Nora Ephron: I Feel Bad About My Neck

By JULIETTE ROSSANT You might think Nora Ephron's new book I Feel Bad About My Neck (Knopf 2006) is not a book for foodies. You would think wrong. I Feel Bad About My Neck is so witty and so much about food in our lives, that every Foodie should read it. This is the kind of book that will make you laugh out loud on the Amtrak train to the chagrin of other passengers buried deep in The Wall Street Journal. You may have to force yourself not to wave it under their noses, shouting, "Get this book!" The subtitle, "and other thoughts about being a woman" may make men and younger women ill at ease. Ignore that feeling: get this book. There is an entire chapter called "The Lost Strudel or Strudel Perdu" (first published in The New York Times), which is all about Nora's search for a cabbage strudel which disappeared from Manhattan when Mrs. Herbst's Hungarian bakery closed. Nora finally found one twenty-three years later that was "divine" at Andre's Hungarian bakery on Second Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street in Manhattan: Tasting it again was like being able to turn back the clock, like having the consequences of a mistake erased; it was better than getting a blouse back that the dry cleaners had lost, or a cell phone returned that had been left in a taxi; it was a validation of never-giving-up and of hope-springs-eternal; it was many things, it was all things, it was nothing at all; but mostly, it was a cabbage strudel. (p. 116) Another chapter "Serial Monogamy: A Memoir" starts off with Nora's mother giving her a copy of The Gourmet Cookbook -- not the one published in 2004 by Ruth Reichl, but an older version published in 1962. Nora doesn't cook with it, but she does cook with The Flavour of France a small volume by Narcissa and Narcisse Chamberlain (a mother-daughter duo) with photos from by husband/father Samuel: For openers, I couldn't imagine why anyone named Narcissa wold name her daughter Narcisse. Also, I couldn't figure out how they collaborated. Did the three of them drive around France together, fighting over whose turn it was to sit in the backseat? Did Narcisse like working with her parents? If so, was she crazy? (p. 20) She moves on to Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Cookbook, and Michael Field's Cooking School. "This was right around the time that endive was discovered, which was folowed by arugula, which was followed by radicchio, which was followed by frisée, which was followed by the three M's –-mesculin, mache and microgreens--and that, in a nutshell, is the history of the last forty years from the point of view of lettuce." (p. 20) She makes connections between the pill and Julia Child, and the rush to entertain, to impress and to cook. Nora describes her jobs moving up in the freelance writers world, intertwined with the dishes she cooks, the ongoing imaginary conversations she has with cookbook authors, and her various marriages and divorces. She moves on to the food writer Lee Bailey: Would Lee Bailey ever in a million years consider cooking the Brazilian national dish? Or Lee Lum's lemon chicken? Certainly not. It was horribly clear that my entire life up to that point had been a mistake. I immediately got a divorce, gave my ex-husband all the furniture and made a study of Lee Bailey. (p. 26) She tries Martha Stewart and Nigella Larson and finally learns to trust herself again. It is a short history of the meaning of cookbooks and the importance of food and entertaining in our lives over the last 40 years. It rings true and funny at the same time. Book details: Publisher Amazon.com Barnes & Noble Previous articles: [Cookbook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, cookbooks, cookbook reviews, cookbook superchefblog --> back to superchefblog