Tuesday, March 12, 2019

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love and Food; Ann Hood


Each Tuesday, Vicki, from I’d Rather Be At The Beach hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros where  readers post the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book that they are reading or plan to read. 


W.W. Norton and Company - 2018


Introduction

"I grew up eating. A lot.  As the great food writer M.F.K. Fisher said, First we eat, then we do everything else.  That describes my childhood home.  In my mind, my Italian grandmother, Mama Rose, was always cooking.  We lived with her in the house she moved to with her parents when they came from Conca Della Compania, a small, mountainous town an hour and a world away from Naples, Italy, to West Warwick, Rhode Island.  When I was young, Mama Rose and her mother Nonna, kept an enormous garden in the backyard, and they would sit on summer afternoons and snap the ends off string beans (served cold with garlic and mint), press tomatoes into sauce, pickle red and green peppers for the Christmas antipasto.  We had fruit trees -- Seckel pear, cherry, apple, fig--and blueberry and raspberry bushes.  They raised rabbits and chickens too. More than once a beloved white bunny -- Snowball, Snowflake, Snowy -- disappeared from its cage only for us to have funny-tasting chicken that night at dinner."

What do you think - read more or pass?

12 comments:

  1. Nope, couldn't get past the though of eating the pet bunnies.

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  2. Ah, this reminds me of my own grandmothers and their canning of vegetables from their gardens. And I helped with string beans - snapping off the ends. However, instead of making antipasto, my grandmother made what she called 'chow chow' - a sort of relish. Tomatoes and peppers, etc. We did not eat rabbit, but there was a lot of fish that we caught and then ate. I hated watching my grandfather clean it. I'd keep reading and will keep this one in mind.

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  3. I love Ann Hood's books, and the excerpt took me back to my grandmother's kitchen and her garden, too. Thanks for sharing...and for visiting my blog.

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  4. This sounds like a wonderful, nostalgic read. Enjoy!

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  5. I have not yet read Ann Hood, though I have meant to. This would be a good one for me because of the autobiographical/memoir angle. Plus my grandmothers did all that gardening, canning, cooking stuff. Oh boy!

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  6. I thought I'd read this but I checked and couldn't find it in my reviews. I'd keep reading.

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  7. Vicki,
    I like the cover and the beginning of this book (no bunny meat though!). It sounds like an enjoyable book. :)

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  8. Oh I don't think I could get past the bunny. I don't think I'd ever eat chicken again! This does sound like a good one though. I love a foodie book.

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  9. Who doesn't eat a lot when they grow up? :) I too feel bad for the pet bunnies lol I've only ever tried them once, and they weren't my pets :)

    Here’s my Tuesday Teaser – https://alternative-read.com/2019/03/12/lee-goldberg/

    Hope you’re having a good day!

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  10. I love the cover. I grew up on a farm and some of the memories are the same (we didn't have rabbits but we did eat goat). See what Susan is featuring this week at Girl Who Reads

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  11. Sounds like a good food memoir. I, too, have tasted rabbit, but not in the guise of chicken. ;-)

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  12. I'm currently reading this memoir and only have a few more chapters remaining. I have so many Post-It flags, marking all the recipes I hope to try, that I plan to buy a copy of the book after I return this one to the library. It's a keeper. I love Anne Hood!

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