Author Highlight: Ruth Reichl

Ruth Reichl is the author I keep on my back burner. When I need a break from too much heavy reading–or too much busy life!–she is the perfect palate cleanser. Her writing is humorous, perceptive, witty, and completely commonsensical. I can depend on her books bringing the delightful zing of new information and experiences with the stability of an engaging and meaningful story 

Whether you are a “foodie” or not, this niche is fascinating–a different flavor all together! I haven’t read all her books, but I intend to! 

Audio version: Kate reads this article to you!

Books by Ruth Reichl, information and ratings:

How I found this author: 

Some of my friends are “foodies” and love to cook. I love food and trying new things–but, I don’t understand this excitement for working in the kitchen. I try to put it in context: *I love books, and some people think reading is a chore (so weird)…but cooking is an actual chore and…once you are in the kitchen, it’s almost impossible to find your way out…I can’t think of anything to love about that...*and that’s about as far as I get. 

Well, it’s my good luck to have these friends, because they are happy to share their delicious talents with me! 

My friend Sam started a dinner club. He plans themed dinners, complete with a multi-course meal, paired drinks, and beautifully plated food. (Attendees pitch in on the cost.) At the beginning of every course, he addresses the table in his smart, black, chef jacket and gives us the background of the dish in front of us. His dinner themes have included: South American, Australian, Italian, and Harry Potter. I’ve had more fun and more of a culinary experience at his table than at any restaurant! 

Rebekah is another foodie friend. One of the first times I sat in her kitchen, she made this crazy melted concoction of caramelized onions, butter, brown sugar, and brie cheese, to be scooped up with slices of apples or french bread. (That dish is still one of my favorites–I could eat it everyday, I swear!) While we were visiting over this deliciousness, she mentioned a book she had read by a food critic called Garlic and Sapphires. I remembered the unique name and put it on my holds list at the library. I had no idea what a journey that would whip up… 

About the books: 

Garlic and Sapphires (2005)

This memoir details her experience making a major career move from restaurant critic at The Los Angeles Times to restaurant critic at The New York Times. This is big time stuff. And you know all the New York restaurants knew who to be on the lookout for! Wanting to give an honest review from the safety of anonymity, she creates and employs various disguises, complete with clothing, wigs, makeup, and personalities as she dines at the restaurants.

I loved the whole book: the career move, the playful but important disguises, and the unique challenges of a high-end restaurant critic (who doesn’t haul around a big time ego, just a big time love of food). 

Recipes are sprinkled throughout, and when she listed a recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara, insisting that every child likes this dish, well she even got me in the kitchen! I was enticed by the prospect of my children actually eating dinner, but also: what was this technique of tossing the just boiled, hot pasta in a bowl with beaten, raw eggs-steaming the eggs and creating the base for the sauce? I just had to try it! 

My kids did like it and call this “Bacon Spaghetti,” which is accurate if not unromantic. It is a quick and tasty meal with ingredients I almost always have on hand. Success!

Save Me the Plums (2019)

A few years later, I came across her other titles in the library catalog. I had no idea she had written so many! Save Me the Plums was the currently available audiobook, and happily I dug in. 

This is another memoir, detailing her time as Editor in Chief of Gourmet Magazine. I loved learning about the inner workings of a well-established food magazine. I was surprised and delighted at her almost complete denial of how posh her job was! It took her months to acquiesce to using the provided car and driver (and she only did it because she realized she was denying someone else a job). Other perks included a clothing allowance, regular visits to the taste kitchen, gourmet meals, and trips around the world. 

But, she remains remarkably unaffected by the status. She loves her people! She loves her food. She works hard at her job and handles the ups and downs of it all with insight, common sense, and humor. 

In this book, I especially loved how she described the people she worked with–it was encapsulated but in-depth…just like her food descriptions, I realized. It is a distinct pleasure to share in the experience of an individual who is sensitive and perceptive on so many levels!

Delicious! (2014)

This is her first novel, and her writing is just as succinct and interesting as her nonfiction. I could see themes and experiences from Save Me the Plums (her last memoir) mirrored in the story, and I enjoyed seeing her personal experience trickle into her fiction. 

