"Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life" (Riverhead Books, 256 pages, $25.95), by Kim Severson: Cooking is powerful. It soothes during a crisis, helps keep families together and is the best antidote for anything life throws at you.
New York Times food writer Kim Severson shares this lesson and others in her new book, "Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life." While big names in food — such as Marcella Hazan, Alice Waters and Rachael Ray — are certainly featured in the book, it is by and large a memoir that recounts Severson's roving childhood, coming out as a lesbian, alcohol addiction and budding journalism career.
The theme that unites it all is, of course, food — the way her mother's pasta sauce provided comfort and consistency amid many moves, the way writing about food helped her figure out who she really was.
A conversation Severson had with Marion Cunningham summarizes nicely her belief in the power of grub: "We talked about the magic lessons of the table, about how serving food family style teaches a child to share, to leave something for the next person. How sitting next to someone and eating creates a kind of intimacy and gently teaches the art of conversation and the importance of community."
The book is sprinkled with interesting food history and explanations of how food critics do their job (sample enough to get your benchmarks: the chocolate against which every other chocolate is compared, for example). It also includes at the end of each chapter recipes that have sentimental meaning to the author and the cooks she features. Severson's writing is vivid and engaging, although maybe not enough to maintain the interest of nonfoodies in this ultimate foodie book.