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Average customer rating:
- Rich...
- This Man Knows How to Live and Eat
- Food tells the story
- good from the getgo
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Fried Butter: A Food Memoir
Abe Opincar
Manufacturer: Soho Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 156947334X |
Book Description
You Eat What You Are
Abe Opincar’s memories are joined to food. The rest of us measure our lives in days, hours, minutes, in milestones, achievements, and losses sustained. He remembers leaving his wife the night he baked chicken, being roundly criticized by French hosts for not properly eating ripe peaches with a knife and fork. Also eggs sunny-side up and first sex, cornmeal mush and his dotty aunt, garlic and his father’s love. We refer to clocks, calendars, address books, photographs, and objects we’ve invested with sentiment. Opincar’s references are to beer, saffron, aguardiente, limes, Ibarra chocolate, foie gras, and yams.
His life in California, Kyoto, Jerusalem, Paris, Istanbul, and Tijuana is called up by flavors that bring back the moments and places and people he broke bread with and loved. Even the experiences of others are marked by dishes and drinks, fruits and vegetables. What’s recalled and savored is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, or insightful and poignant, but it is always witty and penetrating and wholly beguiling. We eat what we are. Food is life, and Opincar relishes it.
Customer Reviews:
Rich..........2004-04-21
...as butter itself is Abe Opincar's spare prose and his eye for detail. Linkages between foods and personal memories are beautifully described as are the many characters the author has encountered in what can only be described as a fully-textured life journey. 'A food memoir' is accurate on as far as it goes...this is a wonderful little book about life. Highly recommended!
This Man Knows How to Live and Eat.......2003-06-11
A friend sent me a review of this book that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm an amateur chef who loves all food writing and the review was so positive I had to buy and read the book. The review was very honest and Fried Butter is an excellent book.
Although many of its stories are quite sad, a lot of them are extremely funny and all of them are very sensuous. Abe Opincar is obviously a man who appreciates life a great deal and he comes across as a very attractive fellow in terms of his personality. I think he would be a wonderful dinner guest. I'd love to cook a great meal for him and hear what he thought of the food and the stories it reminded him of. The picture of him of the book jacket shows him laughing which I think says a great deal about his personality and his writing.
After reading Fried Butter, I don't think I will ever eat the same way again. It really made me think about what goes through my mind when I eat, about all the stories I think of when I eat, and about all the people I remember when I eat. The book really did have a deep impact on me.
Food tells the story.......2003-05-23
San Diego writer Opincar shapes this food memoir as almost a stream-of-consciousness series of vignettes; strong memories attached to food, from the Sabbath chicken he roasted the night he left his wife to a poignant Passover dinner spent with a couple married 50 years.
The title of the book comes from the eggs that his mother craved when she was pregnant with him: "the kitchen smelled always of fried butter," she says. His benevolent, patriarchal father ate raw garlic with his meat at dinner, while beaming over his wife's cooking, his great aunt began her descent into dementia by throwing a pot of Romanian cornmeal mush against the wall. Young Abe engaged in self-conscious sex in Japan while studying sushi and reached the height of embarrassment at a stringent French table peeling a peach.
There's a poignant, almost plaintive air to these pieces - a divorced, melancholy man recalling emotionally vivid, mixed moments throughout his life. In one he's quietly, musingly cooking with turmeric when a "friend" calls to tell him he's never really been in love. In Paris an acquaintance feeds him black radishes in sour cream while awaiting her drunken husband. He recalls eating ashes in Jerusalem, and picking through lentils one by one to avoid eating insects.
Touching and vivid, with bright bursts of humor and food lore, Opincar's memories weave food and life in a wholly absorbing and evocative manner.
good from the getgo.......2003-05-05
while i confess to only having read the first couple pages of this book, there are times a mere paragraph, or even a sentence, is enough to know you are availing yourself to a great story teller, an author, maybe even a sage. i've ordered the book based on a sample chosen by the new york times. i look forward to writing a longer review upon completion. from what i've read, anyone with a mind or an appetite would feel nourished by the pages of abe opincar.
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