Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor

BOOK REVIEW: Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor
I haven't blogged about my reading in a long while and it's also been a while since I've actually done any really substantial reading.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to get back into my reading habit thanks to a medical crisis that has caused me to spend a lot of time on my couch. Thankfully, I'm feeling a lot better thanks to an abdominal surgery*, but I'm also feeling better due to all of the reading I've been doing. I didn't realize just how much I've missed reading!

In addition to my health issue, I've also just let the everyday stresses of life and work get to me. I let reading go by the wayside even though books have always been one of my primary means of relaxation and escape.

Sigh...

Well, on to one of the first books I've really dived into over the past couple of weeks...

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor is a book that was nourishing on so many levels! It was a terrific read, allowed me to focus on someone else's medical problems instead of my own, and it was chock full of food, food, food! Most chapters end with a recipe, almost all of which sound absolutely dreamy!

Naturally, I haven't tried any of the recipes since I read Stir while I was on a highly restricted diet...I'm not sure if that was the best idea, but reading about food and reading recipes did give me something to look forward to once my recovery is completely done and I'm back to a normal diet.

Stir is a memoir--and I LOVE memoirs--about a young, intelligent woman who suffers a ruptured brain aneurysm that renders her incapable of doing almost anything that is part of her normal life. When Fechtor had her medical emergency, she was a PhD student and at the start of her marriage. She loved food and cooking, and was looking forward to starting a family. One moment she was on a treadmill and the next she was on the floor with the worst headache of her life and a long road of uncertainty ahead of her.

Fechtor's book combines so much of what I love in memoirs. She is able to bring together a good mix of seriousness with humor with moments that remind the reader that we are all human. Fechtor also writes with fondness of her parents and other relationships and makes it clear that our childhood memories carry on with us well into adulthood.

As I read about Fechtor's experiences cooking with her stepmom, I was reminded of many mornings and afternoon spent at my grandmother and great-grandmother's kitchen counters--I could practically smell the cinnamon and apples and could just about taste my great-grandmother's bread-and-butter pickles.

If you want to bring alive your food memories, you MUST read Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home. Not only will it bring up memories of food's intersection with your own upbringing, but you will come away with several new recipes as well. I've already written a grocery list and can't wait to make a mess of my kitchen with all the baking and cooking Fechtor has inspired!

You can buy Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor on Amazon HERE (please note, there are two cover versions as of my writing this post).



This post contains affiliate links.

*If you are curious, I had a cecal bascule, a type of volvulus or twisting of the large intestine that can cause a bowel obstruction. Initially, this appeared to correct itself, but then I continued to have symptoms. We (myself, my GI doctor, and two surgeons) decided that even if it appeared resolved on CT scans, the fact that I was continuing to have symptoms and the fact that it could recur at any time and potentially have life-threatening consequences, surgery seemed appropriate.  As of this writing, I am 10 days post-surgery and feeling much better, although I still have some healing to do and it could be a few more weeks before we know if the surgery resolved my symptoms. If nothing else, the surgery will 100% prevent the potential life-threatening consequences due to recurrence--quite simply, the part of my colon involved was removed and thus the potential for recurrence is ZERO.