This novel is set in the present day, and I was fully invested in the main character who was working out her own issues around grief and triggers and food. As the story unfolds, I was surprised to be pulled into the food history of World War II. I never thought about food history as a thing, really…I mean, I knew that people created war-time recipes (like cakes without flour or sugar, etc.), but I had no idea people were harvesting and cooking milkweed floss and pumpkin leaves!

I won't spoil it for you–it really is a novel you should experience yourself–and I was completely on board with the whole story...except for the elaborate hidden-hint chase. 

****

The main character stumbles across important letters written during the war years. A librarian saved these letters, but created a clue trail in an effort to keep the letters hidden and safe, but findable. Each clue hinged on a theme or word from one letter, which led you to the card catalog, where pulling the correct card yielded a note in turquoise ink, which then pointed to where the next letter was filed. Our main character is hot on the trail, following the librarian’s puzzle, motivated by urgent curiosity…but, I kept questioning it. The librarian’s puzzle just seemed so complicated, and time consuming, and, perhaps, unnecessary? Who would devise and execute such a thing? (Certainly a bizarre individual with too much time on their hands. But, really?)

I found it almost unbelievable…until I remembered the one volume of The Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, I had hiding in my bookcase.

My encyclopedia

I started at BYU-Idaho in Fall 2001, the first semester it transitioned from a two year college (Ricks College) to a four year university. (I used to like sharing this tidbit of information about myself and get a “That’s cool!” reaction from people…until recently when I started getting a “Whoa! Way back then?” reaction from current college students. Gosh, was it really 20+ years ago?) 

This changeover required a new course catalog, which included classes inspired by individual professors. These expansion classes were usually pretty small. I remember only 7 of us registered for the new Flannery O’Conner class (with the professor begging us to not drop the class, because a class smaller than 7 would be canceled), and there were only 13 of us in another new class–placed at the intersection of literature, art, and craft–called, “Book Arts.” 

This class was taught by an English professor, who was also an artist and craftsman on his own time, and the class members were a conglomerate of majors: English, art, communications, photography. 

We met in one of the newly remodeled art rooms, furnished with big tables and metal stools in the middle and big windows and shallow drawers along the walls. The class was fun and different and interesting! We carefully tore giant sheets of heavy, white, deckle-edged paper into uniform sizes. We neatly hand-sewed the signatures (small group of pages) onto ribbon or corded binding with large needles and waxed thread. We cut heavy cardboard stuff for the covers. We tightly wrapped and glued fabric or faux leather to the hand-bound spines. We wrote, illustrated, and bound our own books. We took apart and refashioned old books. We made mini books and slip covers for books. 

At the end of the semester, our talented and devoted professor brought a stack of large books to class. He had purchased a partial set of The Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition from the college library book sale. He zeroed in on this set, because of the unusually high quality brown suede covers. As it was an incomplete set, he wanted to gift each of us a volume–if we really wanted one. As he walked around  handing them out, he mentioned that a librarian (or someone) had carefully cut out magazine and newspaper pictures and articles and tucked them between the pages as supplemental material–wasn’t that interesting! 

****

Dear readers, in writing this article I, of course, went to my basement and found this volume tucked in the shadows with my other vintage books–and it is even more of a treasure than I remembered. 

It was published in 1910, and I have “Volume 13: HAR to HUR.” The book is 8 ½”x 11 ½” and only about 1” thick. The brown suede cover, although a little dry to the touch, is still strong and flexible. All the lettering is embossed into the leather and filled with gold leaf. The pages are smooth and fine, print close and neat, and the edges gilt in gold. There are three different labels affixed to the inside cover, all looking official and saying the same thing: “Presented by: Ruth Moody, Ricks College Library.” 

So, my own little library mystery begins. What does “Presented by” mean? Donated by, maybe? Who was Ruth Moody? What was her connection to Ricks College? (A cursory internet search yielded no obvious persons.) 

Then, there are the newspaper clippings to consider. I found 19 of them, ranging from articles to pictures, portraits, and paintings. They are all neatly trimmed, and some are hand-pasted together or have carefully hand-scripted notes. 

