Taste, My Life Through Food, by Stanley Tucci

 

Taste, My Life Through Food, by Stanley Tucci

 

There are books that you enjoy reading and others not so much. But, there are also those rare finds that keep you awake into the wee hours and wake you up early.  Whether the topic is food or has remarkably interesting characters, or a plot that won’t stop, I call these kinds of books ‘delicious.’  They are the mental bread of life, the kinds of books that keep you hungry for more, and you never quite get your fill.

 

The actor, Stanley Tucci has written such a book.  Oh, my goodness, what a book.  Taste, My Life Through Food is a delightful trip through his life, from growing up in an Italian American family, living in New York, to his becoming an actor, to his travels, and always with a background of food and restaurants and recipes.

 

As an actor with decades of film and television, and stage plays behind him, he has traveled the world and as a true and adventurous gourmet, he collected not only recipes, but a wide breath of people he’s met and restaurants where he felt at least a breath of the warmth of home.

 

But, this book also sweeps you along with laugh out loud humor, and a personal and conversational tone that makes you feel he is chatting with you, his new friend.  The book is so well written, and that makes it a remarkably easy read, but one you wish would never end!

 

Along the way, you’ll learn about cooking and drinking, from the making a perfect Martini, to the sensational side-splitting story of his wife

offering her crazy rendition of her mother’s British style roasted potatoes.

 

I mentioned travel.  Well, I’d rather call it the intimacies of travel.  Stories of food from the Mediterranean to Iceland, and from Germany to England, always with a cast of characters, some famous, some not, and along the way, some sadness that America has changed, with so many cafes and restaurants and small shops that have closed under the unceasing and powerful wave of conglomerates.  Tucci takes care to mention how and why we should become patrons of the still existing small grocers and butcher shops, and fish mongers.  And this is part of what makes the book so intimately moving and human.  We all need the warmth and the feeling of belonging and the book makes perfectly clear the importance of personal contact.  When you buy meat, does the butcher call you by name? Does he ask what you’re cooking, so he can suggest the best cuts. Does the fish monger ask if you making more of the fish soup you’d previously mentioned? Do you walk in a coffee shop and have the barista ask:  Same as always, Sam?  And is this your day for a croissant?

 

What a wonderful experience to read a book and feel like it would be ok to call Stanley Tucci just plain Stanley, and feel like he knows you. After all, he wrote a book to entertain you and you alone.

 

Join Stanley on a trip through his life.  It’s a hell of a story and you might want to sip a perfect Martini while you read.

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