STIR: My Broken Brain And The Meals That Brought Me Home

by Jessica Fechtor
 
I don’t read a lot of memoirs, and although we have about a million cookbooks on our shelves, I don’t spend a lot of time reading them either.  But Stirmanages to combine the two genres effectively and engagingly to create this quick-read book about healing, home and how our food defines us.
 
Fechtor was a 28-year-old PhD candidate in Russian Literature when she suddenly found herself flat on the ground at the gym with a brain aneurism. She remembers with incredible detail the physical and emotional sensations that accompanied that experience, and details them, along with her recovery, complications and further surgeries.
 
Despite her academic goals, Fechtor had in many ways defined herself through the food she made.  She was not a fancy chef, but she collected and modified recipes, and enjoyed feeding her family and friends.  So when she found herself unable to read and without depth perception during her recovery, it was cooking that she missed the most.  So she set herself one challenge after another and measured her progress by what she was able to accomplish in the kitchen.
 
Included in the book are many wonderful recipes and the stories behind them.  Perhaps I will try a few someday, but the value in this book for me was the wonderful storytelling and the look inside a brain as it broke and healed itself. (Lily)