White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming-of-Age Story [Hardcover]

Jenna Weber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2012

What do you do when you've just graduated from college and aren't sure what your next step should be? Jenna Weber, whose Eat, Live, Run blog has a huge following, turned to culinary school--but to become a food writer, not a chef. Jenna's charming coming-of-age story follows her ups-and-downs as she confronts the rigors of training, gets her first job, deals with a family crisis, and enters into a love affair.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jenna Weber attended Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Orlando, FL, with the goal of landing a job at one of the top food magazines. Instead, she ended up becoming a hugely popular blogger and writing this, her first book. Visit her blog at eatliverun.com to get an up-to-the-minute look at Jenna's world of food. She lives in Santa Rosa, CA.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Sterling Epicure (September 4, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402777779
• ISBN-13: 978-1402777776
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #207,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jenna Weber is the writer and creator of the popular food blog, Eat,Live,Run. For the past five years, she has been welcoming readers into her life and teeny tiny kitchen, serving up delicious recipes for tasty meals and treats.

Jenna graduated from the College of Charleston with a degree in English and Creative Writing in 2007. From there, she attended a travel and food writing course in Paris, where she fell head over heels in love with just about every French bakery and pastry shop that she passed. Upon returning home to the States, Jenna decided to pursue her lifelong passion of food (desserts in particular!), and enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando, Florida.

Jenna has worked as a pastry chef, bread baker and food writer. White Jacket Required is her personal story of attending culinary school with the goal of becoming a food writer rather than a chef. She hopes it inspires others to go after their dreams, no matter how big they seem.

Jenna loves yoga, traveling, black licorice, shopping at Target and cuddling with her cat, Dexter. Visit EatLiveRun.com for an up-to-the-minute view of her world of food.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great recipes, but shallow stories behind them September 29, 2012

By Christina Hayes

Format:Hardcover

I enjoyed the format of the book, with recipes after each chapter- and most of the recipes are quite good. The narrative itself, though, is fairly thinly developed. The first few chapters seem devoted to "what a quirky kid I was!" The rest of the book recounts the few years after Jenna graduated from college, and they lack a coherent narrative. The book tries to shoehorn her experiences into "young woman follows her dreams!" but I think "young woman flails about, trying to find something worthwhile to do with her life" would be more accurate- and a much more interesting read.

The book also suffers from Weber's refusal to let her readers in on the emotions she's feeling; we learn more about the devastation she felt when she got shin splits from running than we do about how she dealt with a real tragedy, and her boyfriend of many years is given the most superficial of descriptions.

As another reviewer mentioned, there are a few inconsitentcies in the narrative, which can be irritating. Worse are the details that seem left out, that I want to know more about: Wait, you were a sorority girl at University of Alabama? Wait, you're a devoted yogi? Wait, who's this best friend that you're visiting whom I haven't heard of until this page? Wait, were you happy and popular with serious boyfriends in high school or a shy new girl?

Overall, a *** read. Interesting and readable enough when you want something light, and there's a kernel of a good book there, but it's just not developed well enough- or Weber doesn't let us in enough- to make it great.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read but not well written... October 26, 2012

By brit

Format:Hardcover

The reviewers who note the frustrating inconsistencies, erratic pacing, and lack of emotional depth are spot-on. The book is worth reading if you're a fan of the blog. Although you'll have to overlook the vast difference between the writing tone on the blog and the one in the book (among other inconsistencies). Another element that I found extremely frustrating was that many of the recipes are already on the blog and have been for years. It seems as if she tried to copy Amanda Hesser's Cooking with Mr. Latte or Elizabeth Bard's Lunch in Paris but fell drastically short. Both the aforementioned are much more interesting reads. After enjoying the blog for years I expected more from Jenna.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Proof that a blogger doesn't make an author October 6, 2012

By James

Format:Hardcover

I wouldn't recommend this book.... it's very simple with erratic pacing. I think this is a good example of someone who blogs shouldn't assume they will make a good author. Jenna really should map out the events and people in her life much better to allow proper flow and answer lingering questions.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great premise that is not fully realized in execution January 20, 2013

By Chicago Book Addict TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Having read the author's blog on and off since its inception, I was curious to read her first book, White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming-of-Age Story. Billed as a culinary coming of age story, it follows Weber from her decision to pursue culinary school post college to her experience actually at school to her struggles afterward to find her purpose and live a full life. The premise was one that appealed to me because as a 29-year-old the struggles of adjusting to life post-college are still pretty fresh in my mind. I also think that social media like Facebook can give you the impression as an early 20-something that your friends have it all together so if you are struggling, it can be refreshing to read the story of someone in a similar position.

