Good Enough to Eat [Paperback]

Stacey Ballis (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 7, 2010

The last thing Melanie expected to lose when she went on a diet was her husband.

Former lawyer Melanie Hoffman lost half her body weight and opened a gourmet take-out café specializing in healthy and delicious food. Then her husband left her-for a woman twice her size. Immediately afterwards, she's blindsided by a financial crisis. Melanie reaches out to a quirky roommate with a ton of baggage and becomes involved in a budding romance with a local documentary filmmaker.

In this warm and often laugh-out-loud novel, Melanie discovers that she still has a lot to learn about her friends, her relationships with men, and herself-and that her weight loss was just the beginning of an amazing journey that will transform her life from the inside out..

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Melanie Hoffman and her husband Andrew have been happily married for almost 10 years but when Melanie slims down to a trim size 6 after once tipping the scale at 290 pounds, her hubby leaves her for another chubby lady. Now divorced, the 39 year-old finds solace in her successful Chicago restaurant serving healthy gourmet fare. She has a small support group there consisting of her energetic, gay sous chef, Kai, a ballsy part-time cook, Delia, and her new roomie, a 24-year-old whimsical vagabond named Nadia. As Melanie slowly sweeps up the crumbs of fallen love, she finds Nathan and the handsome documentary filmmaker helps her overcome her body image issues. Ballis's (The Spinster Sisters) use of the enjoyment of cooking and eating as a continuous theme with featured recipes in the back is a nice addition, but the heart of her book lies within the jagged mind of Melanie and her daily struggle that most women, fat or thin, endure. Women will savor the brutal honesty of how Melanie sees her body, her battles with food, her failed marriage, and her fear of new love. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

Melanie, 39, is thrown for a major loop when, after she works hard to lose 145 pounds, her husband leaves her for a woman as heavy as Melanie used to be. Heartbroken, she throws her energy into the healthy-food café she founded, Dining by Design. Melanie is hanging on financially until she finds out that her condo association is assessing a hefty fee for a major repair, forcing Melanie to take in a roommate: free-spirited Nadia, who at 24 is on the run from a past she refuses to talk about. Despite their different backgrounds and ages, the two become friends, and Nadia starts working part-time at the café. The novel’s conflicts are few and relatively tame, but food lovers will certainly appreciate Ballis’ sumptuous descriptions of the meals Melanie and her friends cook up; and 40 pages of recipes are provided for readers eager to try their hand at some of the dishes. --Kristine Huntley

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade; 1 edition (September 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425229637
• ISBN-13: 978-0425229637
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,331 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stacey Ballis is the author of several novels, incuding Inappropriate Men, Sleeping Over, Room for Improvement, The Spinster Sisters, Good Enough to Eat, Off the Menu and Out to Lunch, currently available for pre-order, being released December 3, 2013. She is also a contributing author to the anthologies Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, and Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume, and Living Jewishly. She is currently at work on a new work of full-length fiction called Recipe for Disaster for Berkeley/Penguin, which will be out in December 2014.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful! September 7, 2010

By WFUgirl

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I read "Good enough to eat" in 2 days flat. It's a light hearted read with serious warmth. Melanie, the heroine, is struggling with a new life...She's coping with all sorts of new stresses from her recent divorce, significant weight-loss, a business, unexpected financial woes, as well as new personal relationships.

What I like most about Melanie (and all of Stacey's heroines that I've "met" so far) is that she's real. She has flaws & insecurities, as well as, successes & pride. Ballis provides the crucial amount of insight into Melanie so that I can understand and relate to her, without becoming irritated that the plot is being overrun by the protagonist's inner thoughts. The "supporting cast" are colorful, soulful, real.

Real is simply the best adjective I have for all of it. The romance is real, the life issues are real... It isn't a storybook fairytale, it's a glimpse into a fictional character's life.

