Blood, Bones & Butter

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef (2011) by Gabrielle Hamilton. Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty years struggling through jobs in other peoples' restaurants, learning how to cook and eventually, how to be a chef. In this book, she doesn't stint on describing her experiences, but also delves into her own surprising private life. Her first relationship was a lesbian one, but she later went on to get married to a man and had two children. The man she married was Italian, and the couple journeyed to Italy for a month every year to visit his old-world family and his mother, who Gabrielle became fiercely attached to. This is a great book for foodies, and also just a wonderful telling of an extraordinary life. Grade: A