Unfortunately the execution didn't quite realize the full potential of its premise. I found the book to be a nice account of Jenna's early 20-something life, but to me nice only makes for a 3-star, not 5-star read. For me it didn't really flow as a book. Her entire culinary school experience felt really flat to me. There wasn't much tension there and though I get the sense it was a trying time for Jenna, she only seems to touch on the surface of her emotions at this period in time. I was also expecting a little bit more in how she described the whole experience. Her description of food was okay at first, but became quickly formulaic as she described almost every culinary experience the same way. It lacked a lot of the depth and variety I've come to find from other food writers.... If you're looking for a book that brings the culinary school experience to life I personally found The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School to be a much more compelling book. While I wanted this book to be on the same level, I found Flinn's account to be much richer.

I do think we see a deeper side of Jenna and start to get a more poignant book once she explores her reaction to her brother's death. But it doesn't come until page 154 in the book. Personally I think the book would have resonated much more with me if it was more about how her brother's death made her rethink her choices and follow her passion. But it doesn't really feel connected to what came before it and since there are little more than 50 pages after I feel like we don't really understand the full effect it has on her life. The ending felt a bit abrupt to me. Not to mention for all the talk of Jenna going to culinary school to be a food writer, the book makes little nod to this dream at the end. Again, I also kept hungering for Weber to go deeper and truly talk about her emotions, but I felt like even with this tremendously tragic thing happening to her, it still felt like she was holding back. I always got the sense on her blog that she was a private person and I do think it hinders the potential of this book.

My last issue with this book was that although it was billed as a 'culinary coming-of-age story' I felt like food didn't play as big a role in the book as I expected. I thought in the first chapter she did a nice job of showing how cooking played a formative role in her childhood, but post culinary-school it stopped feeling as linked. She kept describing meals she was eating at the time, but it felt forced as if she knew she was writing a book about food and had to include them. What I've loved about food writing is that the meals described in this book often start to feel almost like characters. To me, I didn't get that. It stopped serving a purpose.

Overall, this book was just okay. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did because of all the struggles Weber has been through and the amount of time I'd spent following her life on her blog, but I just didn't. I almost felt like she might have been better off saving this book for a few years until her perspective on the situation and her writing style had matured a bit. Right now the quality of it feels more like a well written college essay than a notable piece of non-fiction.

That said, I do think most current and especially long time readers of her blog will like it. Though it didn't go deep enough for me, it still does share more of Jenna than she wrote on her blog as these events were happening. Plus I think when you already have an established fondness for someone I think you're often willing to overlook more than someone would if they previously had no history with an author. I'm less convinced that this is a book that will appeal to those who haven't read her blog. It just seems to me there are so many other pieces of food writing that are better developed and have a more cohesive flow to them.

So in short, I would recommend it for die hard fans of her blog, but others may want to pass or at the very least, get this at the library vs. investing in the book itself. Read more ›

23 of 30 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Inauthentic, mediocre writing September 19, 2012

By Karen

Format:Hardcover

There are many inconsistencies in this book, as evidenced by the author's chronology of events detailed in her blog - it seems much of this was manufactured for the sake of selling a memoir - still, there's not much here worthy of a book. She comes off (both on her blog and in this book) as a spoiled brat. No one can fault her for her intent: to inspire. But, there's nothing remarkable about Jenna's story, despite her attempts to manipulate facts and events and chronology - it's still a bland and one dimensional coming of age story, with mediocre writing, highly editorialized. I am surprised that any publisher would think there's anything profound enough to merit a memoir here. I found it frustrating to read this tale that didn't ring true to what Jenna has previously shared about these same events.