We all have different backdrops against which we measure our lives, depending on the things we value or those that are most familiar. In an era when women of her generation strived to define themselves away from the home, Betty Fussell imparts the important events and nuances of her life from the perspective of the kitchen. This is just one more brave element in an already heroic memoir, filled with brutal honesty and deep soul searching.

Well known as one America's finest writers and food historians, the kitchens in Betty's lives bear little resemblance to the cozy Betty Crocker/June Cleaver havens that we were all led to believe made up the center of every 50s home. These kitchens are battlefields, as the author struggles for identity and independence at the various stages of her life. They are also schools of learning, not just the fine points of cooking, but the important lessons of life.

Following the author through the tyrannical Puritanism of her family upbringing to the constrained roles of faculty wife and mother, the memoir reads like a novel. Fussell allows us an almost voyeuristic view into the thoughts, frustrations, hopes and dreams of a remarkable woman gaining strength and coming into her own, on her own terms.