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Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life |  | Author: Kim Severson
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $11.25
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Seller: BookDude18
Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 32470
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 242
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 159448757X
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5
EAN: 9781594487576
ASIN: 159448757X
Publication Date: April 15, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
From the prominent New York Times food writer, a memoir recounting the tough life lessons she learned from a generation of female cooks-including Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, Rachael Ray, and Marcella Hazan.
Somewhere between the lessons her mother taught her as a child and the ones she is now trying to teach her own daughter, Kim Severson stumbled. She lost sight of what mattered, of who she was and who she wanted to be, and of how she wanted to live her life. It took a series of women cooks to reteach her the life lessons she forgot-and some she had never learned in the first place. Some as small as a spoonful, and others so big they saved her life, the best lessons she found were delivered in the kitchen.
Told in Severson's frank, often funny, always perceptive style, Spoon Fed weaves together the stories of eight important cooks with the lessons they taught her-lessons that seemed to come right when she needed them most. We follow Kim's journey from an awkward adolescent to an adult who channeled her passions into failing relationships, alcohol, and professional ambition, almost losing herself in the process. Finally as Severson finds sobriety and starts a family of her own, we see her mature into a strong, successful woman, as we learn alongside her.
An emotionally rich, multilayered memoir and an inspirational, illuminating series of profiles of the most influential women in the world of food, Spoon Fed is Severson's story and the story of the women who came before her-and ultimately, a testament to the wisdom that can be found in the kitchen.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 24
 How Kim Severson Changes Lives July 19, 2010
Irena Chalmers (Kingston, NY United States)
Spoon Fed is Kim Severson's autobiography. In her book she paints a word portrait of herself that is a mirror of ourselves reflecting our own anxieties: am I good enough to do this, will they like me despite the flaws in my character, what is the meaning of friendship, of love of food and cooking....of God? The book will make you laugh and weep. I have long admired Kim's work but waited to read it until it became available on Kindle. After devouring it, I have since bought three hard copies for friends and plan to recommend it everyone I meet.
Irena Chalmers
 I liked what she was doing, just now how she did it. July 6, 2010
Peter Shermeta (Rochester, MI)
Kim Severson bears her soul in this memoir that chronicles how she found comfort and acceptance through and around food (with a little help from sobriety). She details many problems she had making friends, meeting her parents' approval and finding love. And the book was good, but it would not have taken much to make it better.
I am going to be a little tough on this book. The subtitle of "How Eight Cooks Saved My Life" sounds good and certainly looks good on paper, but the chronology of the book suggests otherwise. While the author candidly describes her problems, *my* interpretation was that her life was "saved" before she even met the large majority of these eight cooks. Let's call this book Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Changed My Life. It is certainly less dramatic, but I would still read that book.
The constant drive to compare her own life to Ruth Reichl was a distraction. I appreciate that Ms. Severson was up front and honest and admits that she has somewhat of a complex about Reichl. Reichl was a prominent (maybe the single most prominent) food critic. Severson becomes a food critic. Reichl wrote a memoir (followed by others) about how she developed into a foodie in Tender at the Bone. Severson writes this memoir. I am oversimplifying. If you read the book you will see it. It boils down to a seemingly compulsive need to best Reichl at a game where the cards are stacked in Reichl's favor. If Ruth Reichl jumped off a bridge, someone keep an eye on Kim Severson.
This book could stand apart from Ruth Reichl and I almost feel that the author does not truly understand that. The eight stories she shares in this memoir are inspiring for anyone who aspires to better appreciate food. To foodies, and more specifically food bloggers, Kim Severson's experiences are epic and the book offers some valuable insight into food and how to write about it.
This book just needs to be given to a good friend who could go through it and clean it up a little before it went to print. Overall I am more positive than negative on this book. I think food memoirs are interesting and Spoon Fed offers perspective that I had not read before.
Deliciously Candid June 22, 2010
Amy Reiley (USA)
Kim Severson is not only one of the best food journalists in America today, she's one of the most honest. If you have any desire to learn what it is like to work in the food world (in any capacity other than working as a line cook in a restaurant), you need to read this book.
Severson's years of experience as a reporter for two of the country's finest newspaper food sections (San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times) allowed her the opportunity to become close to some of the most iconic women in the culinary world. In this refreshingly candid memoir, she chronicles these relationships and the lessons on life each woman gifted to Severson through the relationships.
All in all, it is a yummy, enlightening and inspiring read.
Kim Severson is a beautiful writer June 21, 2010
NaughtiLiterati (NYC)
I TORE through this book and always perk right up whenever I see that she has a new piece in the times. Being a food journalist in the top newspaper in the world can't be as easy as we think, but Severson uses her gift to show us the most rewarding parts by telling us about the people we most admire and who she has had the extreme fortune to work so closely with. The descriptions of the food and the people behind them are sooo amazing. If you are not familiar with her, this is the perfect introduction, and if you are then this is the book you've been waiting for!
Interesting but not compelling entry in the "how cooking changed my life" genre June 11, 2010
Melanchthon (USA)
In this breezily written, serious but never morose memoir of her life as it intersects with food, the author connects eight separate episodes of self-realization each with a particular phase in her life, a cook she associated with it, and then a particular recipe (which she includes at the end of the chapter). The book starts off rather conventionally but gets better as it wears on -- as the author herself becomes (relatively) more introspective and we learn that she has dealt with alcoholism and coming out, but the truly interesting parts are the vignettes with the famous cooks. I particularly liked a chapter on Italian food culture in northern Wisconsin. A good summer read, even if (or because) reading this book will not change your life the way cooking did Severson's.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 24
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