Amy Huang Huang itibaren V'yazova, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine
I really enjoyed this book for more reason than I can totally explain. I haven't read many foodie books, but enjoyed the rapturous walk through her early childhood in rural Pennsylvania, where she and her four siblings were raised in a burnt-out ruins of a 19th century silk mill with a French ballerina mother and a creative father that loved to have theme parties for the hundreds. There were smoke pits, butchered baby lamb and Chinese lanterns that illuminate this perfect, idyllic childhood, ....that is, until her parents divorced, and left her and her youngest brother to fend for themselves while they both wandered off in depression. Then turn the tables: Gabrielle turns to drugs and lies about her age to get various jobs in restaurants, wanders in and out of three colleges and eventually lands smack in the middle of the catering industry in New York City, where she finally lands her own restaurant, meets her husband and has two children. Yes, the book wanders a bit, and at times, Gabrielle seems to whine. She swears like a sailor and is rather unapologetic about her mistakes and the hard places it takes her. I can see where some readers are turned off with the book and think it isn't deserving of Anthony Bourdain's praise. But along the way, as I listen to Gabrielle's voice and her philosophical thoughts about life and this strange marriage she has made with an Italian man who doesn't even live with her, I fell in love with this book. There's her thoughts on coffee, p. 205. "I hate hating women but double-skim half-decaf vanilla latte embarrasses me. I ordered a plain filtered coffee, as if I were apologizing on behalf of my gender...." and then her thoughts on the Farmer's Market, p. 242, "A time when we just grew it and cooked it and ate it and didn't talk so much about it. When we didn't crow all over town about our artisanal, local, organic fwa fwa. We just went to the farm and bought the milk." Yes, thank you. I see all these things and think the same things, but keep my mouth shut because I'm afraid to say those things and offend somebody. When she goes to a woman's panel on female chefs in the industry and fellow panelists are raving about "how much better than women are then men," but stating nothing else to help these women just starting out, especially averting the topic of how difficult it is to "make it" and how twelve to fourteen hours are demanded. She says nothing because her entire work ethic her entire life is been about "putting her head and down and just working hard," not concentrating on the politics of gender or equality. Her introspections on motherhood are great. "But at thirty-eight years old, hugely pregnant with my future, pure, precious son, I don't want to do anything badass. I want to be J. Crew catalogue-clean. I don't want to be that woman who can-and did-get on all fours and scrape the pancake batter off the oven door after having just cooked three hundred eggs with near constant monologue of fucking fuck of a fuck issuing from her lips.......when you are the one throwing the party every night, emptying the ashtrays, making sure the tonic is cold, the limes fresh, the shifts covered, the meat perfectly cooked and rested.....it will leave some marks. Someone has to stay in the kitchen and do the bones of the thing, to make sure it stands up, and if it's you, so be it." As someone who has worked hard her entire life, now works ten hours shifts, has to have dinner ready thirty minutes after I walk in the door and homework to assist, house to be cleaned and ponytails to be tied, I think Gabrielle is funny, truthful and a goddess to put it all on paper. Some of her lines resonated so closely I thought I had wrote them myself.