Two of my favorite things: puzzles + cooking memoirs
I remember the first book of Ruth Reichl's I ever read - it was Tender at the Bone, in theory a memoir but really an expression of her passionate belief that your meals (and the making of them) shape who you are in a very tangible way, starting even in the earliest parts of childhood. I loved it so much that I read her other books as soon as they came out: first Comfort Me With Apples, then Garlic and Sapphires, about her stint as the New York Times' food critic and all the subterfuge and drama (really) that job entails. Now I'm on to her latest, My Kitchen Year, about the shuttering of Gourmet when she was the magazine's editor-in-chief and her subsequent depression.
I don't always love Ruth Reichl - she can get a little treacly - but I can't stop reading her. And the biggest reason why I go back to her, over and over again, is the recipes; she essentially pioneered the memoir-peppered-with-recipe format that's so popular today. Granted, the recipes I've made from these books haven't always been the best ones on the planet - the matzoh brei was, in a word, a disaster - but when I'm reading her descriptions of how a dish didn't just exist in her life, but explained it somehow, giving her something that she hadn't even known she needed, I'm always desperate to try it for myself.
