[.ca] Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life (ISBN 0060984422)

From Amazon.com:
Born in Louisiana and at home in Tennessee, author Michael Lee West makes any old body feel downright welcome at her kitchen table. The coffee's hot, the iced tea is sweet, the cake's a little dry, and the conversation shows no sign of abating, even as the last page is turned and the cover is closed on Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life. The subject is variously food, family, and Mama, wherein Mama is as much a state of mind as an embodied soul. This is about the South, honey, some of which is of the New South stripe, and some of the Old. In an easy, talkative style, author West spins tales, shares recipes, and hands out advice. In a chapter titled "Funeral Food," she includes recipes for Lemon Chess Pie and Lemon Squares. Among her rules for funeral food, she notes that dishes must be easy to transport as well as appealing to the bereaved. Some foods are simply inappropriate. "I myself have never seen appetizers at a funeral," West writes. "This is not the time to bring Better Than Sex Cake or Death by Chocolate. And it's never a good idea to use uncooked eggs in funeral food." Consuming Passions is about home cooking, about church-basement food, about growing up in the shadow of Mama's kitchen and learning to cook away from home. West is ever willing to try something new, to fail, to try again, and to defend to her last breath the virtues of her favorite mayonnaise. West has the spirit of a close friend who'll share all her secrets, including her best recipes, some of which her various family members (we meet them all) failed to take to their graves. Sit down, pull up a chair, and get ready to listen. --Schuyler Ingle

talented novelist delivers delectable, engaging memoir:
The author of three marvelous books about eccentric and defiant Southern women, Michael Lee West has concocted a winning recipe of down-home cooking and family history in a charming memoir/cookbook, "Consuming Passions." At peace with her love of food and proud of her women-centered family, West promotes food as the sustenance of all that is worthwhile in life. Her anecdotal style sparkles and her recipes are not only provocative, but understandable, even for amateur Yankee cooks and other such timid kitchen souls. The members of West's family take larger-than-life shape in this memoir, and the author is unabashedly proud, both of their iconoclastic character and their abilities in the kitchen. West does provide a modest warning: her "Southern tales are like intricate recipes -- part myth, part truth, and part lies." Her mother's insistence on an okra-free gumbo results in her swinging from a chandelier in protest. Her aunt Dell's oversized appetite takes form in her collection of hairless cats, antiques and skewed instructions on food preparation. Even her husband's attempt to raise bees falters when he mistakenly wears dark-colored socks. In the midst of the author's affectionate observations of family eccentricities is her unflagging commitment to a joyous life. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the numerous invitations to create in the kitchen is her acceptance of imperfection and failure. West never stops trying, never stops of her sense of adventure, never ceases loving food and family. When not enmeshed in rhapsodizing about food, West knows how to create food-based metaphor. Disdaining gossip as a "main course," she suggests that it "was more like an enticing appetizer, or a rich, sinful dessert." Partaking of gossip simply can't be helped, "even though you knew you'd be sorry later." Her family's obsession with food even has serious consequences. When a coroner concluded that several men had died in their sleep of heart attacks, her "aunts knew better -- it was death by butter." At its best, "Consuming Passions" reads quickly; its bite-sized chapters contain both humor and instruction. At its worst, Ms. West's prose tends to have a purple cast, much like the sugared violets she recommends to cause sleep and dissolve anger. Readers who admire Michael Lee West's fictional characters will enjoy her real-life versions; cooks who seek to broaden their repertoire will not be disappointed. She invites you to dig in to the liberating, sensual and powerful influence of food, best shared with people you love.

a smorgasbord!:
Half cookbook, half family album, this book presents snapshots of the women in this delightful Southern family via what they enjoy preparing in the kitchen (complete with a detailed recipe for the reader to reproduce on their own) and a story accompanying a memory involving the food in question. It's cute, folksy and leaves your mouth watering. Can't wait to make and have some of that coconut cake!!!

This could be my Southern family:
This book was so "homey" to me, I felt like it could be my family. Family traditions are so food centered, and especially for the females, we have our secrets and specialties we like to pass on, or not. My mother once asked me, "Do you think they go all out like we do?" After reading, West's book, I know we Southerners share more similarities than differences.

Feast for the Famished Southern or otherwise:
Fair warning! If you are on a diet or trying to lose weight, this book is lethal. My stars, what a feast of food memoirs complete with rich and tempting recipes! And how I would love some of that coconut cake that emerges from an eight day recipe. Obviously, West knows her family characters and attaches them to their noted eccentricities and manna. And what colorful, yea memorable, folks these are! Everyone should have a family like hers, with Aunt Tempe, Aunt Dell, Uncle Bun, a marvelous Mama and grandparents and cousins and family gatherings around food that will make you want to go to the kitchen to execute one of the cooking delights featured in the tales. I was especially fascinated by the pineapple upside down cake cooked in a cast iron skillet, and macaroni and cheese like I never imagined it. It also thrilled me to learn that West was a slow-to-learn cook herself, yet the obvious love she has for her family and their food eventually became a part of her own mature life. I think this book would be a fabulous gift to anyone from the South, or anyone who wishes they were. And recipe book fans are definite candidates for receipt of this tome. Here is a read with laughs and lessons, and it certainly is a keeper for me. Bon appetit, sugar! Meet me in the kitchen!

Delicious!:
Consuming Passions was destined to be a winner with me. A book about food and family -- only taste tests of the included recipes could have improved this book!! Michael Lee West has chronicled her life as spent in a kitchen or a dining room, from learning to cook as a young woman to her pride in her son, the chef. Recipes, whether gleaned from friends and family or her own, are included. I can't wait to try Cousin Lila's Sweet Potato Souffle and the Brabham Family Chocolate Sheet Cake. She even explains to the non-Southerner the preferred way to make Sweet Iced Tea (this I already knew, of course!) Some of the information is very helpful as well. The chapter spent on how to season cast iron cooking pans is a must read. Anyone who has ever tried the seasoning process knows of the grief it can cause. And the humor! As in each Michael Lee West book, the laughs keep coming. I so want to meet her Mama (of the massive canvas pocketbook fame) and her Aunt Dell (in all of her sartorial splendor)! I do have one problem with this book. I can't decide if I should keep it in the kitchen with the cookbooks or shelve it in the den with the rest of my books. I'm tempted to buy another and keep one in each place. A true gem!