Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci

Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci

304 Pages

Published October 2021 by Gallery Books

Publisher's Summary: 

From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen.

Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them.​

Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia; falling in love over dinner; and teaming up with his wife to create meals for a multitude of children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.

Written with Stanley’s signature wry humor, Taste is for fans of Bill Buford, Gabrielle Hamilton, and Ruth Reichl—and anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.

My Thoughts:

Print = recipes 

Audio = Stanley Tucci reading the book

Stanley Tucci may have helped me break my months' long reading slump with this book and I needed it to be in print, in a book that I held in my hands as I turned the pages. Plus, the recipes - I have so many new recipes to try! But can I tell you how sad it also makes me that I didn't get to hear Tucci reading this book?  So, here's my recommendation to you - checkout the physical book AND the audiobook so you get the best of both worlds. If you don't want to do that, do yourself a favor and at least check out some form of this book - I promise you will not be disappointed. 

Yes, it's very much a book about food and the role that food has played in Tucci's life. But it's also a book about family, about growing up in the sixty years ago in suburbia, about surviving lockdowns during a pandemic, about loss and love and friendship. And it's funny. Really. Tucci is a funny, self-deprecating guy. 

My earliest recollection of Stanley Tucci is from his 1996 film Big Night, a movie he wrote and co-directed about two Italian brothers struggling to keep their restaurant afloat. It's a gem which I cannot recommend highly enough and which forever linked Tucci with food for me. It didn't surprise me in the least to find his CNN series, Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy, a series where he is something of a foodie tourist. 

It's only fitting that Tucci should find himself on a television show about food. He grew up watching cooking shows with his mother, a woman who never cooked a bad meal, according to Tucci. He writes about family meals growing up, food on the sets of movies, restaurants he has frequented in his travels, and the meals he's prepared. Many of those meals have been enjoyed with famous friends; even as he's dropping those friends' names, Tucci is mocking himself for doing it. But hey, if you count Meryl Streep, Ryan Reynolds, Campbell Scott, Tony Shalhoub, and Colin Firth, I guess you're entitled. 

Now in his sixties, Tucci finds that food and the act of preparing it and eating it have overcome his previous passion of acting. When you get to the end of the book, you'll know why it has taken on an even greater importance for him in the past few years but I don't want to spoil that for you. Because I'm really hoping that you'll pick this one up. 

And now I need to go watch everything Stanley Tucci has ever been in because I feel like we're friends now. And, to be honest, I find him kinda sexy - I mean, he can cook, he's funny, and he dresses impeccably; what's not to love?

Stir: My Broken Brain and The Meals That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor

Sitr: My Broken Brain and The Meals That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor
Published June 2015 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: my copy checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary: 
At 28, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage, and thinking about starting a family. Then one day, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell, the sight in her left eye, and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved.

Jessica’s journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was able to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she drew strength from the restorative power of cooking and baking. Written with intelligence, humor, and warmth, Stir is a heartfelt examination of what it means to nourish and be nourished."

Woven throughout the narrative are 27 recipes for dishes that comfort and delight. For readers of M.F.K.Fisher, Molly Wizenberg, and Tamar Adler, as well as Oliver Sacks, Jill Bolte Taylor, and Susannah Cahalan, Stir is sure to inspire, and send you straight to the kitchen.


My Thoughts: 
I have had a sinus headache for a week. I'm not saying that to make you feel sorry; I'm saying it so that I can tell you that, even though I've had sinus headaches for more than forty years and even though I'm exceedingly familiar with their symptoms, every single time I get one that lasts for more than 24 hours, I begin to worry that I'm having an aneurysm or that I have a brain tumor. That's the way my thought process works.

It never occurred to Jessica Fechtor, on the other hand, to think that something might be seriously wrong with her when she felt a click in her head then what felt like water running inside her head. Not when she was rushed by ambulance to the emergency room of the local hospital. Not when she was transferred to another hospital, moved to the ICU, not when all of her family raced to be by her side. Not until they had to open her skull and put a clip on a blood vessel in her brain did she begin to understand that her life might have taken a turn for which she was not prepared.

Fechtor was a driven young woman who was working on her doctorate, running miles everyday, teaching, and entertaining regularly. She and her husband were nearly ready to start a family. She was not, in other words, a person who was used to sitting, taking it easy. But when a severe infection set in after her first brain surgery, it was the beginning of a long road to recovery. Fechtor was blessed to have family and friends who stepped up and really helped. But it was hard for her to sit on the sidelines, especially when it came to working in the kitchen. So it's no real surprise that it was the desire to get back to feeding her people that got Fechtor to push herself to recovery. It was not just a matter of building up stamina again. Fechtor had to learn to deal with the fact that her depth perception was off - the knife in her right hand might end up slicing the fingers on her left hand instead of the apple that hand was holding, the liquid she was pouring into a bowl was just as likely to run all over the counter instead of into the bowl.

