Never Eat Your Heart Out

by Judith Moore

A culinary memoir recollects the strange, good, and terrible dramas of the author's life and places them in the context of the realm of food, from childhood mud pies and bridal dinners to the experiments created during an affair.

Genres: Memoir, Food, Nonfiction, Food Writing, Cooking, Womens, Biography Memoir

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Diane Barnes]

An unconventional memoir using food as touchpoints for her memories. Born in 1940, married with 2 children by the time she was 20, her years as a housewife in a small town were full of her efforts to fit in as an outsider. The dishes taken to potlucks and church dinners were from recipes in the ladies magazines of the day. Then along came Gourmet Magazine and everyone was trying the avant garde. Those chapters were pretty amusing.

After 20 years of trying to fit in, and being discovered in an affair with a married man, she moved to Berkely, California and got a job at a magazine. She and her husband never divorced, but never lived together again. She spent the rest of her life making up for "those 20 wasted years". Funny and bittersweet, it was the perfect book to read when I could only manage a chapter or a few pages at a time. For food lovers who appreciate good writing, but no recipes included. Fortunately. Those potluck dinners left something to be desired.

[Theresa]

This collection of essays was almost a five star rating for me. It was so well written that it made me want to touch the pages and savor every word. (Well, not every word, hence the four star and not five!) Of course, since I grew up on a farm, I could really relate to the essays about canning and gardening and butchering. The author's essay about going to the county fair made me relive all the time I spent preparing for and going to the Oldham County Fair. I could see and smell the barns, the garden exhibits and the grease that hung in the air from the screen-enclosed kitchen. I could see all the brownies and angel food cakes baked by 4-Hers eager to claim that coveted blue ribbon. I could see the canned tomatoes and green beans. No seeds should be visible in the tomatoes so the jars were handled with such care so as not to loosen any stray seed. Green beans for the fair were not snapped - they were cut into even segments and only the best and straightest went into the jars for display. We were always in search of the perfect green pepper with four even points on the bottom to display. And the judges looked not only at the outside of the garments, but also at the inside seams. It must look just as good on the inside as it does on the outside. The ultimate was winning the chance to exhibit at the State Fair, where the competition was steeper and the pride even greater. The author talks about the Rodeo Queen - we had the Farm Bureau Queen.

This book brought back all those memories and smells and tastes of the fair. It also beautifully illustrated how hard it is to "go home," and see both how things have changed and how they have remained the same. I feel like I had forgotten many things about that part of my life, but this book was a gentle and sentimental reminder. I enjoyed it!

[Marsha]

Ms. Moore muses on the options that are available to women, past and present, and wonders how her life would have been had she made different choices. Our mothers and grandmothers once spent their lives preparing meals for loved ones. Their daughters and granddaughters then scorned a life in the kitchen, eschewing domestic abilities for the workplace and becoming generations that couldn’t cook or sew. Then the tide turned because women discovered, as their ancestors had before them, that preparing food well isn’t necessarily a chore—not when it’s done for the people you love.

Ms. Moore’s memoir is a glorious travelogue and journal writ through her memories of food. Her year of adultery, which was the happiest of her life, is run through with the wonderful meals she prepared for friends and family simply because of her delirious joy with her lover.

The rest of the book also features tales of food made, prepared, cooked, preserved and spread out like a feast. Food forms powerful associations for her and her prose scintillates as she describes the dishes and the emotions they engendered in her and others. Years and dates aren’t always laid out with any great precision (memory can be elusive like that); rather, events are often defined by the seasons. Summer is a time for preserving fruit; winter a time for pulling the brightly colored jars of fruit from the shelves and consuming the vanished hot season.

Evocative, gripping and occasionally painful, “Never Eat Your Heart Out” is a tribute to the binding power of food and its consumption.

[Simone]

In the chapter called “Adultery,” Moore describes the effect of an affair on her cooking: “I don’t think I ever better got the feel for that complicated business of insinuating cold butter into flour and thence into a high-pitched oven that produces milles-feuilles pastry, don’t think I ever stirred, sniffed, and tasted my way to a more provocative lime-ginger-soy-molasses marinade for duck than during the year I went out on my husband.”

And by the end of the chapter, “About adultery, I don’t recommend it. I also have to confess for that year I was happier than I’d ever been before or have been since.”

Need I say more? just read it!

[Kim]

This is a collection of memoir-ish essays, most of which have something to do with cooking, canning, gardening, etc. But of course, they are not *really* about cooking, canning or gardening. They are really about marriage, motherhood, identity, loneliness, doubt, friendship, aging, etc. Not all of the essays were fantastic, but most of them were really compelling and they hit me in a really strong emotional way. There were moments that made me cry because of how true and vulnerable and honest they were and there were lines that were so well written that I had to stop and re-read them just to marvel again at how good they were. I really liked this one a lot. (Thanks, Cassie!)

[Beth]

This book really frustrated me. I was expecting a memoir based on food memories and life's experiences, which is exactly what I got for about the first third of the book. Then it all changed. I found myself reading brief bits of confusing memoir-like chapters interlaced with chapters about different types of food. Rabbits, Rice, Cranberries ....Potatos. These chapters read like encyclopedia entries or fifth-grade research reports. I did finish the book because there were enough enjoyable parts to keep me interested. Not my favorite but not the worst either.

[Pam]

I first read this years ago and have reread it several times. She links the major events throughout her life in reference to what her food passion was at the time (her parents separating while she eats oatmeal - clever and moving, I love it and just sent it to my mother.

[Gail Richmond]

Some well-written essays in the memoir style, but some plodding, endless prose (i.e., Sunday church supper/potluck) not worth one's time to read! Skim quickly and savor the chapters like the first on pie and the one on canning.

[Lindsey Orlando]

I loved the idea of a memoir linked with food memories, and I really wanted to love this book. However, there wasn't as much connection with food as I'd envisioned and in general I tend to not have enough patience to read memoirs, so the book wasn't a good fit for me in the end.

[Joy]

One of Julie Powell's (Julie and Julia) favorite food books.

[Deb]

4/20/10--recommended by Julie Powell (of Julie and Julia). Another food-memoir

[Lillian]

I would rate it 4.5 actually.

[Keith Burton]

Gets lost at times but it surprises with some nice images at other times.

[Cindy]

Deeply honest memoirs are gifts. It's always an enormous relief to find others experience similar thoughts and feelings in life and can deliver those with dry eyed depth and often humor.