Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef is a memoir by Gabrielle Hamilton. She takes us on a journey from her childhood growing up in Pennsylvania with her parents and siblings. Early in the book, her parents separate and this throws her life into chaos. Between her mother’s move to Vermont to find herself and her father’s distracted parenting, she found herself on her own from her early teenage years. She quickly finds herself embroiled in adult situations with alcohol and drugs, which continued when she moved to New York and found work in a restaurant at 16. She decided to return to school when she got a scare from being arrested in New York.

Gabrielle developed an early appreciation for food from spending a lot of time with her French mother who appreciated good food. This gave Gabrielle the confidence to work in food preparation and at restaurants once she needed to find a job. Without formal training, she developed her skills to work in catering. Although she studied literature, looking for an alternative to working with food, she has remained in the industry and owns a restaurant in NY called Prune, where she is a co-chef with her wife.

A Kind of Love Story

Along the way, Gabrielle married Michele. Despite being married and having two children, they lived separately for 6 or 7 years. Their marriage was motivated by his need for a green card. This is not a fairy tale. After years of yearly visits to Italy to visit Michele’s family, Gabrielle continued to feel estranged from her husband. Eventually, they divorce.

Gabrielle Gets Things Done

In current parlance, we would say Gabrielle is a maker. She talks about the thrill of getting her hands dirty, going barefoot, building a fire to roast an animal for food, climbing trees to prune them, etc. She opened a restaurant without ever having been a chef in one. Her mother-in-law called her brave and courageous for flying to Italy with her children, and all her other achievements and experiences pay witness to this.

“I trim at least six trees, bracing myself in their crotches in the hot summer sun, cursing and grimacing, trying to hold on with one hand and work the clippers with the other.”

Gabrielle comes across as a critic of people who fight a certain way, eat a certain way, or live a certain way. I think that would make it difficult for us to be friends if there even was the chance. While I might not scoff at her choice to eat rabbit, she might scoff at my refusal to do so. Perhaps I have misread the tone of sections of the book, but that is the impression that I got.

“I hate hating women but double-skim half-decaf vanilla latte embarrases me. I ordered a plain filtered coffee, as if I was apologizing on behalf of my gender.”

Themes Explored

Themes explored in Blood, Bones & Butter include expectation versus reality, choices and consequences, intercultural relationships, family dynamics and relationships, and sexuality. Here are several quotes from the book that highlight some of its themes.

On providing structure – “Someone has to stay in the kitchen and do the bones of the thing, to make sure it stands up, and if it’s you, so be it.”

On women in the food industry – Gabrielle participated as a panelist in a conference at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York on “Where Are the Women”. She writes that the “topic’s a dinosaur” but then goes on to give several examples of situations that demonstrate that it’s not.

On the inevitability of her marriage’s demise – “Michele had failed to blanche the pancetta and additionally had overseasoned the ravioli filling and so those several dozen handmade gorgeous little beauties, which looked so enticing and appealing from the outside, went to waste as we opened them and took out the filling and ate only the few bites we could salvage of the empty pasta alone with the butter and sage. I should have paid attention to that.”

On in-law relationships – “I don’t know if anyone in the family knows me or likes me, but I like them. Without language, I am left hyper, acutely tuned in to tone and body language and I can never trust my observations fully. People smile and seem happy to see us.”

On cultural differences, patience, and merging lives – “… I am chucking the mealy-moth-infested crap that I have known to be living in this crazy cabinet since the day I arrived here seven years ago. I feel it is appropriately respectful to have waited this long though I admit it was a challenge for me not to have at this cabinet five years ago.”

On desire versus reality – “I just want my vacation in Italy with my Italian husband to feel like what it sounds like.”

Recommendation

I thought Blood, Bones & Butter would be like A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, In some ways it is, because they both explore the author’s life through her relationship with food and cooking, and both authors experience loss and grief of different types. Molly’s stories center around food, as a way to access her memories. Cooking is central in Gabrielle’s life, but the stories do not revolve around sharing and eating food.

Should you read Blood, Bones & Butter? The story kept my interest and I enjoyed it. Read it if any of the themes explored interest you, if you like memoirs, or if you’re just looking for an interesting book. This memoir is as honest as a memoir can be, told from a single perspective. I was mostly entertained by it. While it is sad in parts, I did not cry. The author is occasionally self-righteous and sometimes critical of others. Who of us isn’t like that sometimes?