Long before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television set, she learned that how we eat is an extension of how we love, how we comfort, how we forge a sense of home—and how we taste the world as we navigate our way through it. Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother’s kitchen in South India.
Poignant and surprising, Love, Loss, and What We Ate is Lakshmi’s extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges’ table of Top Chef and beyond. It chronicles the fierce devotion of the remarkable people who shaped her along the way, from her headstrong mother who flouted conservative Indian convention to make a life in New York, to her Brahmin grandfather—a brilliant engineer with an irrepressible sweet tooth—to the man seemingly wrong for her in every way who proved to be her truest ally. A memoir rich with sensual prose and punctuated with evocative recipes, it is alive with the scents, tastes, and textures of a life that spans complex geographies both internal and external.
My current kindle read! I am loving it! Padma finds zen in cooking, as do I. Her description of the peace she feels cooking barefoot in the kitchen, is me. Her description of endometriosis is the truest description and statement of how it feels to have this autoimmune disease that I have ever read. I had tears in my eyes reading how I feel having the same ailment, how it affects every single part of your life. I also have PCOS and anemia……just for fun. Sigh. Reading this book is a huge treat. I am enjoying it immensely! Padma is a wonderful storyteller of her own life. Very brave. I also now need to order all her cookbooks!
I have finished this lovely read. I learned so much reading this book that I may have to buy it in book form. I will surely be gifting it to a few fellow readers that will be as enamored with it as I was. This will most likely make my top ten reads this year.
