“That fall, in New York, I made mushroom soup almost every night for my mother. She was gracious enough to include a plethora of recipes from these chefs, and quite a few of her own! Three I’m excited to try include her “Like Water for Chocolate” chocolate cake (that’s my title for it based on how she came about the recipe), Dottie’s spinach (pictured above with my dog, Dottie) and her mushroom soup, which I’ll never think of the same way after reading her introduction to it: Also noteworthy were chapters on a few now famous chefs who were just flowering when Ruth crossed paths with them, such as Wolfgang Puck. She certainly came through on her food writing, and in this memoir she travels around the world! My favorite chapters were those based on her travels in China and Thailand. She didn’t always know what to do when a challenge presented itself, and there were quite a few things I’m sure she wished she could do over, but the way she unapologeticly relayed her shortcomings made her just that more endearing and relatable. In it, Reichl faces some pretty heavy challenges such as difficulties in her marriage, jumping into a career as a food critic, death of a loved one, and the desire to find a soulmate and start a family. Reading her previous books made a fan out of me, but Comfort Me with Apples really cemented my admiration for this amazing woman. In reading Reichl’s culinary memoirs, I don’t know how I skipped over this one! This volume chronicles a momentous decade in her life that ultimately shaped her into the outstanding food writer and editor she is today. And that in those times you have to give it everything you’ve got. I needed to find out that sometimes even your best is not good enough.

“When I got on the plane, I didn’t really know why I was.

Comfort me with apples by ruth reichl