My Fat Dad : A Memoir of Food, Love, and Family, with Recipes

From the author of the New York Times Well Blog series,My Fat DadEvery story and every memory from my childhood is attached to foodDawn Lerman spent her childhood constantly hungry. She craved good food as her father, 450 pounds at his heaviest, pursued endless fad diets, from Atkins to Pritikin to all sorts of freeze-dried, saccharin-laced concoctions, and insisted the family do the sameeven though no one else was overweight. Dawns mother, on the other hand, could barely be bothered to eat a can of tuna over the sink. She was too busy ferrying her other daughter to acting auditions and scolding Dawn for cleaning the house (Whom are you trying to impress?).It was chaotic and lonely, but Dawn had someone she could turn to: her grandmother Beauty. Those days spent with Beauty, learning to cook, breathing in the scents of fresh dill or sharing the comfort of a warm pot of chicken soup, made it all bearable. Even after Dawns father took a prestigious ad job in New York City and moved the family away, Beauty would send a card from Chicago every weekwith a recipe, a shopping list, and a twenty-dollar bill. She continued to cultivate Dawns love of wholesome food, and ultimately taught her how to make her own way in the worldone recipe at a time.In My Fat Dad, Dawn reflects on her colorful family and culinary-centric upbringing, and how food shaped her connection to her family, her Jewish heritage, and herself. Humorous and compassionate, this memoir is an ode to the incomparable satisfaction that comes with feeding the ones you love.