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    Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table
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    Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table
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    Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    At an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that "food could be a way of making sense of the world. . . . If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were." Her deliciously crafted memoir, Tender at the Bone, is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by a passion for food, unforgettable people, and the love of tales well told.

    Beginning with Reichl's mother, the notorious food-poisoner known as the Queen of Mold, Reichl introduces us to the fascinating characters who shaped her world and her tastes, from the gourmand Monsieur du Croix, who served Reichl her first soufflé, to those at her politically correct table in Berkeley who championed the organic food revolution in the 1970s.  Spiced with Reichl's infectious humor and sprinkled with her favorite recipes, Tender at the Bone is a witty and compelling chronicle of a culinary sensualist's coming-of-age.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 5, 2000
    ISBN9780553752205
    Unavailable
    Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

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    Reviews for Tender at the Bone

    4/5

    789 ratings45 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The first half to three-quarters of this book is jaw-droppingly fascinating and would definitely have merited five stars. For me, though, the last bit fizzled and sputtered its way to a close, and I sortof wish I'd skipped the last few chapters. However, if you liked Garlic and Sapphires, this is well worth a read.

      For what it's worth, though, I didn't feel nearly as interested in the sporadic recipes as I did the ones in G&S. They seemed overly complicated, and I don't really remember a single one that I thought, hey, maybe I could actually make that.
    • 4/5
      The segments about old New York and wine tasting abroad are wonderful and the recipes are all terribly tempting. Photographs are a wonderful addition as well.
    • 4/5
      Skillful narrative metaphor for "Food is Life."
    • 4/5
      A very interesting way to meet Ruth Reichl. I'm ashamed to say that I really didn't know who she was or anything about her until this book was selected for our monthly book club read. I am definitely happy I read it and I think others will enjoy it too.
    • 4/5
      [Tender at the Bone] is [Ruth Reichl's] first book about becoming a foodie. It begins when she is a child hanging out in kitchens and progresses through her twenties when she becomes a restaurant critic for the New York Times. I had read her first novel [Delicious] last year and enjoyed it enough to look this book up and I liked this one enough to continue with the next,[Comfort Me With Apples].
    • 4/5
      Light, yet rich and tasty. Restaurant critic Ruth Reichl's memoir is all of these. Easy to read, yet filled with insight and well-rounded characters. The author's mother suffered from manic depression, and one way it manifested itself was in bizarre - and often downright poisonous - culinary creations. The author describes herself as having been shaped by her mother's handicap, beginning at an early age to use food as a way of making sense of the world. She effectively conveys this food-sense in a series of funny and poignant tales that take us from her childhood in New York up through young adulthood in California. She lovingly introduces the significant people in her life, revealing them to us in how and what they cooked. Her stories are punctuated by recipes. I did make the 'Artpark Brownies' on page 244 of the edition I had from the library and they were a simple, gooey, choclatey-delicious treat! I will try other recipes too.The author is equally effective when she moves away from the table to tell more directly of her relationships with friends and family. She describes some episodes that could be seen as time-bound clichés - living in a commune, working in a collectively managed restaurant - with a perspective sometimes lacking in baby-boom memoirs. She brings similar good-humoured perspective to her mother's mental illness and her own struggle with anxiety attacks, never wallowing in graphic description of symptoms. You don't have to be a foodie, or familiar with Reichl to enjoy Tender at the Bone, just a lover of warm, tender memoirs and an appreciation for her style of poignant humour.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. I loved reading about Ruth in the kitchen. I felt bad for the life she had growing up but I couldn't put this book down.
    • 3/5
      Ruth Riechl tells the story of how she grew up in a crazy, somewhat dysfunctional family and found her way through life - which usually involved food and cooking. Her stories were amusing and kept my interest. Fans of food related memoirs will gobble this one up.
    • 5/5
      Memoir of the author and growing up with a mother who had bouts of depression. Food and cooking was a major part of her life, from disastrous food parties her mother would throw, working at a Berkley Co op restaurant, to becoming a food critic. She thoroughly enjoyed that she was paid to critique food and she recounted many events in her life, from her mother nearly food poisoning everyone at a dinner party. Although her and her brother would steer those that they were concerned might die from the food away from the possible offending dish. She wrote of her time at Berkley living in a community apartment and putting together a whole Thanksgiving Dinner including the turkey that was pulled out of the grocery store trash dumpster. Our book club read this for our November book club selection and really enjoyed the story and felt we would like to read more of Ms Reichl's books. As an added bonus she included a few very tasty sounding recipes in her book.
    • 3/5
      I found the authors travels more interesting than her descriptions of eating or cooking. Much of her cooking tales personally turned my stomach. I suppose I'm glad that I'm not familar with her New York Times reviews. The recipes included in the book were either bizarre sounding or rather simplistic. Save for the soufflet recipe, I'm really not tempted to try any of them.It took until page 54 for me to really get into the book. I had five abortive attempts at starting the book before I finally got to a point where I was interested enough to keep reading. It was at the point that she went to the boarding school that I wanted to continue. Again it was for the traveling and not the food.To top things off I had the joy of reading this book while traveling for the holidays. My mother-in-law and mother both did things that reminded me of Ruth's mother. In the case of latter, it was to see if years old preserves that no longer had the consitency of preserves were still etible. For the former, it was to cook a meat dish that smelled okay but was gray in color. She also then made a strange vegetable dish that had all sorts of things mixed together that just don't seem like they should go together. Both dishes actually tasted fine but they sure looked strange! Perhaps if I hadn't been reading Tender at the Bone at the time I wouldn't have been so put off by them. In the case of the preserves, my mother in law came to her senses before actually eating any.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book. Although Ruth Reichl's career has been synonymous with food and this book does chronicle her evolving love affair with it, it's really a book about life. It's a memoir which she candidly admits has been "embroidered" so as not to let the truth get in the way of a good story, but all the best memoirs are, arguably by necessity. Her deceptively simple prose engages you from the very beginning and her totally absorbing story is literally hard to put down. Fortunately there are a couple of sequels so although I've finished the book, I haven't finished the story. There are some fascinating characters in this book (in addition to Ruth herself) and she manages to bring them to vivid life. As well there are recipes here and there related to various phases of her life, all of which sound amazing. I can't wait to try her "Artpark Brownies". A totally entertaining read.
    • 5/5
      After reading Ruth Reichl's newest book Delicious, I just had to find out more about her. Tender at the Bone was a great place to start. This book is about so much more than just food. She says, " I learned that the most important thing in life is a good story." Her story is not just good it is amazing even if only parts of it are true. I'm ready to read more!
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book, although I felt like it petered out a bit at the end - I didn't really feel like the story ended when the book did. But maybe I just didn't want the book to end.

