The Sharper Your Knife

The Sharper Your Knife the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears at the World's Famous Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn is one of those books I picked up at random off the shelf at the library. It also has an incredibly long title. Not really knowing what to expect, I dove in. This memoir follows Flinn's journey from being laid off to enrolling at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in France to fulfill a lifelong dream. Along the way she finds love, in life and in the kitchen.

Fun fact I learned from this book: Le Cordon Bleu has nothing to do with Chicken Cordon Bleu. It's simply French for blue ribbon. C'est vrai!

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. It was a pretty cute story and I really liked Flinn's writing (she's also a journalist by trade). This was kind of a cross between Julie and Julia and Eat, Pray, Love in that it combines cooking and a soul searching quest of an experience. It's also peppered throughout (cooking pun intended) with recipes from her time at school. These all seemed too difficult for my cooking skills; I'm no blue ribbon chef. But, they were interesting to read nonetheless. This memoir is a few years old but should you happen upon it in the stacks, it's worth the quick read it will bring you. It also made me long to go to France.

P.S. This was my 16th read for 2010!