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Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flinn
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Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good

A Memoir of Food and Love from an American Midwest Family

$17.96

Retail price: $19.95

Discount: 9%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Length 8 hours 26 minutes
Language English
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A delicious memoir from the author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry

In this family history interwoven with recipes, Kathleen Flinn returns readers to the mix of food and memoir beloved by readers of her bestselling The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good explores the very beginnings of her love affair with food and its connection to home. It is the story of her Midwestern childhood, its memorable home cooks, and the delicious recipes she grew up with. Flinn shares tales of her parents' pizza parlor in San Francisco, where they sold Uncle Clarence's popular oven-fried chicken, as well as recipes for the chili made by former army cook Grandpa Charles, fluffy Swedish pancakes from Grandma Inez, and cinnamon rolls for birthday breakfasts. Through these dishes, Flinn came to understand how meals can be memories and how cooking can be a form of communication.

Brimming with warmth and wit, this book is sure to appeal to Flinn's many fans, as well as readers of Marcus Samuelsson, Ruth Reichl, and Julie Powell.

Kathleen Flinn has written for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and other publications. The director of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, she lives in Seattle and Florida.

Original bio sent from Cassandra:

Cassandra Campbell began doing voice overs as the voice for Calvin Kleinā€™s Italian commercials. This was followed by commercial and documentary recording in both English and Italian. She has recorded many audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an AudieĀ® Award nomination. As an actress and director, she has worked at the Public, the Mint, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stagewest, Theatreworks, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Millmountain Theatre, the National Shakespeare Company, and the New York Fringe Festival. Ā 

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Reviews

ā€œCraving a beach read with a bite? Kathleen Flinnā€™s new memoir, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, chronicles her Midwestern familyā€™s culinary adventures, starting with a move cross-country to run her uncleā€™s pizzeria. There are plenty of hilarious missteps (like a maybe-donā€™t-try-this-at-home experience raising chickens), but food is a blissful constant, even in the craziest of times. And the book is filled with recipesā€”Grandpaā€™s Mich-Mex chili, Momā€™s cinnamon rollsā€”so you can create some memorable family meals of your own.ā€

ā€œFlinn shares uplifting stories of the recipes that shaped her life, from her Swedish grandmotherā€™s pancakes to her momā€™s chicken and biscuits.ā€

ā€œTrue to its lighthearted title, the book possesses a friendly, intimate feel, complete with memorable family characters including a bootlegger-cook granddad and a kitchen-wizard grandmother. Flinn herself is a Le Cordon Bleu graduate, but her tasty recipes here possess distinctive Swedish and Midwestern flavors.ā€

ā€œA memoir with lots of eating, road trips, and family history, this combination platter will fill you up.ā€ 

ā€œSurrounded by a warm, extended family, Flinnā€™s childhood sounds like a wonderful way to grow up, and her additions of mouthwatering Michigan recipes adds even more flavor to her memoir.ā€

ā€œFlinn affectionately recalls her family and growing up in the counties surrounding Flint, Michigan, in the days before Americaā€™s mighty auto industry collapsedā€¦As she recounts the years of her youth, Flinn summons up memories of family dinners and of foods the older women of her extended family cooked so carefully and lovinglyā€¦Recipes for Flinnā€™s familyā€™s favorite feasts appear throughout the text, most of them readily replicated, yet carefully detailed, even to the level of creating specific spice mixtures.ā€

ā€œAn award-winning nonfiction writer and journalistā€™s recipe-packed memoir of her Midwestern childhoodā€¦A warm, quietly poignant treat.ā€

ā€œCassandra Campbellā€™s velvety voice conveys heartfelt moments in this comforting story of tradition, food, and familial love. This rich memoir recounts the journey of author Kathleen Flinnā€™s family from Sweden to America and how they managed through good times and bad to maintain a life that provided the stability and support of family. Campbellā€™s steady narration not only allows listeners to relish all the details of cooking rituals but also captures the strong family connection, especially between the authorā€™s mother and father. Campbellā€™s range of voices offers some liveliness in an otherwise soothing narration. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.ā€

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