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The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Co...

Kathleen Flinn

Discussion: 2015-16 Books

Why we're reading this: This is the November 2015 selection of the book group.
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2015-16 Books

December Book: Truman Capote: A Christmas Memory
By Elizabeth · 1 post · 1 views

last updated Nov 09, 2015 08:02AM

The Sharper your Knife, the Less you Cry
By Lynetta · 1 post · 2 views

last updated Nov 07, 2015 11:43AM

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Nov 13, 2015 Lynetta rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir

My mother grew up in the era of "Women Whose Lives are Food, Men Whose Lives are Money." (title of a book of poems by Joyce Carol Oates) When the last morsel of breakfast was gone it was time to do dishes and think of lunch. Alas, this gene skipped me completely. I was the prep person and my husband cooked the breads, canned the tomatoes, and more. Now that I live alone it is rare to cook with depth.

Kathleen Flinn cooked to nourish and cheer her mother after her father died. She got a journalis My mother grew up in the era of "Women Whose Lives are Food, Men Whose Lives are Money." (title of a book of poems by Joyce Carol Oates) When the last morsel of breakfast was gone it was time to do dishes and think of lunch. Alas, this gene skipped me completely. I was the prep person and my husband cooked the breads, canned the tomatoes, and more. Now that I live alone it is rare to cook with depth.

Kathleen Flinn cooked to nourish and cheer her mother after her father died. She got a journalism degree, rose up the corporate ladder, and one day was told her job was gone. She had just met Mike who had asked what she really wanted to do with her life and told her he would go with her to France while she went to Le Cordon Bleu, THE most famous of cooking schools.

This memoir describes the agony of having to gut fish, chop off rabbit heads (page 74), remove chicken leg tendons with a soup ladle (page 41), taste tripe, fix sauces, cook main dishes, puff pastry, and desserts, present on a warm or cold plate on time and perfectly seasoned. It was great fun to read of her adventures, much as it is to read about others doing feats completely beyond me such as climbing a mountain or surviving a desert. It was also a great comfort from the safety of my bedroom to read about her rice not being acceptable to chef.

Throughout the book are most appealing recipes but intimidate me just by looking at their title. Fortunately I am eating much less meat and many of these are for carnivores (Gumbo from Paris, with Sausage, Shrimp, and Chicken page 100) or Guinea Fowl with Calvados Sauce and Rabbit Legs Simmered in Wine (page 118).

It's a fun read. Other reviewers suggest they would prefer to have less personal life, but I liked the weaving of the relationship with Mike and would like pictures with the results, and, if anything, would have liked wedding pictures.

Her bravery in going to France when she barely speaks French, with a guy she's known but not in depth, gambling her life savings, well....that's how mountains and deserts are mapped, rarely by cowards like me. ...more

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Sep 06, 2013 Elizabeth rated it liked it

This is provides an interesting window into how a top-flight cooking program, in this case the Cordon Bleu school in Paris, looks from the perspective of the student. The author's personal life at times seems overly intrusive, but it does give some narrative tension to the first two main sections of the book (corresponding to her first two terms at the Cordon Bleu). By her third term, I sensed that she was happier and facing greater culinary challenges, but it was less interesting. By this point ...more

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