From the James Beard Award-winning blogger behind The Everywhereist come hilarious, searing essays on how food and cooking stoke the flames of her feminism
When celebrity chef Mario Batali sent out an apology letter for the sexual harassment allegations made against him, he had the gall to include a recipe—for cinnamon rolls, of all things. Geraldine DeRuiter decided to make the recipe, and she happened to make food journalism history along with it. Her subsequent essay, with its scathing commentary about the pervasiveness of misogyny in the food world, would be read millions of times, lauded by industry luminaries from Martha Stewart to New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells, and would land DeRuiter in the middle of a media firestorm. She found herself on the receiving end of dozens of threats, when all she wanted to do was make something to eat (and, okay fine, maybe take down the patriarchy).
In If You Can’t Take the Heat, DeRuiter shares stories about her shockingly true, painfully funny (and sometimes just painful) adventures through gastronomy. We’ll learn how she finally got a grip on her debilitating anxiety by emergency meal-planning for the apocalypse (“You are probably deeply worried that in desperate times, I would eat your pets. And yes, I absolutely would.”). Or how she learned to embrace her hanger (“Because women can be a lot of things, but we can’t be angry. Or President, apparently.”). And how she inadvertently caused another international incident with a negative restaurant review (she made the homepage of The New York Times website! And she got more death threats!).
Deliciously insightful and bitingly clever, If You Can’t Take the Heat is a fresh look at food and feminism from one of the culinary world’s sharpest voices.
