Life From Scratch by Sasha Martin

I would say that the difficulty getting through this memoir outweighs its merits, for me at least. In the interest of full disclosure, I do not read food blogs in general and I have not read the author's blog, Global Table Adventure, which is very likely what led to her being able to get this memoir published. It does contain the inception of her blog, which was to cook a meal or an iconic dish from every country on the planet and write about it. A laudable feat which she was ill-prepared to accomplish (she did go to culinary school, but had little experience actually cooking) but managed to do a bang up job of it. The preamble to that is an accounting of her childhood, which is where the problem lies. She was born to a fly by night dad (who she never had much to do with and who died before that could change) and a mother who is an unattractive blend of an irrepressible, eccentric, free-spirited single mother and an unlucky, unhappy depressive burdened by the weight of family responsibilities who gives up custody of all five of her children. Three go with their father, who wisely moved away from the dumpster fire and two she gives to relative strangers who have money but poor parenting skills. The trouble is the forgiveness part of the memoir--in my mind to get forgiveness you have to ask for it, mean that you understand the heartbreak you have caused, but I see none of that here, and so in the end, I was dissatisfied with this. All told, it is well written.