Stir
My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home
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4.7 • 20 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A national bestseller and winner of a Living Now Book Award, Stir is an exquisite memoir about how food connects us to ourselves, our lives, and each other.
At 28, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage, and thinking about starting a family. Then one day, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell, the sight in her left eye, and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved.
Jessica’s journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was able to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she drew strength from the restorative power of cooking and baking. Written with intelligence, humor, and warmth, Stir is a heartfelt examination of what it means to nourish and be nourished.
Woven throughout the narrative are 27 recipes for dishes that comfort and delight. For readers of M.F.K.Fisher, Molly Wizenberg, and Tamar Adler, as well as Oliver Sacks, Jill Bolte Taylor, and Susannah Cahalan, Stir is sure to inspire, and send you straight to the kitchen.
Customer Reviews
Stir
The best thing about this book are the recipes. It was also a unique, creative idea to have recipes imbedded in the narrative; kind of like a gift of nurture and healing that the author gave us. However, as a book about the experience of someone with a life threatening condition who slowly recovered, I think it fell short. There was a lightness to the narrative that I don't think conveyed the gravitas of such an experience. On a positive note, one thing that came across load and clear was the importance of close community in recovery. She has a close cadre of friends, family and a loving supportive husband who helped her through this. I just think that the internal process one goes through in something like this wasn't explored enough and the tone was too light to accurately convey to the reader what this brush with death and recovery is really like for the person going through it.