I enjoyed this book on multiple levels - as a kind of medical memoir, as a memoir of a life in which food played a huge part, and for Fechtor's writing, which she honed by writing a blog as part of her recovery.

"Being sick is supposed to come along with grand realizations about What Really Matters, but I don't know. I think deep down, we're already aware of what's important and what's not. Which isn't to say that we always live our lives accordingly. We snap at our spouses and curse the traffic and miss the buds pushing up from the ground. But we know. We just forget to know sometimes. Near-death forces us to remember. It pushes us into a state of aggressive gratitude that throws what's big and what's small into the sharpest relief It's awfully hard to worry about the puddle of milk when you're just glad to be here to spill it."

All of the recipes Fechtor includes in the book come with the story behind them - the morel mushroom and fresh pea dinner she had on her 27th birthday that she worked to recreate - and explanations for why recipes give particular instructions, such as salting a chicken days in advance of roasting it. These recipes are all getting copied before I take this book back to the library!

Perhaps this was my favorite bit:

"Home is a verb. It's not only where we live, but how." 

I've never thought it home in exactly that way before, but it is absolutely the way I feel about my home. Fechtor has inspired me to up my game in the kitchen to get back to being the person who expresses my love through food but also in all of the ways I treat people - taking into consideration what will make the people I care about happy, what will provide comfort, what will make them want to linger.

Whiskey In A Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me about Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits by Reese Witherspoon

Whiskey In A Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me about Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits by Reese Witherspoon
Narrated by Reese Witherspoon
Published September 2018 by Touchstone
Source: audiobook checked out through my local library

Publisher's Summary:
Reese Witherspoon’s grandmother Dorothea always said that a combination of beauty and strength made southern women “whiskey in a teacup.” We may be delicate and ornamental on the outside, she said, but inside we’re strong and fiery.

Reese’s southern heritage informs her whole life, and she loves sharing the joys of southern living with practically everyone she meets. She takes the South wherever she goes with bluegrass, big holiday parties, and plenty of Dorothea’s fried chicken. It’s reflected in how she entertains, decorates her home, and makes holidays special for her kids—not to mention how she talks, dances, and does her hair (in these pages, you will learn Reese’s fail-proof, only slightly insane hot-roller technique). Reese loves sharing Dorothea’s most delicious recipes as well as her favorite southern traditions, from midnight barn parties to backyard bridal showers, magical Christmas mornings to rollicking honky-tonks.

It’s easy to bring a little bit of Reese’s world into your home, no matter where you live. After all, there’s a southern side to every place in the world, right?


My Thoughts:
Guys, do not check out the audiobook copy of this book from your local library. Nothing against Witherspoon's narration (well, sort of, but more on that later); but you're missing all of the recipes, tips, and pictures. There is a pdf that includes all of these things if you've bought the audiobook, but I didn't and I think it took away from the book. I really don't even know why the library carries the book on audio, given how much you lose by listening.

Now, back to that narration. I love, love Reese Witherspoon. She's a woman who has managed to have a successful acting career for almost 30 years, she's an entrepreneur, and she's huge book lover who has done a lot to promote books. And I've always thought her voice was charming and sweet. But, I'm sorry to say, it really started to grate on my nerves as the book went on. Now I'm a little worried that the next time I see her in a movie, I'm going to have this experience coloring my impression of her performance.

I'm sorry to say that's not my only beef with this book.

The book is, of course, Witherspoon's take on her life growing up in the South. But throughout the book, she seems to imply that all Southern women mind their manners, love hot rollers, and wallpaper and monogram everything. The thing is, Witherspoon's experience is as a privileged, white woman. I've been to the South and can vouch that not every woman in that part of the country wears pearls to the grocery story and minds her manners in public. Again, Witherspoon is writing from her own experience, but in trying to wrap her lily-white arms around all women, she's largely ignoring a huge population of Southern women. She does periodically talk about "strong black women" and civil rights activism, but those pieces felt compulsory and not as heart-felt as the rest of the book.

Once in a while, too, I got the impression that Witherspoon was a woman who had never much been out of the South, which is obviously not true. How else, then, to account for the fact that she seems to think that some sayings, some behaviors, are strictly Southern? For example, more than once she talked about how friendly the people are in the South. But I'm told on a regular basis, by people who've come to Nebraska from other places, that the Midwest has the nicest people. I'm not saying we're the only nice people in the country; I'm just saying Witherspoon should be aware that Southerners are either.

