I've got the jar of Prego!

The following are dream careers for me:
1. Broadway star (which I touched upon in my last post)
2. photographer
3. singer (can't carry a tune, though)
4. novelist (hopefully someday!)
5. book reviewer

I've got the last one going, at least... Here's something I wrote about my one of my latest reads: I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti by Giulia Melucci

I’ve recently co-founded a book club consisting of friends and friends of friends, all female. This month we read half-food/half-girly-relationship-dating-and-boys memoir, I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti. On Saturday we all got together on my friend’s rooftop and had a picnic while we discussed this read. Light and fairly breezy, this book is a typical 20’s girl pick. Giulia Melucci, fellow New Yorker and member of the single-and-dating-scene, chronicles several of her past relationships and the role food has played within each one. That is, she discusses whether or not the man she was dating at the time was a fellow foodie or a cook, whether he appreciated her cooking, and the pitfalls of dating said man.While the single girl in me enjoyed reading about the faux pas and foul ups of another, I felt myself evoking more of a schadenfreude feeling rather than one steeped and stewed in empathy. One great thing about the book is that Melucci doesn’t hold back. She is honest about her dating woes. Yet as a character in a book she becomes frustrating as she seems not to learn from her mistakes. (The girls at book club agreed with me on this.) Wanting to embrace the New York singles scene she dished quite a bit about the men in her life, while including recipes for dishes she concocted and fed them along the way. The recipes seem easy to follow (esp. for this non-cook) and a couple are cute and funny; one is called F-U Cake… need I say more?While I would have enjoyed more background on just how food has played a part in her family life and less about the relationship stuff, that’s not what the book’s about. And while I would have liked to hear more stories about one bad date, one great date, and the food that was digested in between and the author’s jumping from relationship to relationship made it difficult to follow a time line or glean from her a real perspective beyond the immediate, this is a fun read. Bring it to your book club and pair it with an Italian themed dinner. We had homemade lasagna, broccoli rabe, amazing garlic bread, cannolis and tons of red wine. Pasta and a jar of Prego will do, though!