My Kitchen Wars

A Memoir

By: Betty Fussell

Narrated by: Jennifer Chambers

A fierce and funny memoir of kitchen and bedroom from James Beard Award winner Betty Fussell.

A survivor of the domestic revolutions that turned American television sets from Leave It to Beaver to The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Julia Child's The French Chef, food historian and journalist Betty Fussell has spotlighted the changes in American culture through food over the last half century in nearly a dozen books.

In this witty and candid autobiographical mock epic, Fussell survives a motherless household during the Great Depression, gets married to the well-known writer and war historian Paul Fussell after World War II, goes through a divorce, and finally escapes to New York City in her mid-50s, batterie de cuisine intact.

My Kitchen Wars is a revelation of the author's lifelong love affair with food - cooking it, eating it, and sharing it - no matter where or with whom she finds herself. From Princeton to Heidelberg and from London to Provence, Fussell ladles out food, sex, and travel with her wooden spoon, welcoming all who come to the table.

©1999, 2015 Betty Fussell, Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Life is what you make of yours.

I enjoyed the history which encompassed my mother’s and mine in the kitchen and the bedroom.

horrible French pronunciation!

Why not get a reader with a rudimentary understanding of French pronunciation for a book centered on French cuisine? Truly bad!

Mispronunciations Start to Finish

I'm not sure who Jennifer Chambers is or how she landed this gig, but I'm absolutely shocked at the sizable number of fairly common cooking terms (important in this book) that she has no clue how to pronounce -- even things as simple as cassoulet end with "ette" instead of "lay" when she narrates. Even "Le Crouset" is "Lay Crew-zette" when she narrates. It gets old -- fast.

Other than that, this is an interesting look at a time gone by, largely driven by neighborly one-upmanship when it was chic to dive in to the newest Julia Child, and the more complex it was the more points you earned amongst your neighbors in terms of esteem.

Glad that era's over, but it's interesting to read about, and surprisingly candid, but then again, it was the swinging 60s and so on.

Enjoyable, save for the endless pronunciation issues.