Blue Plate Special
An Autobiography of My Appetites
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Narrated by:
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Tavia Gilbert
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By:
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Kate Christensen
About this listen
That the greatly admired novelist Kate Christensen has turned to the memoir form after six novels makes this book an event. Readers of memoirs of high literary quality, particularly those with food themes - most conspicuously Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me with Apples and Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones, and Butter - as well as admirers of M. F. K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin will be a large and eager audience.
This memoir derives from Kate's popular foodcentric blog, in which she shares scenes from an unusual upbringing and an unusually happy present-day life, providing an audience for this book that is already primed. That it is written by Kate Christensen means it will be a delicious reading experience in every sense - a compulsively listenable account of a knockabout life, full of sorrows and pleasures, many of the latter of the sensual, appetitive variety.
©2013 Kate Christensen (P)2013 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Timothy Bentinck
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In The Devil in the Kitchen, White tells the story behind his ascent from working-class roots to culinary greatness, leaving no dish unserved as he relays raucous and revealing tales featuring some of the biggest names in the food world and beyond, including: Mario Batali, Gordon Ramsay, Albert Roux, Raymond Blanc, Michael Caine, Damien Hirst, and even Prince Charles.
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A chef / restaurateur must.
- By Brandon on 07-18-16
By: Marco Pierre White, and others
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Buttermilk Graffiti
- A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine
- By: Edward Lee
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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American food is the story of mash-ups. Immigrants arrive, cultures collide, and out of the push-pull come exciting new dishes and flavors. But for Edward Lee, who, like Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton, is as much a writer as he is a chef, that first surprising bite is just the beginning. What about the people behind the food? What about the traditions, the innovations, the memories? A natural-born storyteller, Lee decided to hit the road and spent two years uncovering fascinating narratives from every corner of the country.
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Good listen for the aspiring food snob
- By thurman r. on 02-09-22
By: Edward Lee
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Stir
- My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home
- By: Jessica Fechtor
- Narrated by: Jessica Fechtor
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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At 28, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage and thinking about starting a family. Then one day she went for a run, and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell and the sight in her left eye and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved. Jessica's journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was able to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she drew strength from the restorative power of cooking and baking.
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Wonderful powerful read
- By Amazon Customer on 01-13-24
By: Jessica Fechtor
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Toast
- The Story of a Boy's Hunger
- By: Nigel Slater
- Narrated by: Nigel Slater
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Toast is Nigel Slater's truly extraordinary story of a childhood remembered through food. In each chapter, as he takes listeners on a tour of the contents of his family's pantry (rice pudding, tinned ham, cream soda, mince pies, lemon drops, bourbon biscuits), we are transported.
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Nigel Slater is fabulous!
- By S on 02-13-07
By: Nigel Slater
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Bonjour, Happiness!
- Secrets to Finding Your Joie de Vivre
- By: Jamie Cat Callan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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As a young girl, Jamie Cat Callan was fascinated by her French grandmother. Though she had little money, Jamie's grand-mère ate well, dressed well, and took joy in simple, everyday pleasures. As Jamie journeyed through France as an adult, she gained more insight into the differences between French and American women. French women - whether doctors, shop owners, or housewives - don't worry about being thin enough, young enough, or accomplished enough.
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a delight
- By Jan Kovac on 02-28-16
By: Jamie Cat Callan
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Notes on a Banana
- A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression
- By: David Leite
- Narrated by: David Leite
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Reminiscing about the people and events that shaped him, David looks back at the highs and lows of his life, from his rejection of being gay and his attempt to "turn straight" through Aesthetic Realism, a cult in downtown Manhattan, to becoming a writer, cookbook author, and web publisher, to his 23-year relationship with Alan, known to millions of David's readers and listeners as "The One", which began with (what else?) food.
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Finished it in a day!
- By Kathryn on 08-23-17
By: David Leite
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South Toward Home
- Adventures and Misadventures in My Native Land
- By: Julia Reed, Jon Meecham - foreword
- Narrated by: Julia Reed, Dan Bittner - introduction
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In thinking about her native land, Julia Reed quotes another Southern writer, Willie Morris, who said, “It’s the juxtapositions that get you down here.” These juxtapositions are, for Julia Reed, the soul of the South and in her warmhearted and funny new audiobook, South Toward Home, she chronicles her adventures through the highs and the lows of Southern life - the Delta hot tamale festival, a masked ball, a rollicking party in a boat on a sand bar, scary Christian billboards, and the southern affection for the lowly possum.
