Stir

Description

A national bestseller and winner of a Living Now Book Award, Stir is an exquisite memoir about how food connects us to ourselves, our lives, and each other.
 
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, 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. Written with intelligence, humor, and warmth, Stir is a heartfelt examination of what it means to nourish and be nourished. 

Woven throughout the narrative are 27 recipes for dishes that comfort and delight. For readers of M.F.K.Fisher, Molly Wizenberg, and Tamar Adler, as well as Oliver Sacks, Jill Bolte Taylor, and Susannah Cahalan, Stir is sure to inspire, and send you straight to the kitchen.“Pairing food with the nightmare of surviving a brain aneurysm shouldn’t work—but under Jessica Fechtor’s wise and wonderful narration, the pairing not only works, it shines.”—Susannah Cahalan, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Brain on Fire
 
“Jessica Fechtor writes with remarkable lucidity, courage, and grace about the darkest and brightest moments a person can know. Stir will feed you, even after the last page is turned.”—Molly Wizenberg, creator of Orangette and author of the New York Times bestseller A Homemade Life
 
“Utterly captivating, engrossing, un-put-down-ably, terrifyingly magnificent. In a world filled with dross, Stir is breathtaking.”—Elissa Altman, author of Poor Man’s Feast
 
“Written with the flare of a novelist and the precision of an academic, Stir is a brave, beautiful narrative of illness and recovery. But it is not only that. It is a meditation on food and the kitchen, what it means to cook, and how the choices we make at the table can define who we are – and who we want to be.”—Molly Birnbaum, author of Season to Taste 
 
“Fechtor’s gentle lyricism cannot hide her fierce determination not only to survive, but to flourish.”—Luisa Weiss, creator of The Wednesday Chef and author of My Berlin Kitchen
 
“Stir is a beautiful, sometimes sad, often heart-lifting story of putting back together what has fallen apart. It is a poignant reminder of how inexorably tied our hearts and minds are to our stomachs, and what a blessing that can be.”—Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal
 
“Though Stir winds us through Ms. Fechtor’s illness, its complications and ultimately her recovery, this book isn’t a tale of sickness and health. And though it is filled with inviting concoctions…it isn’t merely a book about food and how to make it. Rather, it’s a recipe for living a life of meaning and an homage to the people in her life who nourished her.”—Wall Street Journal
 
“An inspiring journey, with recipes. With a novelist’s touch, Fechtor chronicles her recovery from a brain aneurysm that hit her as a Harvard graduate student at 28, sending her life on a far different path than she had imagined.”—Seattle Times
 
“Charmingly peppered with personal recipes, [STIR] thoroughly inspired readers and immersed them in Fechtor’s life against all odds.”—Elle
 
“Jessica Fechtor blends the story of her near-fatal brain aneurysm with recipes as if it’s a natural combination. And for someone with her optimism and modesty, it is. A feel good memoir.”—Shelf Awareness

“Beautiful”—Pyschcentral.com
 
“With warmth, humor and clarity, she explains in Stir how cooking helped her to reclaim her life.”—Columbus Dispatch
 
“Reading the book, I was compelled to reach for a pen every few pages, to underline things I didn’t want to forget — things I had to remember.“—The Forward
 
“Fechtor writes beautifully and is a warm, gracious guide through her own landscape of illness. Fechtor skillfully combines the sequence of events, memories of her earlier life, and her adventures in the kitchen.”—Jewish Week
Jessica Fechtor is the author of the bestselling memoir Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home. Her play, Book of Hours, was developed by The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, the Great Plains Theatre Commons, and was a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Jessica’s essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Tablet. She earned a B.A. in music from Columbia University, and has completed master’s degrees and doctoral work in Jewish literature from Oxford and Harvard universities. She lives in San Francisco.

1. On page 17 of Stir, Fechtor writes that “food is the keeper of our memories, connecting us with our pasts and with our people.” How does this statement apply to your own experiences cooking and baking? Which foods evoke the strongest memories for you?

2. Stir is an incredibly intimate book, wherein Fechtor reveals the peaks and valleys of recovery after a near-death experience. After reading, how would you characterize Fechtor? Which anecdotes in the book were most impactful to you?

3. Fechtor’s road to recovery is as much a mental journey as it is a physical one. Discuss the challenges she faced in assuming the role of “patient.” During which moments of her recovery did she experience the most frustration? Elation?

4. Fechtor integrates anecdotes about her personal journey alongside meaningful recipes that relate to the content of each chapter. How did this impact your reading experience? Which recipes were you most drawn to?

5. In Chapter 2, Fechtor asserts that “getting well means finding your everyday.” Which aspects of Fechtor’s everyday came back first? Which elements of her daily life took longest to resurface?

6. Fechtor’s relationship with her husband plays an important role in the narrative. Discuss their courtship. How would you characterize their relationship? Which moments of their lovestory stick with you?

7. Stir is full of delightfully descriptive scenes of Fechtor in the kitchen. How does the act of cooking physically reconnect
Fechtor to her body? What adjustments does she make during her recovery process in order to return to the kitchen? What meal would you consider her “breakthrough” meal, when she realizes that her passion for cooking and baking is more than just a hobby?

8. Discuss the importance of community in Fechtor’s journey ofrecovery. How did her friends and family help her reestablisha sense of normalcy in her life?

9. In Chapter 23, Fechtor discusses the art of hosting, revealing that there is “no such divide” between the words guest and host in other languages. Discuss the significance of this statement. How does Fechtor’s recovery change her perception of hosting? From Fechtor’s perspective, what characteristics make for a gracious host? Guest?