A few of the clippings had dates, which included: 

• The New York Times, Sunday, February 18, 1934 

• St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, Friday Morning, May 23, 1941 

• Hometown (a magazine), June 1953

I think you could get your hands on The New York Times almost anywhere in the US, but St. Louis seems an odd connection. Did this set of encyclopedias move from St. Louis to Rexburg, Idaho–or was it the newspaper that did the traveling? And what prompted and motivated this project? It is extensive! At the very least, it spans 2 newspapers, a few magazines, and 19 years between 1934 and 1953. 

Was this attempt to supplement and update the encyclopedias a thing librarians did across the nation? Or was it specific to one person? Is Ruth Moody the librarian? Or maybe there was no librarian, and this was Ruth’s personal project that she donated to the college library? Or…or…or…any other number of scenarios…

So, on my very own bookshelf, I have a little history mystery: an antique book, stamped with a benefactor’s name, enriched by an exceptionally devoted person (or persons), and part of a personal memory for me. 

(I wish I could hand you my book so you could feel and see it for yourselves! But, I’ve included pictures of the volume and the clippings here:)

****

NOW I’m on board with Ruth Reichl’s complicated library clue trail. If my "librarian" can spend almost 2 decades reading newspapers and magazines, cutting out articles, pasting them together, and filing them in the pages of an encyclopedia, then I can believe that her librarian made an elaborate puzzle through the card catalog to keep information safe during uncertain war times.

Additionally, how could I forget what a  tactile, labor-intensive, time-consuming  process it was to gather resources before the “information revolution,” so to speak.

(I am an Xenial–I do remember when going to the library’s encyclopedias was the only way to start a research paper…) 

Back to Delicious!

Reichl’s novel encompasses all the elements of mystery, adventure, history, healing, self-discovery, and romance–with a strong food theme throughout. 

I finished Delicious! with a distinct longing for gingerbread. I don’t really like ginger as a spice–and am not a huge fan of gingerbread, either–but If you do read this novel, you’ll understand why I can’t stop craving this cake I’ve never tasted! I might tackle this experiment in my own kitchen…(or maybe I can convince one of my talented friends to make it for me instead!)

A Favorite!

Ruth Reichl is the author I keep on my back burner. When I need a break from too much heavy reading–or too much busy life!–she is the perfect palate cleanser. Her writing is humorous, perceptive, witty, and completely commonsensical. I can depend on her books bringing the delightful zing of new information and experiences with the stability of an engaging and meaningful story (fiction or nonfiction). 

Whether you are a “foodie” or not, this niche is fascinating–a different flavor all together! I haven’t read all her books, but I intend to. 

Bon appétit! 

P.S. Ruth Reichl is currently running a newsletter called "La Brieffe" on Substack. Eeek! I couldn’t hand over my $5/month fast enough! She’s in her 70s and publishing new articles and resurrecting old ones, including pictures of typed pages of her work that were never actually published and carefully saved but wrinkled menus! She’s talking about old and new: recipes, chefs, ingredients, travel, restaurants, menus, and cooking at home.

(And, you can sign up, too–she has a free version for anyone interested!) 

P.P.S. If you haven’t had a chance to look at the pictures of my encyclopedia, you can view them here.

About the author:

RUTH REICHL (1948-Current) is the author of My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life, a cookbook published in September 2015.  She was Editor in Chief of Gourmet Magazine from 1999 to 2009. Before that she was the restaurant critic of both The New York Times (1993-1999) and the Los Angeles Times (1984-1993), where she was also named food editor. As co-owner of The Swallow Restaurant from 1974 to 1977, she played a part in the culinary revolution that took place in Berkeley, California. In the years that followed, she served as restaurant critic for New West and California magazines.

Ms. Reichl began writing about food in 1972, when she published Mmmmm: A Feastiary. Since then, she has authored the critically acclaimed, best-selling memoirs Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, and For You Mom, Finally, which have been translated into 18 languages. In 2014 she published her first novel: Delicious! Ruthreichl.com

*This is issue #7 of The Book Moth Newsletter