Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table
By Ruth Reichl
Broadway Books
1999 (paperback edition)
Condition: Very good; owner’s name inscribed; additional inscription reads: “10/99 Seattle.”
Why I keep it: intellectual, emotional [*]
I can’t remember why I purchased Ruth Reichl’s memoir “Tender at the Bone” (Did someone recommend it? Had I read a review?), but what I do remember is reading it on the plane and in the hotel and during every available moment (because it was so incredibly good and full of wit and wisdom that felt so incredibly important at that moment) during a long weekend trip to Seattle in October 1999. I was attending the wedding of my former coworker and good friend Tracy Cutchlow, and “Tender at the Bone” kept me good company during the down time between wedding-related activities.
To me, this memoir sets the bar by which all modern food memoirs ought be compared. It’s funny. It’s heartbreaking. It’s insightful. It includes really great recipes. Plus in this era of you-just-can’t-believe-it’s-true memoirs, Reichl opens with the observation that:
everything here is true, but it may not be entirely factual…I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story.
And a good story she provides, opening with my favorite chapter “The Queen of Mold.” Reichl describes how her mother fed her father “the worst thing he had ever had in his mouth…so terrible that he leaned over and spit it into the sink and then grabbed the coffeepot, put the spout into his mouth, and tried to eradicate the flavor.” In explanation, Reichl writes that her mother was “taste-blind and unafraid of rot.”
I have long secretly believed that Reichl and I share a common ancestor. Perhaps our mothers were first cousins or maybe even sisters? Because Reichl’s description of her mother’s worst kitchen nightmares sound a lot like my own experience with my mother’s. Even as I write this, I am still genuinely convulsed by laughter when I read this passage:
“I can make a meal out of anything,” Mom told her friends proudly. She liked to brag about “Everything Stew,” a dish invented while she was concocting a casserole out of a two-week-old turkey carcass. (The very fact that my mother confessed to cooking with two-week-old turkey says a lot about her.) She put the turkey and a half can of mushroom soup into the pot. Then she began rummaging around in the refrigerator. She found some leftover broccoli and added that. A few carrots went in, and then a half carton of sour cream. In a hurry, as usual, she added green beans and cranberry sauce. And then, somehow, half an apple pie slipped into the dish. Mom looked momentarily horrified. Then she shrugged and said, “Who knows? Maybe it will be good.” And she began throwing everything in the refrigerator in along with it—leftover pâté, some cheese ends, a few squishy tomatoes.[1]
Reichl, who was in the news this past fall because of Gourmet Magazine’s surprise closure (where she was editor from 1999), has written other equally wonderful books, but for some reason, “Tender at the Bone” remains my favorite. Perhaps it’s because I associate it with Tracy’s wedding or because it was the first time I really laughed out loud while reading a memoir. I don’t know. All I know is that it occupies a treasured space on my shelves.
“Tender at the Bone” has been around long enough and has been lauded often enough that it seems like almost everyone has read it; but if you happen to fall into that small percentage of people who hasn’t had the pleasure, go. Go today and buy your copy, and sit down and read it as greedily and unrepentantly as possible. You won’t regret doing so.
What you can look forward to: “Eva Moves the Furniture” by Margot Livesey
Further reading:
NY Times interview by Deborah Solomon (Oct. 10, 2009)
Ruth Reichl: A New Book And The End Of ‘Gourmet,’ Fresh Air WHYY (Oct. 14, 2009)
Powells.com interview
Salon.com interview about Reichl’s work as a food critic (November 1996)
1Tender at the Bone: The Queen of Mold. http://www.gourmet.com/food/2009/04/tender-at-the-bone-excerpt-ruth-reichls-mother Accessed February 28, 2010.