She gossiped with other faculty wives. She dabbled in political activism. She had intellectual conversations turned arguments turned bitter verbal battles with her husband. And she cooked. Cooking was an outlet for frustrated intelligence and creativity.
Food is the great leveler.
Cooking is sensual, artistic, and gratifyingly violent. Hunger, like lust in action, is savage, extreme, rude, cruel. After decades in the kitchen, Fussell felt she had little to show for her labors. The truth is Fussell writes very well, and this is a delicious little book, albeit one with a few discordant notes. She is very funny on the subject of her husband, but whatever he may have been in her life, in the book he sometimes seems not much more than an easy target.