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The Comfort Food Diaries
The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish to Mend a Broken Heart | Emily Nunn
17 posts | 16 read | 28 to read
In the tradition of Elizabeth Gilbert and Ruth Reichl, former New Yorker editor Emily Nunn chronicles her journey to heal old wounds and find comfort in the face of loss through travel, home-cooked food, and the company of friends and family. One life-changing night, reeling from her beloved brothers sudden death, a devastating breakup with her handsome engineer fianc and eviction from the apartment they shared, Emily Nunn had lost all sense of family, home, and financial security. After a few glasses of wine, heartbroken and unmoored, Emilyan avid cook and professional food writerpoured her heart out on Facebook. The next morning she woke up with an awful hangover and a feeling shed made a terrible mistakeonly to discover she had more friends than she knew, many of whom invited her to come visit and cook with them while she put her life back together. Thus began the Comfort Food Tour. Searching for a way forward, Emily travels the country, cooking and staying with relatives and friends. She also travels back to revisit scenes from her dysfunctional Southern upbringing, dominated by her dramatic, unpredictable mother and her silent, disengaged father. Her wonderfully idiosyncratic aunts and uncles and cousins come to life in these pages, all part of the rich Southern story in which past and present are indistinguishable, food is a source of connection and identity, and a good story is often preferred to a not-so-pleasant truth. But truth, pleasant or not, is what Emily Nunn craves, and with it comes an acceptance of the losses she has endured, and a sense of hope for the future. In the salty snap of a single Virginia ham biscuit, in the sour tang of Grandmothers Lemon Cake, Nunn experiences the healing power of comfort foodand offers up dozens of recipes for the wonderful meals that saved her life. With the biting humor of David Sedaris and the emotional honesty of Cheryl Strayed, Nunn delivers a moving account of her descent into darkness and her gradual, hard-won return to the living.
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Magpiegem
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Pickpick

Book 28-2021: This has been on my audible TBR for a long time. I finally got round to it thanks to #booked2021 #bakedgoodoncover. I found large parts of this book interesting & yet I kept drifting off & missing bits so I wasn‘t totally gripped. There was some beautiful descriptions of food, places and people and I will need to transcribe some recipes! I wish she had gone a little deeper on some of the family dynamics but still ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 1/2

Cinfhen This sounds like it would totally be in my wheelhouse!! #stacked 3y
Cinfhen Have you ever listened to this audio??? It nearly broke me in half 😭😭😭 3y
Magpiegem @Cinfhen ooh no I haven‘t- added to my stack!! Thank you 😊 3y
BarbaraTheBibliophage Sounds like a great fit for #Booked2022 #includesarecipe also! 3y
Magpiegem @BarbaraTheBibliophage oh yes it would be perfect for that. So many recipes! 3y
24 likes1 stack add5 comments
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Magpiegem
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Tonight has been Christmas pudding night so I‘ve had 7 hours of audio cooking and audio cleaning, listening to the tagged book. The pudding has a slightly unusual ingredient as I have run out of sherry, brandy and plain rum so coconut rum came to the rescue! Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the US 🦃 xx

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Magpiegem
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Edging ever closer to completing #booked2021 with this for #bakedgoodsonthecover prompt and crossing another one off my audible TBR to boot! Starting this one in glorious November Sunshine on the beach ☀️

Cinfhen Gorgeous 💕🤩💕🤩💕 3y
27 likes1 comment
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kyraleseberg
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My #DollarTree did not disappoint today!

Christine Excellent finds! I love an exceptionally good DT haul. And Voracious is such a great book! 5y
kyraleseberg @Christine I'm really looking forward to Voracious!! 5y
19 likes2 comments
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Expandingbookshelf
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Mehso-so

This book was fine, but not great. The recipes in the book made me so hungry I could cry 😭 and I found myself writing a lot of them down. But I wasn‘t super engaged with the book and Nunn really needed an editor. #somanycommas

jillrhudy By page 10 I was tired of her and she was raised 10 miles from where I was. Maybe she was uncomfortably like me? 5y
6 likes1 comment
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annalibris
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Pickpick

I didn‘t mean to read this book. It just sort of leapt into my hands while I was moving some nonfiction around at work. And I‘m so glad it found me! This is a lovely read about food, friends, family, and coming back from the edge of despair and substance abuse. Plus, it has some terrific-looking recipes.

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AileenRR
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About reuniting with an old friend:
“... it felt as if she had changed into a concentrated truer version of someone she‘d always been, with whatever possible false parts fallen away.” ❤️❤️❤️
Love this line, but I can‘t decide if I‘d like this to happen to me, or if I‘d want to be a bigger, more open version of myself.

Lea I have this on my Audible wishlist. 7y
AileenRR @lea I think this one would be great to listen to rather than read. It took me a couple of weeks to get through it because there were a few times when I got bogged down with details. 7y
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tholmz
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Pickpick

I‘m not sure if I‘ve ever connected to the trials and tribulations of a family and one person‘s experiences navigating guilt and sadness within it as much as I did with this book. I loved these words, unexpectedly, in a way I couldn‘t have imagined.

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Pamwurtzler
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Pickpick

Book 2 of #24in48 ✅ it was an interesting memoir & there were tons of good recipes. She got a little tedious at times though.

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Jeanne_S
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Pickpick

So good

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Jeanne_S
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Hoopiefoot
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Pickpick

I‘m not sure audio is the best format for this book because of the recipes, but I really enjoyed it. Southern cooking is my comfort food too and so listening to this both made me feel warmer and made me really really really hungry for pimento cheese.

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auntie_jenn
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Mehso-so

i wanted to love it, but sometimes a bad copy editor ruins an otherwise good story. #toomanycommas #somanycommas

16 likes1 stack add
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tammysue
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Just picked these up last night. I've been excited about reading the tagged book, puts me in mind of Eat, Pray, Love? (enjoyed book + movie)

#nonfictionnovember

bookloo You‘re going to love Dear Ijeawele!! 💜💜 7y
tammysue @bookloo It's a Goodreads nonfiction nominee! 🎉 7y
Jess7 @bookloo i really enjoyed one of he other little books. Is Dear Ijeawele as good or better than this one that she wrote: 7y
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bookloo @Jess7 I love anything Adichie writes so I‘m a little biased here, but both WSABF and Dear Ijeawele are solid feminist essays. You‘ll still come out feeling you want to do better for the next generation and even more proud to be you (if you didn‘t feel that already). 💜 7y
Jess7 I definitely want to read it. @bookloo . I recently purchased this feminist book at b&n but haven‘t had a chance to read more than first couple pages. Have you read it? - 7y
bookloo @Jess7 I‘ve tried reading it! I found it kind of boring. 😕 7y
RadicalReader @whatshesreadingnow the book everyone can and will relate to 😂😂😂 7y
tammysue @RadicalReader Lol!! 👍🏻 7y
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Jen2
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Pickpick

I love books about food!!!

RebelReader Me too!💕 7y
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lisakoby
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Another podcast recommendation! Food and mending broken hearts...sounds like a fall read to me. #biography #librarypick #allthebookspodcast #podcastrecommended

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Ashley_Morgan
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Pickpick

I LOVED this book! Part memoir, history of food, and cookbook. This lady has got a lot of heart ❤️

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