“Sex in the City,” restaurant critic edition; pretty antithetical to my vision for criticism, but why should I rain on Reichl’s parade? She’s America’s food writer par excellence and reading her is like watching a holiday romcom chock-full of genre clichés past its moment of cultural relevancy (something else I did yesterday): the magic is mostly (although not altogether) gone; the joy in the experience comes rather from picking the making of the myth apart — in this case, a colonial myth of self-discovery of white womanhood through exploring the wider world through food. What I’ve written makes this sound like an unpleasant book, and it is not!

(I, too, however, would look at my mother askance if she told me a calves’ brains recipe was “mixed up with my destiny,” and politely reject.)

A few additional notes: Reichl clearly knows way more about food than her insecure narrative voice would suggest. Is this because she is attempting to affect a critical naïveté that she had as a budding restaurant critic? I prefer a more confident critic as a matter of personal style (even when they may not be that sure of themselves in reality!) but evidently readers enjoy being taken along the ride for Reichl’s bumbling incertitudes (being dazzled by and shy of fame, feeling unfit to write for the LA Times, failing to fact-check a basic claim, etc… it all becomes fairly exhausting for me). Her invention of the “Reluctant Gourmand” is quite ingenious and so is her comment that it is possible to measure change in a society through tracking the availability of ingredients.

Fantastic follow-up to Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by one of my favorite authors. This book dives deeper into her personal life - her relationships, marriages and children. Of course, there's still a lot of wonderful descriptions of food.

It's just great.

I'd give this 3.5.

The book flies off the starting blocks. Ruth has a disarmingly charming voice, like a friend telling me the greatest story over drinks one evening in my living room. And what a story it is! Filled with great food stories and incredible love stories and exotic foreign work trips over a decade of her life - her thirties.

Then, in the second half of the book, I realised not much had changed. She's still saying the same stories, only the names were different. It's late into the night but the stories were still looping. And then I realised how far removed her stories are from me, how exotic her Western perspective sounded to me - high-flying white Californian food lifestyle. And I understood why I was losing interest, why the second half of the book just felt like a carousel of names of people, dishes, places, ingredients.

If you love travel, food, love stories, you might love this book. It reads like a good Hollywood production.

Ruth Reichl wrote a trio of memoirs. I read the first which was about her growing up years with her parents. Comfort Me With Apples is the second in this trio. This covers the period in her life, her marriage, beginning of her career, infidelities, divorce, remarriage, and a heartbreaking attempt at adoption of a little girl. Her writing style just draws you in and I found it really hard to put this book down. I felt she was very honest and didn't gloss over the things that put her in a bad light, or the parts that brought back heartbreak. I am definitely going to be checking out the third and final in this trio and soon. Excellent read.

dnf no rating.

Not nearly as interesting and good as Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table which I loved and not even as good as Delicious! which I didn't. Even so, I might like to try another Ruth Reichl, maybe the one about her mother.

Comfort Me With Apples is a good, racy read--full of delicious stories from real life and a few actual recipes. Ruth Reichl, renowned food writer, has lived a full and adventurous life, not all of it soothing. This is the second memoir. I confess I didn't read the first but am somewhat familiar with Reichl as a food celebrity and was curious what she might reveal about her life. The book captured my interest and led me through some of the highs and lows of her life. I think it helps to have an interest in food and cooking to read a book like this--she is prone to describe the meals, bite by bite, and she also expects you to want to know how to cook what she has described. Her life is bound by meals and she sees yours that way too. I for one love to cook and eat, and am somewhat jealous of her successes, but Comfort Me With Apple tells some of the difficult parts and well and elevates the reader by its honesty and candor.

Normally I'm not big on food/chef memoirs, but Ruth Reichl's contextual approach to the subject sets her apart from her peers. Her non-fiction works are much better than her novel, but she always puts together an enjoyable read.

This followup to Reichl's first memoir, Tender At the Bone, is as lush as its predecessor, if a little sickening as a comforting marriage splinters, a self is reinvented, and a longed-for child is gained and lost.

Though she's well-known for writing about food, Ruth Reichl is just as adept at writing about the self, particularly when the self is caught in unfamiliar, transitional phases.

In the beginning of Comfort Me With Apples, Reichl finds herself embroiled in one extramarital affair after the other. The breakdown of her marriage is sketched for the reader, rather than drawn out in excruciating detail, but that sketch is evocative and, indeed, excruciating anyway. It's very clear to the reader what Reichl is giving up, and how hard it is for her to make the decision to give it up.

Also palpable, though never stated outright, is her bemusement at being swept into the L.A. food world of celebrity chefs and movie stars. Perhaps that feeling comes from having read Tender At the Bone.

The part of Comfort Me With Apples that will stay with me the longest is the part about Reichl's adopted daughter, Gavi. I can't imagine withstanding a loss like that. Indeed, I had no idea there was any such thing in Reichl's life. She tells the story of her daughter with the awe-inspiring level of self-knowledge that seems to be a characteristic of her memoirs.

Ruth Reichl knows food, but Ruth Reichl also knows herself -- every strength and weakness, every grace and meanness -- and she's not afraid to show us each aspect of her personality.

Wonderful and vivid food memoir. Ruth is a pleasure to read and I loved getting to taste and travel with her. The narratives are interspersed with recipes, which act as little mementos of people or places. A lovely food journey that made me want to cook and eat!

Ruth Reichl, food critic and former editor of Gourmet magazine, is a fluid and engaging writer. Her stories about the early days of California Cuisine were interesting, as were the anecdotes involving people like Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters, and the Aidells sausage guy before they became household names. But too much of the book is about her personal life, which at this phase involved living in a commune in Berkeley and pursuing several extra-marital affairs. Even if all her descriptions of meals had been for food I actually like, visions of unwashed, unshaven, unmarried people in flagrante would have killed my appetite. For me, the problem with these memoirs, as with some of her recipes, is content, not style.

When I picked up this book for book club (having not read the first), I never expected it to be as engaging as it was nor to have such a profound impact.

In the beginning, I was drawn in by the author's engaging writing and beautiful descriptions of the food she encounters. I also found myself captivated like someone watching a train wreck as she cheats on her husband time and time again and then just floats in limbo in two relationships at once. It's so unlike my own experience that it's difficult to relate, but no less intriguing. This is also taking place in the late 70's/early 80's so it's just a different time.

The end it the bit that truly touched me. When Ruth and Michael try so hard to keep precious Gavi and then lose her. It absolutely broke my heart. But she picks up from her loss. Her revelation after the trip to Barcelona definitely stuck a chord: "...sometimes even your best is not good enough. And in those times, you have to give it everything you've got. And then move on. (pg. 296). And then the very last line in the book (after she successfully carried a pregancy, after so many problems and so little hope): "...life is full of surprises...and there is always hope" (pg. 297) It brought tears to my eyes. And that almost never happens.

Now I'm going to go whip up some of the wonderful recipes included in the text!

I am not a huge fan of memoirs, but I am prepared to make an exception for Ruth Reichl - Californian communes and Paris cafés and food descriptions that make you want to dedicate your life to good food.