***Another May 2011 backlog draft post. Editing and posting while shoving Gummi Bears into my mouth two by two***

Even though Blacklight claims I can, I don’t cook (note: shoving salmon fillets in the oven with lemon pepper seasoning, making Success brown rice and steam in a bag broccoli isn’t cooking…it’s reheating). But man oh man oh man I love reading about cooking and food! Now given this, why wouldn’t Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef just leap off the library NEW BOOKS shelf and into my little undead paws?

Gabrielle Hamilton, owner/chef of restaurant Prune, never grew up thinking ” I am a chef” or “I LIVE TO COOK”. Youngest child of an artist and a former ballet dancer, Hamilton lived a magical life in the ruins of a burned out mill with her French mother always cooking something wonderful on the stove. But once her family breaks up, the teenage Hamilton is left to fend for herself one summer and begins a lifetime in the food business.

But the food business is just a way of keeping body and soul together. summers are spent cooking at a sleepaway camp, the rest of the year in vast kitchens assembling food for catered events by the dozens. Note: I never ever want to eat catered food again. YUCK YUCK YUCK. Thank HEAVENS my family is a) too poor or b) amazing Italian home cooks to go the catering path for family events. Hamilton parties, drinks and gets a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing. Only the perfect location (an abandoned restaurant that is screaming for gallons of bleach and Hazmat suits to clean up), turns Hamilton into restaurateur.

And with the birth of Prune (restaurant NOT a child) comes earth shaking changes in Hamilton’s life. One of her customers becomes her husband in a green card marriage. A son is born. Hamilton reconnects with her estranged mother briefly. Another son is born. And every summer Hamilton visits her husband’s Italian family.

The culture clash is painful and poignant and raw. It’s like eating one of the stuffed cherry peppers in oil my stepmother makes every year. You know, the kind that when you take a bite, it stings your mouth so badly you’re gasping for water, anything to take away the burn but you take another bite. That’s Hamilton and her husband. There’s pain and love and you almost want to shake her and scream “leave him, he will never change, things will not get better”. But you eat that jar of peppers until it’s gone and there’s just a slick coating of hot oil.

Read Blood, Bones & Butter for the food. Read it for the almost fairy tale of Hamilton’s childhood. Read it for her teenage adventures. Read it for her exile in Ann Arbor. Read it hoping those frosted pop tart camp counselors really DID get eaten by a bear attracted to the KFC at the fire pit. Read for the Italian villa. Read it knowing you might never get to be lucky enough to grab at seat at Prune for Sunday brunch. Just freaking read it.