Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds by Hetty Lui McKinnon My rating: 5 of 5 stars For those that know me, the fact that I have pledged to try at least one of the eggplant recipes in this book if I try ALL the other recipes, is probably the most astounding review I could ever give a cookbook. But this is more than just a cookbook. It is a story of the way food both nurtures and cultivates memories and helps us work through our grief to find those tangible things in life that help us hold on in healthy ways. McKinnon writes beautifully about both her parents, but particularly her memories of her father. The book opens with a quote from Francis Weller's The Wild Edge of Sorrow : "Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close." McKinnon's father, Wai Keung Lui
CROSS-POSTED at Reb's Reading Rants and Raves Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain My rating: 5 of 5 stars cw: suicide I wasn't prepared for the emotional journey I would take in listening to Anthony Bourdain read this book, originally published in 2000. Published at a time that didn't know Covid. Published at a time when sensibilities were altogether different. Published at a time, of course, when Anthony Bourdain was alive. Of course what was raw and real and shocking in 2000 is still so today--perhaps more so. But it takes on new meaning to hear Bourdain's bravado in joking about suicide, his unabashed love for the rough and tumble culinary world, and his blasé attitude toward airborne illnesses, the like of which he never lived to see. While certainly one could criticize Bourdain's own seeming acceptance of the sexism and toxicity that he says is innate to the "culinary underbelly", the fact remains there