Customer Reviews

Feasts and Friends: Recipes from a Lifetime

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I try to stay away from combination memoir-recipe books since they seem to all be wistful in the exact same way, but this one's different. Thompson's the daughter of actress Gloria Stuart and screenwriter Arthur Sheekman so the dinner parties she eavesdropped on as a tot were a little more exotic than the norm, and she is the goddaughter of M.F.K. Fisher, which can't have hurt when it comes to learning about what makes for a good cookery book. (You may in fact have read about Thompson without realizing it; in Fisher's The Gastronomical Me she is the little girl "[who] hates her mother's sensuous dishes" and only wants to eat her grannie's "store ice cream" and mashed potatoes). There are some amusing stories in this book (such as one about a failed teenage attempt to impress indifferent gum-chomping boys with an elaborate meal) and a refreshingly un-thematic collection of beloved and often-tested recipes from all over the world. One of the chapters, for example, consists of recipes learned from and inspired by the cook at a villa Thompson stayed at in Italy, who was talented enough to remain employed after her "balding, baby-faced, un-employed lover" was caught wolfing down the Thompson family's prosciutto and guzzling their wine.