Book Review: Save Me the Plums

Welcome to Thinking Out Loud Thursday!  Today I'm sharing a book review from a book I read while we were vacationing in Ireland - Save Me the Plums - My Gourmet Memoir.  Have you read it?

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Part of planning a vacation for me is making sure I have a couple good books loaded on my Kindle.  Sometimes I have an opportunity to read them and sometimes I don't.  I do know when we are travelling internationally I'll be sitting on a plane for several hours so the chances are pretty good that some of those hours will be spent reading.

I'll be honest, I've found that reading on the plane is one of my most favorite times to enjoy books.  Distractions are at a minimum.  Even when I've carved out a bit of time at home to read and I'm sitting in my favorite chair with a cup of tea in my hands, the laundry seems to call me or that pile of mail is in my peripheral vision.  But if I'm sitting on a plane, those distracts are nonexistent!

Save Me the Plums had shown up on some blogs I read and I thought it sounded like a good vacation book.  Here's the summary from Amazon ~

When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?

This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl’s leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.

Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams—even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be.

A book about food and a magazine - two of my most favorite things!  How could it not make it to the top of my reading list!  And let me tell you, it did not disappoint.  Ruth gave an honest and humble account of her rise, and eventually fall, from her Cinderella life.  Through the pages of the books she intertwines family favorite recipes such as her German Apple Pancakes and Spicy Chinese Noodles.

Several times in the book there were comments that were so profound.  I love when there are statements that make you truly stop and think.  Here's a few examples ~

"Luxury is best appreciated in small portions.  When it becomes routine it loses its allure."

"I'd learned an important lesson:  When something frightens me, it is definitely worth doing."

"Nothing feels as good as building a team and empowering people, watching them grow and thrive."

This is a book I would love to get in hardback and keep on my shelf.  I imagine it with post it notes on the recipes I want to try and eventually it would have stains and spills on the pages like my other favorite cookbooks.  And if Ruth Reichl is ever speaking in a 200 mile radius of St. Louis, I'll be figuring out a way to be in the audience!

Author Ruth Reichl

Add this one to your reading list.  It would also make a great gift for a food-loving friend.

That's what I'm thinking about today.  What's on your mind?  Link up and share!

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