Crying Over Cut Onions...and a Book!

My brother, Jim. scored another big hit this holiday season with Kathleen Flinn's "The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry." It was his gift to me for my birthday, and it couldn't be more perfect! See that little Eiffel Tower on the cover? It's a hint that this book is about the author's life-long dream to go to Paris and study cooking with the master chefs at Le Cordon Bleu. At 36 Kathleen Flinn was a successful manager working for an American company based in London; within 2 hours after arriving home from a vacation, however, she was unemployed, laid off, from a job that she really didn't feel a passion for, but that paid the bills. Sound familiar? It did to me. That hit very close to home.What Kathleen did, however, was something I'm not sure I'd ever be brave enough to do...she cashed in her retirement, emptied her savings account and applied to cooking school. She was accepted and her adventure began. (This is the part that made me cry. What a leap of faith!) I'm not certain that putting up with the rigors of the curriculum and the moods of the Cordon Bleu chefs would be my idea of fun, but Kathleen loved it. Each chapter of her book is devoted to a cooking lesson and comes complete with a recipe at the end. I don't intend to spend hours and days making beef stock from scratch, but I've tried the faux minestrone soup recipe, and it's delicious. So is this book!