest and newest addition, Rachel Ray, it tempted me with promise. Severson has an easy to read writing style, coupled with honesty, humor, and pathos (New Orleans Katrina, for example). Many of her eight women had a privileged introduction to the food world, Kim did not. I was glad to see Rachel Ray among these women as I truly enjoy her food shows and books. Loving to cook, and having a repetoire of difficult gourmet ventures on my belt, Rachel encourages that anyone can cook at home, eat healthier, learn to substitute. While she may espouse preshredded cheese, it is real cheese, she uses mostly fresh ingredients. What is there to criticize about that! Alice Waters, Marcella Hazan, the aformentioned Ruth, Edna Lewis, Leah Chase, Marion Cunningham and Kim's mother all share a small part in Kim's personal growth. Self limited thinking, lack of confidence, alcohol addiction became a thing of the past. Kim had it all the time. A unique feature is Kim's openess about being gay, and that it can be tied with the ability to pray and be loved. Her interpretation of God's love, should you wish to go there, is gentle and forthright. Some recipes and guidelines tempt me to give them a try, but that is not a cookbook per se, it a growth book.