HUNGRY: What Eighty Ravenous Guys Taught Me About Life, Love & The Power of Good Foodauthor: Darlene Barnes
genre: Memoir
publisher: Hyperion
source: TLC Book Tours
"foodie" elements: YES
hard cover: 272 pages
random excerpt: Some of what made that year hard for me was me. I was becoming like the women relatives I remembered from my childhood who would spend all day making Thanksgiving dinner and then get mad at the diners who were done in ten minutes, not nearly as thankful as they goddamn well should have been. (p.86)
summary/synopsis (from the TLC website): Newly arrived in Seattle, Darlene Barnes stumbles on a job ad for a cook at the Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity on the University of Washington, Seattle, campus, a prospect most serious food professionals would automatically reject. But Barnes envisions something other than kegs and corn dogs; she sees an opportunity to bring fresh, real food to an audience accustomed to “Asian Surprise” and other unidentifiable casseroles dropped by a catering service. And she sees a chance to reinvent herself, by turning a maligned job into meaningful work of her own creation: “I was the new girl and didn’t know or care about the rules.”
In HUNGRY: What Eighty Ravenous Guys Taught Me about Life, Love and the Power of Good Food naively expecting a universally appreciative audience, Barnes finds an exasperatingly challenging environment: the kitchen is nasty, the basement is scary, and the customers are not always cooperative. Undaunted, she gives as good as she gets with these foul-mouthed and irreverent—but also funny and sensitive—guys. Her passion for real food and her sharp tongue make her kitchen a magnet for the brothers, new recruits, and sorority girls tired of frozen dinners.
Laugh-out-loud funny and poignant, HUNGRY offers a female perspective on the real lives of young men, tells a tale of a woman’s determined struggle to find purpose, and explores the many ways that food feeds us.
