Amy Thielen

I don't really read a lot of memoirs or biographies, but I enjoy cooking, and cooking tv shows, as well as my middle son would like to become a chef, so I was drawn in by the title and what it may reveal inside! I agree with a few other reviewers that even a handful of recipes sprinkled through might have put it into the five star category.

I didn't think there were enough adjectives in the English language to make the description of so many ingredients and recipes come alive. Her description show more of the look, feel, taste and smell of so many foods made them come alive off of the page. I wanted to try things that I normally wouldn't eat. It made everything seem appealing, and yet was not repetitive.

The story seems to have two phases although the location changes frequently between NYC and rural Minnesota. The first half while getting to know the main characters is very much focused on the food and her journey as a chef. Just when I thought I was kind of "done" with that, Amy begins going deeper into her emotions, relationships and thought provoking decisions about life that they faced. This for me engaged me back into the memoir through the end.

I think the appeal of the memoir will be to a variety of audiences from the aspiring chef, to the midwestern housewife, to the older generations looking back... very well done Amy Thielen! show less

This book is just gorgeous and amazing. I made two recipes from her that were on her television program, the chicken and wild rice hot dish and the old-fashioned, not-from-a-packet onion dip. They were both astonishingly good and the hotdish has become a regular fixture of dinner. This cookbook takes items like that and expands on it. The photography is beautiful, the stories introducing the dishes are well-written and interesting and there is a wonderful variety of old-world food, like pate show more and salted fish and deviled eggs. Thielen is absolutely right: the Midwest IS rising. show less

I wanted to love “Give a Girl a Knife” – if not only for the great title…but I found it just a bit too easy to set down.

Amy Thielen’s story is an interesting one – one detailing the influences her Midwestern childhood and her high-end restaurant experiences in New York have on her life and her thoughts & experiences with food. Indeed, at times, it feels as if the story is about two difference people depending on where she is living and who she is surrounded by.

When she is in the show more Midwest, she reflects on things like hot dishes and the custom of reusing gallon ice cream buckets to give cookies and food to neighbors:

“Later I would roll my eyes at those buckets, because I couldn’t see these milky, repurposed, plastic gallon containers for what they really were: a symbol of the whole community’s eating, a marker of generosity and thrift at the same time. In any other place, these ideas of abundance and frugality would sit at odds with each other, but in the Midwest of my youth they were bosom buddies, as tight as tongue and groove.”

And when she is working in some of New York’s high end kitchens:

“The cooking at Michel Bras wrestled with place in a way that I’d never known possible, somehow conveying the range of emotions that belong to those who live all their lives in one spot and see their childhood refracted through the lens of their adulthood. This is the middle of nowhere and the center of the universe. It contained the hometown struggle set against the backdrop of the landscape.”

I like food, and love the dining experience – but this was a bit over the top for me. The taste or smell of a certain food can certainly take me back to a time or place or person – but a bite of food has never made me think of struggle or landscape.

One of the most evocative scenes is when the author is cooking with her mother. “My mom dribbled in vanilla extract from the cap and then gave it all a quick stir. She worked from memory, with a knowledge that was housed in her hands. It was kind of like watching a veteran carpenter build a house.”

Food touches us in physical and emotional ways. This memoir touches on the author’s experiences growing up and becoming absorbed into the world of food and restaurants and at times is touching and other times is very interesting with its “behind the scenes” view.

But as a written story, it goes on too long and drifts too far afield – and I found it too easy to set down. show less

That's a nice cookbook if you're particularly interested in Midwestern cooking, but I prefer the newly released Heartlandia over it. I really craved the Corn Fritters with Green Chile Buttermilk Dip, though! And I'm curious to try the poppy seed streusel bar. It reminded me of those poppy seed pastries they make in eastern europe.