Good Grape Wine Company

Obviously, West knows her family characters and attaches them to their noted eccentricities and manna. And what colorful, yea memorable, folks these are! Everyone should have a family like hers, with Aunt Tempe, Aunt Dell, Uncle Bun, a marvelous Mama and grandparents and cousins and family gatherings around food that will make you want to go to the kitchen to execute one of the cooking delights featured in the tales.

I was especially fascinated by the pineapple upside down cake cooked in a cast iron skillet, and macaroni and cheese like I never imagined it.

It also thrilled me to learn that West was a slow-to-learn cook herself, yet the obvious love she has for her family and their food eventually became a part of her own mature life.

I think this book would be a fabulous gift to anyone from the South, or anyone who wishes they were. And recipe book fans are definite candidates for receipt of this tome.

Here is a read with laughs and lessons, and it certainly is a keeper for me. Bon appetit, sugar! Meet me in the kitchen!


talented novelist delivers delectable, engaging memoir   June 10, 2003
The author of three marvelous books about eccentric and defiant Southern women, Michael Lee West has concocted a winning recipe of down-home cooking and family history in a charming memoir/cookbook, "Consuming Passions." At peace with her love of food and proud of her women-centered family, West promotes food as the sustenance of all that is worthwhile in life. Her anecdotal style sparkles and her recipes are not only provocative, but understandable, even for amateur Yankee cooks and other such timid kitchen souls.

The members of West's family take larger-than-life shape in this memoir, and the author is unabashedly proud, both of their iconoclastic character and their abilities in the kitchen. West does provide a modest warning: her "Southern tales are like intricate recipes -- part myth, part truth, and part lies." Her mother's insistence on an okra-free gumbo results in her swinging from a chandelier in protest. Her aunt Dell's oversized appetite takes form in her collection of hairless cats, antiques and skewed instructions on food preparation. Even her husband's attempt to raise bees falters when he mistakenly wears dark-colored socks. In the midst of the author's affectionate observations of family eccentricities is her unflagging commitment to a joyous life. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the numerous invitations to create in the kitchen is her acceptance of imperfection and failure. West never stops trying, never stops of her sense of adventure, never ceases loving food and family.

When not enmeshed in rhapsodizing about food, West knows how to create food-based metaphor. Disdaining gossip as a "main course," she suggests that it "was more like an enticing appetizer, or a rich, sinful dessert." Partaking of gossip simply can't be helped, "even though you knew you'd be sorry later." Her family's obsession with food even has serious consequences. When a coroner concluded that several men had died in their sleep of heart attacks, her "aunts knew better -- it was death by butter."

At its best, "Consuming Passions" reads quickly; its bite-sized chapters contain both humor and instruction. At its worst, Ms. West's prose tends to have a purple cast, much like the sugared violets she recommends to cause sleep and dissolve anger. Readers who admire Michael Lee West's fictional characters will enjoy her real-life versions; cooks who seek to broaden their repertoire will not be disappointed. She invites you to dig in to the liberating, sensual and powerful influence of food, best shared with people you love.


This could be my Southern family   December 10, 2002
This book was so "homey" to me, I felt like it could be my family. Family traditions are so food centered, and especially for the females, we have our secrets and specialties we like to pass on, or not. My mother once asked me, "Do you think they go all out like we do?" After reading, West's book, I know we Southerners share more similarities than differences.