Starting from Scratch

A captivating memoir with recipes from a cook who's traveled across the globe cooking, tasting, and enjoying good food.

Patty Kirk has always loved food: eating it, cooking it, sharing it, talking about it. At six, she scrambled the last of the family's vacation provisions over the campfire and concocted a delicacy—eggs with bacon and onions. Overnight she became the family cook and discovered a lifelong passion for cooking that accompanied her through decades of roaming and finally to the farm in Oklahoma where she now lives.

Starting from Scratch narrates Kirk's wanderings in the U.S. and abroad from a culinary perspective, sounding the spiritual, political, and emotional depths of Brillat-Savarin's famous observation, "Tell me what you eat; I'll tell you who you are."


In this candid and engaging food memoir—complete with recipes!—good food beckons from the past as well as the future: surrounding us, eluding us, drawing us, defining us.