Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

by Ruth Reichl

What I was learning, on those weekend walks, is how much you can find out about a person merely by watching what he eats. Food became my own private way of looking at the world.

Because all the talk about “quality time” is utter nonsense; children don’t need quality time. They need your time. Lots of it. And they let you know it.

When I’d contemplated the job I’d worried about the burden of being a boss, afraid the staff would fear and resent me. But now I saw that there was another side to that coin: Nothing feels as good as building a team and empowering people, watching them grow and thrive.

I had the awful feeling I was about to get one of those stinging assessments your children are uniquely equipped to deliver.

“The most important lesson we learn at the table is that great rewards await those who take chances. Do we really want to be telling our children, ‘Just eat your nice chicken nuggets’? It would make so much more sense to say, ‘Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.’ ”

I was thinking of a meal in a small restaurant in Florence when I was twenty and another in Tours a few years later. People would lean in to tell me what to order and to share their favorite dishes. And every once in a while a chef would simply start feeding me, a point of pride because I was so new to the food. It was a generosity that was not reserved for restaurants. Once, stranded at Heathrow because of a canceled connection, the girl who’d been sitting next to me on the plane took me home to stay with her family. They were lovely people with a large house in Wimbledon, and I ended up staying a few days. Those things never happen when you travel on the excess express. The more stars in your itinerary, the less likely you are to find the real life of another country. I’d forgotten how money becomes a barrier insulating you from ordinary life.

As far as I’m concerned, a swell room means you end up spending too much time there, and I’d rather be out in the streets.”

“When you attain my age you will understand one of life’s great secrets: Luxury is best appreciated in small portions. When it becomes routine it loses its allure.”