In shipshape shape but reading (1)

The ash cloud has kept me extra muros a bit longer. So we read.

During a Mediterranean meal this week with friends I hadn't seen for a while, it took little time before we broached the subject of food, farmer's markets and home-grown vegetable gardens. One of my convivial table companions mentioned Jason Epstein's memoir Eating.

The New York-based former editorial chief at Random House wrote in fact two memoirs: one about books, another about his relationship to food, which started in his grandmother's wainscoted kitchen in Maine.

The book is a fluid recollection of lessons in cooking, meals and encounters. Memoir is larded with recipe, but in broad, effective strokes, like a seasoned cook, not a didactic cookbook writer. Epstein was the editor of many a famous chef.

In matters of food, Epstein is no purist, but an epicurean omnivore without complexes. He's knowledgeable about the seafood goodies of the East coast, and not at all squeamish with live lobsters. His doctor put him on a diet, but he ends the memoir with a tarte tatin. The very last sentence is: And life goes on.

Epstein uses the word shipshape in Eating - Tony Curtis was in "shipshape shape" too in Some Like It Hot.