Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table

Categories: Cookbooks , Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Nonfiction

I'm passing this along to all of you who enjoy a nice, quirky memoir.  Another librarian recommended Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone:  Growing up at the Table to me.   It's not a new book, but that just means there are two sequels, Comfort Me with Apples and Garlic and Sapphires to put on your list, too, if like me you didn't read them when they came out.

Reichl is a food writer, the editor of Gourmet magazine, a one-time chef, and most famously a former restaurant critic for the New York Times.  Tender at the Bone is the story of her childhood and youth. 

How she ever became a foodie is something of a mystery, given the stories she tells about her manic-depressive mother's odd ways of dealing with food, particularly her blithe habit of scraping the blue layer off of leftovers and declaring, "It's only mold." 

But a long line of mentors and fellow enthusiasts helped Reichl to some memorable meals, and she lovingly remembers every friend and every bite.  How a boarding school friend's French father introduced her to fois gras, how two courtly locals fed her couscous in Tunis on a college trip, the time she asked a lower Manhattan matron to teach her to make gefilte fish, to the days when she whipped up the daily specials at a Berkeley collective restaurant--Reichl fills her pages with warm and delicious stories. 

And she includes recipes.