      Either way, it was marvelous - a highly entertaining read, and a fast one if you don't feel the need to actually read the recipes she inserts into every chapter.
    • 4/5
      Funny and touching. Much more depth than Garlic and Sapphires. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Food is what helps us grow, in many ways. Ruth Reichl connected to preparing food early in her life, felt the comfort this can give, and made food and preparing food the center of her life. In this book, she fills the blanks between the meals with stories from her life. Some details are funny, while on the whole the atmosphere is not very cheerful. It was obviously not a happy childhood, but Reichl made the most of it, emerging an interesting, courageous and observant person, and a novelist. I have a feeling that she has reinvented and healed herself through her work. That reflects in her writing, she feels bold to laugh away the hurtful and unpleasant anecdotes, and make the most of that too - a book.
    • 5/5
      A delicous autobiography, told through memorable food.
    • 2/5
      Ruth Reichl , a N.Y. Times food critic manages to intermingle her relationship with food throughout different phases of her life in this memoir. She definitely has many amusing stories to tell about her coming of age. I enjoyed her stories when food was in the room and she beautifully describes them and the eating experience.

      But, she seems more muted when she deals with human beings. She has a chance to better understand her father but she realizes that only after a boyfriend (later her husband) learned more about him in a few hours during his first visit than she did in her twenty years. Her mother, who is bi-polar, makes for some strange and chaotic stories. However, so many of her mother's strange choices for her actually ended up working out quite well in Ruth’s life and she didn’t seem to give her credit for it. I don't think the author did enough soul-searching to make this a moving memoir.