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Julia Reed IS the SOUTH
- By toni on 05-23-20
By: Julia Reed, and others
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Provence, 1970
- M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste
- By: Luke Barr
- Narrated by: John Rubinstein
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Provence, 1970 is about a singular historic moment. In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery.
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Superb Narration, Engrossing Tale
- By Robert R. on 10-22-13
By: Luke Barr
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Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking
- A Memoir of Food and Longing
- By: Anya von Bremzen
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, in its full flavor, both bitter and sweet, Anya and her mother, Larisa, embark on a journey unlike any other: they decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience - turning Larisa’s kitchen into a "time machine and an incubator of memories". Together, mother and daughter re-create meals both modest and sumptuous.
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Does Pronunciation Matter?
- By Mary on 11-23-13
By: Anya von Bremzen
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My Place at the Table
- A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris
- By: Alexander Lobrano
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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A mouthwatering testament to the healing power of food, My Place at the Table is a moving coming-of-age story of how a gay man emerges from a wounding childhood, discovers himself, and finds love. Published here for the first time is Lobrano’s “little black book,” an insider’s guide to his thirty all-time-favorite Paris restaurants.
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Great foodie talk, great palate
- By daily walker on 07-02-21
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Isle of Palms
- A Lowcountry Tale, Book 3
- By: Dorothea Benton Frank
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Dorothea Benton Frank is a treasure of American letters with numerous New York Times best-sellers to her credit and a portfolio full of critical acclaim. “Mixing high drama and high jinks” ( Booklist), her third Lowcountry novel follows the fortunes of the dysfunctional Abbot family. Looking to set her life aright, Anna Lutz Abbot returns to her South Carolina lowcountry hometown. And as she attempts to right past wrongs, Anna receives help and support from a quirky cast of lovable locals sure to endear themselves to listeners.
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A feel good story
- By Sheryl on 02-04-13
What listeners say about Blue Plate Special
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Momoko
- 12-18-23
The food!
I went on a food journey when Covid hit and I gave birth to my second child. My father had died 3 weeks before I gave birth and my in-laws moved to town 2 weeks before I gave birth. Teddy was born 4/2/2020 so everything was raw and sad, yet joyous and amazing. We quickly fell into a pattern of extravagant nightly dinners, where I chopped, mixed, simmered, and sautéed multi part suppers and my husband’s parents quietly cleaned up while we tended to nightly routine. I ended up printing a photo book of our year in food and each meal reminds me of the details that ensued.
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- Pamela Harvey
- 07-27-13
Disappointing and Shallow
I grabbed this book as soon as I heard an interview with the author on NPR. Based on that, I wanted to read anything by Kate Christenson and thus I was expecting a much more introspective exploration of her life. What I got instead was an extended list of unexamined life experiences, rendered factually and sounding totally banal by the narrator's sing-song-y voice. Every event, situation, item in the physical environment was made to seem oh-so "precious", with unnecessary detail which after a few chapters became just tiresome. Perhaps in the hands of a less chirpy narrator, this book would have more heft and substance. But performed as is, "Blue Plate Special" is the new "Eat Pray Love", with the same shallow, self-referential descriptions that make it a picaresque pseudo-adventure for the privileged.
Actually, the "I", Kate, the narrator of this memoir is not nearly as interesting as her mother, with her multiple marriages, breakdowns, struggles and angst, and the listener only gets a random flash of her as background noise. Sometimes I kept reading just for the purpose of finding out more of what was going on with the mom in the story.
I can't say that this book is ruined by the narrator (although for me it was), or simply that IMO Tavia Gilbert's birdsong reading gives a shallow rendering to what might be an interesting life. Might read better in print.
I'll give it a "3", though, because it satisfies one of my basic standards of read-worthiness: it's entertaining.
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11 people found this helpful
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- newyorkdoll
- 07-19-13
Compelling in lots of ways, from start to finish.
What made the experience of listening to Blue Plate Special the most enjoyable?
Kate Christensen has a lot of unique experiences growing up in various parts of the country (under various conditions) and later Europe, with unusual parents and extended family. She has a front row seat for some pretty exceptional experiences: living in France, the Iowa Writer's Workshop and working in NYC in the late nineties while living in pre-gentrified Williamsburg. Her voice is genuine and charming and I couldn't stop thinking about her when I wasn't listening.The only distraction is the narrator's voice, which has an affected, overly-respiratory breathiness that reminded me of an "I can't Believe it's Not Butter" commercial. You can get past it though, easy. Just would have been cooler if she'd read it herself. Reminded me lots of Blood, Bones and Butter.
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