SPOON FED

A salmagundi of memoir, cookbook and self-help bromides by New York Times food writer Severson.

Gradually delineating her many troubled years, the author writes about how she recognized and accepted her lesbianism, struggled with alcohol and substance abuse, survived fractured love affairs and coped with feelings of personal insufficiency. She made transformative job changes—from Alaska to San Francisco to New York—and tried to understand her ambivalence toward her own family, a complex attitude that ignites some of her somewhat sophomoric epiphanies near the end of the book. Severson punctuates her journey with stops to reflect on some iconic cooks who influenced her. “My heroes,” she writes, “are women who never abandoned the kitchen. They use cooking as a source of strength.” Each segment ends with a relevant recipe. Among the notables she visits, and reveres, are Marion Cunningham and Alice Waters (in the Bay Area), Ruth Reichl (New York), Leah Chase (New Orleans), Edna Lewis (Atlanta) and—perhaps surprisingly—Rachael Ray (“I mean, who doesn’t like to feel a little close to a celebrity?”). Severson begins and ends with her mother, who emerges as a lodestar as the text progresses. Throughout, the author is a fiery advocate for the importance of home cooking and family meals. Cooking for, and with, those you love, she writes, is one of life’s great pleasures. The recipes range from gumbo to sour cornbread. Though Severson characterizes herself as a hard worker, she did not work hard enough on her diction, which leaps back and forth from cliché (“a New York minute”) to treacly Wayne Dyer–isms (“The most valuable thing I have is who I am”).

Too much sugar, not enough salt.