Finding Freedom Quotes

“It was simple, it was honest, it was dirty, and it was real. It was glorious.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“The ability to touch a complete stranger with a plate of food, to feed them and awaken their senses while filling them up with joy—it’s an intimacy that you can’t help craving. It’s an intimacy that can only be made with food—a reason why restaurants can be so enchantingly addictive.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“limoncello I had made. We casually sipped our coffees and made the decision to get married that week: Let’s just do it! There was no downplaying the seriousness of this relationship anymore. It had found its way to a new, undeniably real level the day Jaim piped up with this little, nearly four-year-old voice calling Tom Dad. He had heard Tom’s girls call him that over and over again, the one night a week they were with him, and picked up the term for himself. It was real now, not a game we could play or a fling we could just keep casually engaging in for years. What Tom and I were doing held more weight than I had realized, and the weight of this one word, “Dad,” woke me up to the reality of what I was doing. Every decision I was making was impacting Jaim. As his mother, every big and little decision I made was shaping his world. This fling had become something greater and the responsible thing to do was to make it real, make it everlasting, make it right. Jaim liked Tom well enough, and Tom was kind enough to Jaim. Tom wasn’t”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“For me, food wasn't a competition about who could make the best dish. It's greatest power was to make taste and turn it into a long lasting memory. As a girl, I had learned from my father that good food could be a vessel, a way to show love, even when you might not have the words to say so. I could feel it in my soul that this was exactly what I was meant to do now. But the question remained, if I built it, would they come.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“It was the nicest thing I had said to myself and truly believed in a long time.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“The mystery of this place and its success still sometimes bewilders me. How could a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, run by all women (and one good man) with no formal training not only survive but thrive? Only one thing could explain it: love. We love our work because here, work feels joyful. We dance around the kitchen and dining room with a quiet grace—no yelling, no screaming, no put-downs. We are women, doing what we do best: caring for people.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Find your way to Freedom for dinner, and my only hope is that I can give you a meal and a moment that will leave a memory to last for a very long time. Because like my mother told me, that’s all life is made of: memories. From the pothole-laden parking lot, make your way over the gravel path embedded in the woods and follow the soft light guiding you to the footbridge that extends over Freedom Falls.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“For me food wasn’t a competition about who could make the best dish. Its greatest power was to take taste and turn it into a long-lasting memory.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“I wanted to do more than cook: I wanted to serve; I wanted to entertain and host; I wanted to take in strangers and feed them my love on a plate. As a woman, I felt a most innate joy in caring for people. Something that felt so natural to me, something that I craved to do.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“The kitchen is the beating heart in any home. That’s what I wanted my kitchen to feel like. Just like home. I wanted my stove smack dab in the middle of the room for all to see and feel. I wanted to mix and mingle with guests between plating courses and serving soups and salads.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Logic is the death of dreams. And it turned out that Tony and Sally favored dreams … and second chances.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Just keep going, girl, I told myself. Put your head down and your heart into it; you’ll know what to do—you’ll feel it in your bones. It was the nicest thing I had said to myself and truly believed in a long time.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Just keep going, girl, I told myself. Put your head down and your heart into it; you’ll know what to do—you’ll feel it in your bones. It was the nicest thing I had said to myself and truly believed in a long time. It”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Look out. I was back, and I was going to be better than ever.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“From here on out, I would open my eyes and ears and, most of all, my heart. I’d make a promise to live my life with authenticity and truth. Tonight’s dinner would symbolize the eve of my rebirth.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“With each step I felt as though I were extending a hand toward that little girl I had left behind. I looked into her eyes and told her what no one else had—that she was perfect, that she was safe, that she was going to be okay. She put her hand in mine and simply said, “I forgive you.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“I had been living some safe and sad version of someone else for far too long, trying to appease others.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Tom because that wasn’t the girl he seemed to want. He didn’t want wild. He didn’t want a dreamer. So I let go of her out of fear he wouldn’t want me, out of fear he would discard me, as my father had. I had lost her, that girl who didn’t care about chicken shit on her feet or mud on her clothes.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“A short parade of tabby barn cats followed close behind her.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Journeys take time, and the first few miles of that journey were in my rearview mirror now, which at the very least was a steady start.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Here we were, years later, and I still didn’t have time to wait for my father’s tutelage or energy to waste seeking his attention.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“My father saw emotions as a sign of weakness, and weakness was not masculine. He had been raised to ignore emotion and bury it deep, because that’s what a man does. So when the day came that his youngest daughter became an emotional wreck, he did what he was taught: He ignored it, buried it deep.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Baking helped me relax. It gave me something to focus on while distracting me at the same time. I could use my hands, get lost for a moment, and end up with something tangible and edible.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“Through each low moment, my sister remained absent. But I didn’t mourn her lack of presence: I was used to our nonexistent bond. Rooting me on wasn’t her style. Our relationship was riddled with decades-old decay and drifting apart that had yet to be repaired. We were anything but sisters, not even friends, really.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“I wasn’t just working on technique, I was working on my identity as a cook. I hadn’t fallen back on food as a safety net because I believed it to be the only skill I had ever really learned; it was becoming my absolute passion. I understood then, in perfect clarity, what drove my father to do what he did all those years, even at the expense of his family. But while feeding people was a driving force, it wasn’t in spite of my family, it was for them. And for the first time in so very long, it was something for me, too.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“felt untouchable; I could breathe, and it felt divine. I had a weapon now, one that shielded me from his barbs all in one little convenient pill, and I felt like I was finally starting to take back control of my life.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“He was scolding me as if I were a child and harping on every little imperfection he could find, making me feel naive and low. Along with his sobriety came his ability to nitpick the most insignificant of circumstances.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“I had made a promise to Jaim when he was born that I would dig us out of the hole I had dug for myself and start to build a better world for him. Now I was making good on that promise, and I started the best way I knew how: by building a home.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“I hung a framed watercolor of the Velveteen Rabbit I had painted for him while I was pregnant.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch

“There was fresh bread made each day from a sourdough starter kept in a jar in a cool, dark cupboard—the antithesis of the commercial rolls at the diner that we kept in a warming drawer with a soup cup filled with water to make it steamy, keeping the buns moist and hot.”
― Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch