num_pages: 288
description: A story about one woman's search for self-love experienced through food and travel.On the surface Jackie Kai Ellis's life was the one that every woman--herself included--wanted: she was in her late twenties and married to a handsome man she had a successful career as a designer a home that she shared with her husband. But instead of feeling fulfilled happy and loved each morning she'd wake up dreading the day ahead searching for a way out. Depression clouded each moment the feelings of inadequacy that had begun in childhood now consumed her and her marriage was slowly transforming into one between two strangers: unfamiliar childless and empty. In this darkness she could only find one source of light: the kitchen. Inspired by the great 20th century female food writer M.F.K. Fisher's works it was the place Jackie escaped into herself finding life peace comfort and acceptance. This is the story of how armed with nothing but a love of food and the words of M.F.K. Fisher one woman begins a journey--from France to Italy then the Congo and back again--to find herself. Along the way she goes to pastry school in Paris eats the most perfect apricots over the Tuscan hills watches a family of gorillas grazing deep in the Congolese brush has her heart broken one last time on a bridge in Lyon and ultimately finds a path to joy. Told with insight and intimacy and radiating with warmth and humour The Measure of My Powers is an unforgettable experience of the senses.
language: None
title: The Measure of My Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery and Paris
publisher: Appetite by Random House