If You Can't Take the Heat

Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury

By: Geraldine DeRuiter

Narrated by: Geraldine DeRuiter

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the James Beard Award–winning blogger behind The Everywhereist come hilarious, searing essays on how food and cooking stoke the flames of her feminism.

“With charm and humor, Geraldine DeRuiter welcomes us into her personal history and thus reconnects us with ourselves.”—Mikki Kendall, New York Times bestselling author of Hood Feminism

ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

When celebrity chef Mario Batali sent out an apology letter for the sexual harassment allegations made against him, he had the gall to include a recipe—for cinnamon rolls, of all things. Geraldine DeRuiter decided to make the recipe, and she happened to make food journalism history along with it. Her subsequent essay, with its scathing commentary about the pervasiveness of misogyny in the food world, would be read millions of times, lauded by industry luminaries from Martha Stewart to New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells, and would land DeRuiter in the middle of a media firestorm. She found herself on the receiving end of dozens of threats when all she wanted to do was make something to eat (and, okay fine, maybe take down the patriarchy).

In If You Can’t Take the Heat, DeRuiter shares stories about her shockingly true, painfully funny (and sometimes just painful) adventures in gastronomy. We’ll learn how she finally got a grip on her debilitating anxiety by emergency meal–planning for the apocalypse. (“You are probably deeply worried that in times of desperation I would eat your pets. And yes, I absolutely would.”) Or how she learned to embrace her hanger. (“Because women can be a lot of things, but we can’t be angry. Or president, apparently.”) And how she inadvertently caused another international incident with a negative restaurant review. (She made it on to the homepage of The New York Times’s website! And she got more death threats!)

Deliciously insightful and bitingly clever, If You Can’t Take the Heat is a fresh look at food and feminism from one of the culinary world’s sharpest voices.

Hilarious and validating

I loved this author’s voice, her humor, and her fight against the BS that is the patriarchy.

Touching, funny, frustrating, and amazing.

The author’s narration is perfect, the essays are entertaining and thought provoking, and very witty. A fun listen.

So relatable

This book is a delight. It is infinitely relatable, inspiring, thought-provoking, and validating. I was disappointed when it was over.

Fierce!

The intersection of food and feminism is found in the fury of navigating an adult life when cultural ‘norms’ that are anything but normal.

Always enjoy the blogs - But the book would have been better for me than the audiobook.

I love reading The Everywhereist blog, and it is as a huge part of my life in the 2010s as I tried to be a travel blogger myself.

The stories were always well written, witty, and amusing. I was very excited to get to this book - but probably would have been better off reading it instead of listening to it.

After years of having the author's voice in my head as I had made it up to be, the real author was nothing like my inner monologue, and it really threw me off. There was a lot of overemphasis, or emphasis on the wrong words. (In my own head anyway)

I feel like the book is written a lot like the blogs, and had I sat down to enjoy the actual book, read out by my inner monologue, I would have enjoyed it much more.