How to Share an Egg
A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
An “absolutely transformative” (People) culinary memoir about the relationship between food and family—sustenance and survival—from a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
“Beautifully written, heartbreaking and hopeful.”—Ruth Reichl, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Novel
AN NPR AND THE GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
When you’re raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food.
Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on.
Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish. Stepping into the kitchen to connect her past with her future, the author recounts the defining moments of her life in a poignant tale of scarcity and plenty: her colorful childhood in the restaurant business, the crumbling of her first marriage and the intensity of young motherhood, her decision to become a chef, and that life-altering visit to Poland. Whether it’s the flaky potato knishes and molasses porridge bread she learned to bake at her baba Sarah’s elbow, the creamy vichyssoise she taught herself to cook in her tiny student apartment, or the brown butter eggs her father, now 93, still scrambles for her whenever she needs comfort, cuisine is both an anchor and an identity; a source of joy and a signifier of survival.
How to Share an Egg is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. By turns sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman’s search to find her voice as a writer, chef, mother, and daughter. Do the tiny dramas of her own life matter in comparison to everything her father has seen and done? This moving exploration of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery sets out to find the answer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist and chef Reichert debuts with a mesmerizing memoir about grappling with depression and growing up as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. The youngest child in a tranquil Edmonton household, Reichert spent blissful afternoons cooking with her grandmother, accompanying her father to the restaurants he owned, and testing out her own recipes. "Food was everything," Reichert writes. "I knew it was delicious and I knew it was precious." The flip side of Reichert's sunny upbringing, however, was an unrelenting pressure to be happy, and a deep sense of shame whenever she struggled to contain her fear or sadness: "Life was painted with almost too much color in an effort to brighten what had come before." After eating borscht on a trip to Warsaw as an adult, Reichert was moved to investigate her father's time in Auschwitz and to unpack how the experience shaped his—and by extension her—love of food and obsession with joy. Recounting major meals and events in her life, from a bumpy marriage to her decision to become a chef, Reichert weaves a rich narrative tapestry that traces her journey toward self-knowledge in luminous prose. Nimble and nourishing, this is not to be missed.