10. Discuss Fechtor’s creation of Sweet Amandine. How does blogging act as an outlet for her to escape the confines of her illness? What does she learn from the act of sharing recipes and experiences online?

11. In the latter chapters, Fechtor reveals her dificulty accepting the idea of reconstructive surgery. What causes Fechtor to reconsiderher stance on it? How does the tension between being externally “fine” and internally “fine” play out throughout the pages? 

12. Discuss the connection between senses and memory. How does Fechtor’s loss of her sense of smell affect her as she recovers?Which scents evoke memories for you?

13. Jessica and Eli’s determination to become parents is an important thread in the narrative. What anxieties or fears does she have about motherhood? How do the matriarchs in her life—her mother, her grandmothers, and Amy—shape her idea of what motherhood is and can be?

14. Discuss the significance of Jessica and Eli’s trip to Berlin. How does this trip act as a sort of liberation for Fechtor?

15. On page 156, Fechtor asserts that “home is a verb.” Explore the significance of that statement. How does Fechtor define home? How does the act of cooking become tied into the idea of “home” inasmuch as physical objects do?

I am on the floor.

My back is flat against the ground, and so are the soles of my feet, and my knees are up and swaying. Someone is holding my head at the temples. “Jessica, it’s Ilana.” She says it the Canadian way, with a flat first a. Lavish, lamb, Atlantic.

My knees are swaying.

I turn my head and vomit into her lap. The  hotel gym guy comes with orange Gatorade. He is tall and waxy with a bird face and dark hair that’s more thin than thinning. He wants to know if I’ve had any breakfast. “A banana,” I tell him, and he nods as though he suspected as much. He bends at the waist and wags the bottle over my face for me to take it. I vomit again. Ilana doesn’t flinch.

I’m at a graduate student conference in Stowe, Vermont, a town wedged deep in the valley between the Green Mountains and the Worcester Range. I am twenty-eight years old. Ilana is a colleague. I’ve seen her at these conferences over the last couple of years, and we’ve shared meals, but that’s all. I’m grateful for the pad of her thigh.

I see my friend Or. We’d planned to run together along the country roads that morning, but a crack of thunder had sent us to the gym instead. He stands over me now in a tank top with a bandana tied low across his forehead. He looks like a pirate and says he’s going to call. The gym guy insists it’s not necessary, but Or calls.

An ambulance is coming.

It’s August and the sky is dark from the storm. I don’t try to get up. I don’t even think to try—it will be years before I realize the oddness of that—and  no one offers to help me. Ilana is talking to me, and Or is talking to me, and Or and Ilana are talking to each other about me, and the girl who was on the treadmill next to mine is talking to someone, the gym guy maybe, about “what happened.” I can hear the spit moving around in her mouth as she speaks. She sounds breathless and scared and I want her to be quiet. Someone at the opening session the night before had mentioned that he was training as an EMT and they bring him in. He looks me in the eye, expressionless, then steps away.

My knees are swaying.

I’ve had migraines before. The pain feels similar, so I assume that’s what this is. I’ve never fainted, though, and it has never come on so fast. A flash migraine, then. Is that a thing? I can’t decide if I’m supposed to be scared.

Or is asking me whom he should call and I tell him my dad, no, Eli. I give him my husband’s number and watch him dial. My head hurts so badly, and I think that if I can relax my body, get really quiet, I can make it better. Ilana says, “She’s not talking anymore.”

The paramedic arrives. He shines lights and asks if I remember the fall, and I do.

I was running on the treadmill, when I felt a painless click in my head. There was an odd trickling sensation along my skull like a rolling bead of sweat, but on the inside. Then the room went gray and the earth sucked me down. I knew I was about to faint. The red stop button seemed suddenly far away. I swiped at it, but there was no time to step off the machine. Someone says I hit my head on the way down, and I wonder if the belt was still moving when I fell. I can no longer sway my knees; the paramedic’s in the way, so I start rubbing his leg instead.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m rubbing your leg.”

“That’s all right. You keep rubbing.”

He tells me to fold my arms across my chest, that they are going to strap me to a board and carry me to the ambulance. It’s very important, he says, to call out if I need to vomit so that they can flip me over in time. The thought of that, of hanging facedown in the air and vomiting, the thought of being dropped, is at this moment the most terrifying thing in the world.
 
I start this story here, on the floor of a conference center gym, because it now seems the most obvious place. But it wasn’t obvious to me then that a start had occurred at all. I thought my fall from the treadmill was a dot on a plotline already under way, the one about the literature student at  a conference who fainted, missed the morning’s events, got checked out, and returned, red faced and sheepish, in time for lunch. I didn’t know then that when I slipped from that moving belt, that dot had also slipped and become its own point A.

What a click in my head, and a moving belt, and a headache that knocked me down might have to do with butter, and flour, and eggs at room temp, and hunger, and love, and a kitchen with some- thing to say, I couldn’t have known that day. How a detour could become its own path, I would never have believed.US

Additional information

Dimensions	0.6400 × 5.2500 × 7.9700 in
Imprint	Plume
ISBN-13	09781101983638
ISBN-10	1101983639
Author	Jessica Fechtor
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	HEA028000, CKB002000
Subjects	autobiographies, bread, sensory, senses, kitchen, chef, non-fiction, wine, biographies, motivational books, cooking gifts, culinary, health and wellness, autobiography, challah, therapeutic, CKB002000, cook books, medical books, health and fitness, cooking books, culinary arts, food memoir, aneurysm, stir, Memoir, bio, photography, HEA028000, wellness, self help, Recovery, therapy, mindfulness, health, happiness, biography, inspirational, motivation, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Cookbooks, nonfiction, true story, fitness, cookbook, photographs, cook book
Format	General Trade