Like a great dinner party, Erway’s memoir is full of fabulous food and engaging conversation.
A New York City food blogger chronicles her time as a culinary shut-in.
Erway had her epiphany while eating a greasy hamburger. Like many New Yorkers, she rarely cooked at home, instead indulging in the countless restaurants her adopted hometown offered. However, while New York is arguably the epicurean capital of the world, many of the eateries serve little more than expensive greasy hamburgers. Erway decided that both her stomach—and her wallet—needed a break. Her solution was to go on a complete restaurant fast and document the process—the discoveries, the recipes and the restrictions—on her blog, noteatingoutinny.com. During the course of her two-year experiment, she cooked her way through three apartments, one relationship and an attempt at dating. She also spawned several award-winning dishes, immersed herself in New York’s foodie underground and managed to cook tripe. Most remarkable, however, is not the fact that she made it that long without eating out—she often took premade food with her in case of emergencies. Rather, it’s how appealing and simple the author makes it seem. She makes whipping up a batch of homemade basil ice cream seem as easy as microwave pizza. She turns foraging in New York parks into an adventure. And she makes every success, including her prize-winning no-knead bread recipe, into readers’ victory as well, including recipes for her favorite dishes at the end of each chapter. All of this is presented in a light, girl-next-door manner; the author gleefully mixes and sautés through life, making you want to grab a spoon and help.
Like a great dinner party, Erway’s memoir is full of fabulous food and engaging conversation.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-592-40525-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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