Care and feeding : a memoir
Edition
First edition.
Publication Information
New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2025]
Physical Description
xi, 334 pages ; 24 cm
Summary
"In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there's more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. Behind the scenes, Laurie's life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all--from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli--while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood. As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie's mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life's work that she truly values: care and feeding"--
Contents
- Introduction
- Hayseed
- Fat-free Reddi-Whip
- Don't freak out
- Inflammation and swelling
- Coke can dick
- Lamb's tongue
- Whole panties hangin' out
- Dogs
- Chopper
- Meetings
- Parting gift
- Executive editor
- Dinner party
- Techno-emotional
- Stewpot
- The narcissism of small differences
- Black death
- I'm your assistant
- It's not a metaphor
- Sexless separates
- This is nowhere
- Brian
- Vortex
- Jack
- Class act
- Jaffna
- Threat
- Asia
- Family emergency
- I'll live
- Life insurance
- Emotional sobriety
- Epilogue: Jujubes and diamonds
- Acknowledgments.