    • 3/5
      This is the fourth or fifth food memoir I’ve read this year, and unfortunately, probably my least favorite. I think mainly because the author really didn’t resonate with me. There was very little that I could find myself connecting with in the book, and so for me, although a fine book, it just wasn’t my favorite. The author is a food critic, and this story is her autobiography. In it, we learn about all the things in her past that have influenced her love for food. Parts of the book were quite enjoyable. I didn’t dislike it overall, but it bounced around a lot and was pretty much all over the place. It bothered me a bit that the last two chapters didn’t seem to flow well with the rest of the book, and the last two paragraphs especially, her attempt at a conclusion, just wasn’t enough to sum up the book. So, 3 of 5 stars for me.
    • 5/5
      This was the perfect book for me to read whilst 38 weeks pregnant.I know it sounds strange to associate the kind of book I'm reading with the fact that I'm pregnant, but they are very much related. I've been seeking easy, somewhat upbeat yet well-written stories to keep myself distracted and in good spirits! This was perfect.
      I'm such a fan of food writing and good memoirs and this book is a perfect combination of both. Reichl is wonderful. I don't want anyone to tell me a story that will make me dislike her (if one exists), because I just enjoyed her storytelling so much.
      I'm going to immediately start reading her follow up, "Comfort me with Apples," and I hope it is as delicious and addictive as "Tender at the Bone."
      The only bad thing I can say about this book is that it encourages me to eat eat eat! As if I needed encouragement.
    • 4/5
      Loved this book, loved all of her books. Love her! One person I would love to have at my fantasy dinner party. She is funny and brash.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful writing and an excellent example of a memoir that's not too tell-all. Fun and also heartbreaking.
    • 5/5
      This is a memoir built around food--and as Reichl put it, she decided that instead of pictures she'd give recipes throughout to paint a picture of her relationships. The Author's Note tells us, "Everything here is true, but it may not be entirely factual. In some cases I have compressed events; in others I have made two people into one. I have occasionally embroidered." That sort of thing usually bugs the hell out of me. It didn't here. Maybe because Reichl was open about it from the beginning--maybe just because she's such an engaging writer and personality. She said she didn't want to get in the way of a good story, and she's a good enough storyteller and more that I forgive her. The book wasn't found in the biography section of my neighborhood bookstore, but rather in the cookbook section, in "food writing." So, you might expect you have to be a real foodie to love this--yet I'm not really and yet did love it. Part of that is that this is a lot more than an ode to food. A lot more. It's about growing up in New York City's Washington Heights in the early 60s, and a boarding school in Montreal, and coming to adulthood in Michigan in late sixties and early seventies Berkeley California. It's about travels to Tunisia and Greece, Italy and France. It's about dealing with a crazy mother, the deterioration of a cherished friendship and love. It's tender, yes--in more than one sense. And often quite funny. I found myself very much amused at the picture of the very hippie era. Oh, and there is the food. And she has a gift in describing it and connecting it to her life. Here's her description of her first taste of Brie: "I felt Monsieur du Croix watching as I ate the strong, slippery cheese. It was so powerful I felt the tips of my ears go pink." She gives us not just the taste, but the colors, the sensations. This was just so fun to read on several different levels. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Excellent. Funny, poignant, and hunger inducing. Ruth goes from her childhood to her wild teen years to her commune to becoming a food critic. I love her voice. Anyone who really enjoys a good memoir, or likes to read about food, should pick this up. Includes recipes.
    • 4/5
      Ruth Reichl developed a love of food -- cooking it and appreciating subtle nuances in taste and texture -- at an early age. In this book, she talks about different periods in her life, each revolving around cooking or exploring foods. This book is more a collection of memories than a plot-driven autobiography, but it does paint a picture of the author's life. She is a good writer with a keen knack of finding humour in trying circustances. And, I baked the raspberry pie which is delicious!
    • 4/5
      Wonderfully written memoir of Reichl to about age 30. Can't wait to read the sequel.
    • 4/5
      “Tender at the Bone” by Ruth Reichl was a charming book that we read as part of a cooking theme for a local book club. Along with learning about Ruth as a young girl, you are also treated to an array of recipes which are a consequence of her memories of when she was growing up. Her stories are not always happy reflections. Ruth’s mother was a terrible cook who according to Ruth came close to poisoning her guests many times over.This is a delightful read and it will make you smile, re-think your own cooking, and for many of us, be generally be thankful for the mother’s cooking that sustained us as we grew up. I heartily recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      Famous food/restaurant reviewers autobiography. Great story of a love affair with food (in a healthy way). The chapter of her mothers cooking was beyond description. I don't know how their family survived.
    • 4/5
      Former New York Times food critic and Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl wasn't born a gourmand. Her mother was the sort of person who shopped obsessively for the cheapest food and served it even when it was spoiled. Young Ruth learns to cook mostly as a survival skill, and keeps at it only because she sees the joy it brings to people. I loved this book because it was the first foodie memoir I've read by someone whose culinary awakening happened relatively late in life, and because it is as much about finding your passion as it is cooking good food. Ruth's journey with her lovable but out of control mother is poignant, and admired her tenacity in living life the way she wanted to -- even when that meant squatting in a crowded Berkeley apartment and cooking what her hippie roommates found in the trash. This is a food memoir, but it is also very much the story of growing up in the nineteen sixties and seventies, and seeing how the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and racism intersected with Ruth's otherwise ordinary life made these events far more vivid than any history book. Her travel experiences in Canada, France, and North Africa are fascinating as well.
    • 4/5
      Reichl grows up, from being the only child of the worst cook in the universe, to becoming a food critic for the New York Times.
    • 4/5
      Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table is Ruth Reichl's memoir about her childhood and early adult experiences with family and food. Reichl grew up in the 1950's and 60's, and entering adulthood in the early 70's. From being thrust into a French Canadian boarding school (and learning about French cuisine) to cooking with her Aunt Birdie and Birdie's cook Alice, to joining a sort-of commune and cooking vegan, Reichl's formative years seem to have been perfectly aligned with her eventual career as a food critic and food magazine editor. But what really strikes home was her relationship with her manic-depressive mother and her long-suffering father. While Reichl is able to spin stories about her mother into comic episodes, I have a feeling that her mother's disease affected Reichl more than she really lets on in the book. Reichl has an engaging style, and she tells her stories with relish. A definite "must" for those readers who enjoy food writing.