Regardless, there are moments in time where French food becomes undeniably French, and this foodie nationalism has lasted to this very day. No real answer was found, but there are quite a few suggestions that part of French cuisine did, in fact, follow Catherine de Medici and her court across the border from Italy. He traces ingredients and recipes through historical records, even visiting palaces to try to dig up unpublished records of the meals eaten there throughout the years.

Buford dons his hat as an investigative journalist to find the true origins of French cuisine. The real gem for me was the food history, a subject I did not realize I was interested in until reading Dirt. Buford learns to slaughter and gut a pig to make blood sausage, he stages at Michelin Star restaurants, he brushes shoulders with the top French chefs, makes bread with an authentic boulanger, and gets behind the scenes information about the process of making the best flour, how voting actually happens at the Meilleur Ouvrier de France competition, and how poorly staff is treated on their way to becoming chefs. I wanted to hear about the food, so once the book finally started describing meal prep, Michelin starred kitchen gossip, the particularities of each French sauce, and food history, I was completely hooked and immersed myself in the expansive world of food.īill Buford is a journalist by training, so we get an insider view into areas of French food life that might not otherwise be seen.

It was a little too Eat Pray Love for me at that moment. Honestly, the book started off a little slow for me - the first few chapters were all about Buford getting the idea to go to France and setting up his family to move there, and how he didn’t yet speak French. Part memoir, part travelogue, part history book, Dirt covers the expansive history of not only cooking in Lyon, but French cooking in its entirety! It’s a culinary delight if you’re as obsessed with food as I am. Even the title is long! I don’t think anyone could accuse Bill Buford of being short winded. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.For the past four months, when I found myself in the car for stretches longer than ten minutes, I’ve been listening to the 26 hour long audiobook of Bill Buford’s Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure India was for the art of devotion in Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.Īn intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society's ideals. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world–all alone.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want–a husband, a house, a successful career. Īround the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught of midlife crisis. A celebrated writer's irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life.

Eat pray love audiobook part 11