Real Life of an MSW

The book Blue Plate Specail by, Kate Christensen, is not a cookbook. I might refer to it as a foodie book, but that will make one hell of a discussion if you belong to a book club. I can see where the confusion comes from the title though, as the author pens “She really cared what we ate… we told her how good it was and asked for seconds, she would say, half-jokingly ‘aww is nothing but a blue plate special!’ She told us that it meant the kind of dinner you got in an old 1950’s dinner: a piece of fatty salty meat or chicken or dish usually fried, with or without gravy, plus a side of vegetables…plus something starchy, like mashed potatoes or baked beans. It was old-fashioned feeling and cheap” (42). “We were all assigned one weeknight to cook dinner and another to clean the kitchen.”  (82). Yes, the book has a few recipes (I tried the Hu Kwa, a smoky oolong tea, and the chicken) at the end of each section, and Christensen waxes on about a number of recipes throughout the book (she spoke so much of Europe I found myself reading this book with a glass of wine and a charcuterie board), but its takes someone who a decent cook to decipher them as no measurements are given (the recipes just seem tossed in, as very few of them are related to the story Katie has shared with the reader).In saying that, I oddly enjoyed this book. The book would make an excellent audiobook on a long solo drive as it’s like listening to an old friend telling you captivating stories of family tug-of-war, parental neglect, sibling rivalry, the ebbs and flows of academic and employment all the way to the career she dreamt, and, of course, food cravings. The book is clearly a catharsis for the author. She starts it off by saying “The older I get, the more my own life feels implicated in my own novels, and the clearer it is to me that all my characters’ concerns come directly from my own experience” (4). Have you read this book? Do you have any good foodie book suggestions?