Food with Padma Lakshmi

In an effort to watch less TV and feel marginally more intellectual, a few of my friends and I started a book club. Once every month or so we get together after work, order some drinks, and talk about a book. We’ve done everything from the more highbrow All the Light We Cannot See to a one called Retail Hell. I can relate to the latter more than I would care to admit. Falling somewhere in the middle is Padma Lakshmi’s relatively new book Love, Loss, and What We Ate. As a Top Chef fan, self-labeled foodie, and a person who occasionally craves a quick read, I was a fan of this choice even though it wasn’t mine. I devoured it in two days and have left my favorite quotes below for you all to enjoy as well.

“I have always associated cooking with womanhood. At that moment, in August 2007, when I did not feel so womanly, with my insides carved out and my marriage a failure, the only thing I could take pleasure in was that golden sauce.”

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“The decision to consume my placenta was not an easy one.”

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“Just a hunk of cheese with good bread and olives were all I needed. Cheese and olives smashed between flanks of crisp baguette was the perfect combination of umami and chaatpati in one starchy, crumbly bite.”

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In regards to the concept behind Top Chef: “She loved Julia Child but had no interest in adding to the pile of imitators already on TV.”

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“Indeed, food and femininity were intertwined for me from very early on. Cooking was the domain not of girls, but of women.”

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Padma Lakshmi is not the kind of writer that makes you think “Pulitzer Prize!,” but this was an engaging glimpse into her life. Salman Rushdie, modeling around Europe, and a very public baby daddy drama make this a page turner, while her descriptions of growing up between two cultures is what make it real. Pick it up if any of that piques your interest; you won’t regret it.

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