Tender at the Bone

            Since the beginning of the book, Ruth had a very complicated relationship with her delusional mother, known as the Queen of Mold. Her mother brought chaos to the family and her culinary disasters of poisoning the entire guest in her son’s engagement party from was unbelievable. All of her journey with her family was dysfunctional, but it helped Ruth find comfort wherever you are.

            With her notorious family Ruth felt lonely. As a result, she had insecurities throughout her life and constantly trying to discover her identity. Fortunately, it helped Ruth find love and affection through food preparation with other people.

Feeding her friends was her primary joy. When she was in high school, she made the devil’s food cake for a boy. In this way the temptation to try new things and connecting food with affection helped her to be a stronger girl. Later on in college, she learned to make coconut bread with her roommate’s Caribbean mother. Each of the food descriptions are mouthwateringly defined and all of her recipes helped me understand her personal adventure. Her sweetness to get along with everybody and expressing herself creatively in the kitchen was marvelous.

Building her education and traveling to North Africa and Europe, she got the freedom to let go and have some fun! Finally, when she attended the University of Michigan, she found the love of her life, Douglas Hollis, who helped her in her adventures and astonishing meals.

Moving to Berkeley, California and working in a restaurant, in which the whole entire staff cooked, this is when her journey and passion for food became more solid. Serving vintage ‘70s dishes, is when she became part of the Culinary Revolution movement. Most of the experts believe the Culinary Revolution started with Alice Waters, who is the owner of Chez Panisse a restaurant in this city. The values of food changed and also her ideas. Consequently, “the mantra of using fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients,” helped Ruth change the meals she served throughout her life. Having a better understanding about food, she achieved a deeper level of emotion and maturity.

Her joy and pleasure to cook amazing dishes and discovering new products is something humans usually find comfort.  I remember two years ago, I gained 25 pounds. I didn’t know how, but it was incredibly fast that I didn’t notice I was overweight! After this incredible shock, I started finding simple and quick ways to help in my diet. A few days later, I drove by Stone Oak and I looked at a store named My Fit Food, so I decided to go in. This store was build with 5 refrigerators that contained packed foods. Eventually, one of the employees explained that they are high quality nutritious meals that are 90% gluten free. Most of the time, people buy the plates (packages) each week, but everything sounded too good to be true.  Having thousand of options for people who had pressed schedules was a perfect idea. I asked the guy that if I choose to eat only My Fit Food for one month, how much weight I was going to lose, including exercise. As he replied, “mmm.. maybe like 3 pounds…” WHAT! That means each of the plate costs around $9.25 times 21 meal containers that I will eat for a week will cost me around $300 dollars! Times four weeks will come to a total of $1,200. Okay… let’s go to plan B. I decided to buy my own food at the grocery market and started making my own meals. After a few months, I was so happy because I found comfort with food in healthy and simple ways. I learned 10 different ways to eat and prepare tuna, and just like Ruth, I began a new journey with food.  

Later on, Ruth becomes a cook in a community in California, where she makes an unforgettable Thanksgiving dinner entirely from supermarket discards. However, this is when her fear comes back. She was worried that the same thing will happen, poisoning a meal like her mother did. Thankfully, everything turned out just right.

It was so fascinating to see how many people she met and cared for influenced the way she felt about food. With all the relationships and fears she overcome, it shaped her future to be one of the most famous restaurant critics in the world. One of her most famous quotes is, “The cook doesn't want to be locked away in the kitchen anymore. He or she wants to be around the guests ... That means that kitchen appliances suddenly become like a sofa and table ? Things that everybody is going to look at, I think it's a real indication of where we are in food culture today.” (Ruth Reichl). 

Angelica Romero