It's chick-lit, or "women's fiction" without the trite sap.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Look into How We View Food and Ourselves September 8, 2010

By Deborah VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I'm sure there are many women out there who feel that they have to lose weight in order to either attract a guy or keep a guy's interest. So imagine the shock if you do happen to lose weight and your guy dumps you because he liked you better when you were bigger. It's not something someone would normally expect but that's just what happens to Melanie in this book. I don't know what I would do if I were in that situation. It's totally understandable as to why her self esteem went down. I mean, here you are trying to be healthy and not losing weight for selfish reasons and then your husband breaks up with you because he misses that extra weight. It wasn't even that she was a normal size and losing unnecessary weight. Melanie was actually in the obese range and learning to be healthy and then her husband does that to her. It's enough to make anyone get depressed and gain back all that weight but thanks to her nutritional counselor friend Carey and her coworkers at the restaurant/shop she owns, Melanie is able to slowly pull out of that funk.

I loved reading about her entrepreneurship with her cafe. I would gladly come to Chicago just to eat there. Everything sounded delicious and it also sounded like a really fun place to work. The characters that make up this novel are very engaging. I really liked Melanie's relationship with Nadia. At first they start off as an "Odd Couple" type of relationship but eventually they grow closer but still maintain that off beat distance. Nadia's story is equally as interesting to read about. Plus there's an Amish twist! (I can't seem to escape them) One of my favorite parts of the book is when Melanie travels to DC to visit her friend and ends up touring the Holocaust Museum. If you have not been that museum, it is worth alone a trip to DC just to visit it. I felt that Melanie's experience was exactly how I felt when I visited the museum last year. It's hard to explain the feelings and emotions you get while visiting but it's a a deeply moving experience. It is also in this trip that Melanie begins to find love again and starts a new relationship. What I liked about her and Nate was their easy going nature and the ability to not have everything be so concrete.

The absolute best of the book for me is all the food. First at the beginning of each chapter is a short essay about comfort foods that Melanie grew up with. Of course, throughout the book, since a cafe is being run, lots of food is talked about. Then at the end of the book are recipes! I love books with recipes because I want to make and eat what the characters are eating throughout the story. If they are raving about a dish, I want to try it too. What's really nice is that there are two different versions of each recipe - the decadent, fatty, buttery one and then a lighter, healthier version. Both kinds look equally delicious and I'm looking forward to trying out several of them.

I wouldn't necessary classify this as a chick lit novel. More so a contemporary read with a LOT of good and yummy food. It's a fast read but with a lot to think about as you read. Just be sure to have some snacks or dinner ready as soon as you finish because I guarantee you will be hungry.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartwarming and delicious read! September 11, 2010

By skrishna VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I'll admit it, I had pretty high expectations for Stacey Ballis' Good Enough To Eat going in. After all, I've been hearing about it for months through Jen Lancaster's blog. Jen and Stacey are close friends, and Jen's really been doing her part to spread the world about this book release. Therefore, when I received it, I couldn't wait to get to it. I love reading books about food and it sounded like a great story.

I was thrilled that Good Enough to Eat surpassed my expectations. First of all, the story was wonderful. I absolutely love that it wasn't your typical girl-loses-weight story. Mel worked incredibly hard to lose weight, and it wasn't about how she looked. It was about how she felt about herself, plus her health problems. Once Mel lost that weight, she had a love-hate relationship with food. I loved reading about her learning to appreciate each mouthful of food, rather than eating so fast she couldn't taste each bite. She was also very strong, constantly resisting the temptation to binge when things weren't going her way.

I also appreciated that this wasn't a magic story - Mel struggled with food on a daily basis. At one point Ballis compares food addiction to a drug habit or alcoholism, and makes the very good point that if alcoholics or drug users were required to take their drug of choice, but only in moderation, exercising self-control three times a day, it would be incredibly difficult. It makes it even harder for Mel that she works around food, albeit very healthy food that helped her to lose weight.

The storyline in Good Enough to Eat doesn't follow your typical women's fiction pattern either. Around each corner was a surprise, which made this book very fresh. And the food. Oh, the food. I was constantly hungry throughout this book because of Ballis' delectable, wonderful food descriptions. Including recipes is the new "thing" in novels, but Ballis takes that a step farther - the entire last 40 pages of the book is recipes. And considering how amazing the food was in the book, you can bet I'll be trying some of them out.

Good Enough to Eat was a wonderfully warm, delicious novel that I really enjoyed. I truly hope that Ballis chooses to revisit these characters in a future novel, as she took such care developing them that I felt like they were real. I highly recommend this book for fans of women's fiction and foodies alike.