For The Love of Food

Editor: Chris Manganaro

We depend on food for a lot of things in life. It is sustenance for all, comfort for many, a job for some. There are many different faces to every food. The way a dish looks, tastes, and smells are but a few of the ways people see the food in front of them. Even a simple plate of spaghetti can hold many lessons.

In the book I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti: A Memoir of Good Food and Bad Boyfriends by Giulia Melucci, the reader experiences the ups and downs of the dating life while also enjoying the dishes that come from the memories of that time. In this way, Melucci draws us in with the aroma of food, something which makes us connect even more to the words on the page.

The book is split up into chapters which represent one full relationship. This means that the book feels like it has five main chapters and the rest are subchapters, no less important, but on slightly different topics. These shorter chapters add needed variety to the book. With one being about her father and another being about making supper for yourself when your single, these chapters round out the authors life and create a fuller picture of her life.

The longer chapters about her relationships are set up in a similar way, explaining the “good times” before things go downhill. It can be interesting at times, but it also has dull moments because Melucci is, in effect, describing things that are pretty normal. She does inject humor, food, and her own observations to make things more unique. The way the reader will react to Melucci’s relationships depends upon their own experiences and perspective. You may judge things much differently than she does. This simply means the book is very hit-or-miss.

There are recipes sprinkled throughout the narrative of Melucci’s memoir. They pop up where she mentions having made them in her life. This is a nice break in the action to some extent and even has some charm when she incorporates something happening in the story she is telling into the name of a recipe. Other times she even plays with the reader by putting a recipe in that is not truly a recipe. Aside from these things though, the recipes themselves are pretty basic. They sound likely to work well and maybe even be delicious, but they are not very different from anything else people may have come across. They also may be familiar because some come from magazines and other sources. With a recipe index in the end of the book, it could be used as a simple cookbook.

It may not be the tastiest thing in your kitchen. It may even make you feel a little queasy, as the author’s life is not easy to stomach. None of her relationships seem that healthy, but that doesn’t mean the recipes she offers are just as unhealthy. Depending on what you are looking for this book may not be for you, but it is a fairly light read with a few good moments.