These are all things that might not have been as noticeable to me if I had been looking at this book, eager to turn the shiny pages and see the next beautiful image.

All of that being said, I did like this book (and I'm sure it will be hugely successful despite its flaws). Witherspoon's personality shines throughout the book as she shares family stories, the ways her upbringing formed her, and lots of humor. I mean, who else is going to give you a two-page spread about how to hot-roller your hair (that includes telling you to leave the house with the rollers still in your hair!)?

I did learn some things about the South that do make it unique. That Easter scene in the movie Steel Magnolias? Apparently, that's common in the South. Of course, they can probably count on warmer temps in Tennessee at Easter than we can count on in Nebraska. I think my favorite parts of the book were when Witherspoon got personal. In one story, Witherspoon tells about how, on the day of her wedding to her current husband, her best friend reminded her that "You only get married for the second time once,"making Reese crack up laughing and easing the tension. I sort of love her best friend!

I will be checking out the print copy of this book as soon as it's available because I have to get my hands on some of the recipes Witherspoon includes in the book. She talks a lot about food in this book and it's only through tremendous willpower that I didn't find myself regularly driving off to find some comfort food (although even Witherspoon couldn't talk me into trying black-eyed peas again).

I'd also like to be able to get a copy of all of the books she recommends here in both the book club section and a section where she talks about Southern novels she loves.

Cook Book Love

For those of you who don't use Twitter, I can understand why you would think that it's largely a time suck of people posting the minutiae of their lives. But not using it means you don't get to have great conversations with friends, like the one I had this weekend with Trish (@trinicapini) and JoAnn (@lakesidemusing). Trish was talking about using her mother's old Betty Crocker cookbook to try recipes for cream puffs and cobbler. It got the three of us to talking about the old cookbooks our moms have or that we've inherited and eventually prompted me to pull mine off the shelf.

This little baby was published in 1951 and it is both a wealth of knowledge and and a source of amusement. It's a five-ring binder, divided into sections which sometimes baffle me; I often find that recipes are in sections where I wouldn't expect to find them.

I'm impressed with the fact that the very first section is one on nutrition. It has a table for the recommended daily allowances, broken down by men, women, pregnancy, children, male adolescents, female adolescents. Would you like to know what they figured as the average weight of the men and women they were calculating caloric intake for? For men, 154 pounds; for women, 123 pounds. Yikes! I know we're taller than people were in 1951 but for a society so obsessed  with body image and healthy lifestyles, we really have let ourselves go! And these were people for whom Better Homes & Gardens recommended "butter and other spreads" be eaten every day for their vitamins. By the way, American cheese slices are listed under desserts on the calorie chart.

The next section is one for meal planning. It really does have some very practical tips but when it launches into some suggested meals, things get interesting, if for no other reason than the number of courses they seemed to think people would serve. All meals included: meat, fish poultry; appetizer; starchy food; vegetable; bread; salad; dessert; and something labeled "nice to serve." Here's a sample meal you will not be seeing on my table any time soon: veal birds (what is a veal bird?), tomato juice, paprika potatoes, fried onions, Parker House rolls, head lettuce with french dressing, apricot whip and for your "nice to serve" item, bacon.

Just as I did with the first two sections, I found the section labeled "Special Helps" to be both helpful and ridiculous. There is actually a page titled "Gay garnishes." Apparently you're meant to surprise your baked ham with a new garnish - pineapple and cloves. The spice list has about half of the spices shown that I use in my kitchen and the recommended list for things needed to start a kitchen includes only one spoon for cooking. ''Cut your cooking corners" includes a tip on getting onion juice (have you ever seen a recipe that calls for onion juice?) and a suggestion to "spank that cooky with a fork."

I was surprised that there weren't fewer "strange" recipes. When I tried to find images for the recipes that I did find strange, quite a lot of them are were recent pictures. Evidently they aren't as strange as I think they are. Clearly in places like Estonia, for example, aspics are still quite popular. I was surprised to find "foreign cookery" making an appearance already in 1951.The book is loaded with recipes and tips that we may all need to fall back on as a way to stretch our grocery dollars (an entire chapter on canning and freezing, for example). I'm definitely going to be trying the recipe for what is essentially homemade Bisquik.

I have a lot of cook books but, to be honest, I've never really "read" them. I pull them out when I'm looking for recipes. That changes as of yesterday - I have a couple of dozen books in my kitchen that are begging to be read and discovered! Do you read cook books?