Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef’s Story of Family, Food, and Forgiveness
By: Cat Cora / Narrated By: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
Oy vey: Clueless! clueless! exASPeratingly clueless!
Yeh yeh yeh: Once I LOVED cooking (Could I make the perfect reduction, or what?!), now I hate it, but NEVER have I NOT loved cooking shows or memoirs by chefs. As I worked the graveyard shift, there was ample time to watch reruns of “Iron Chef” whilst folding laundry, and I remember the verrrrrry first episode that Cat Cora was in: Dah Dah DUM: The FIRST Woman Iron Chef. Cue wild applause, and thus began my racing heart cuz I sooooo wanted Cora to do well, to represent for all women out there, shunned and shunted off by a male dominated industry. I was sooo nervous, I was all sweaty and gross (What? Too much information?), and laundry? Oh soooo forgotten as I sat nervously on the typical institutional vinyl-covered chair, watching her whiz around her kitchen.
I was less than wowed by her results, but she eked out a win, and I let out a mighty Huzzah!
It’s been neat to watch her, yeh yeh yeh: A woman, I’ll say it, she’ll say it, you’ll hear it, a gazillion (and six!) times, do well. So I was all OVER listening to this for Pride Month, for a Thanksgiving chef/cooking addition.
Jiminy HellFire Cricket… is this woman mourning dove dumb, or what?!
It starts well enough, starts great as a matter of fact. I did NOT know she’d been born in a home for unwed mothers, mom being but 16-years old during an unforgiving era, and she was adopted quickly after. Then she talks of her happy family with dad a school teacher and mom a psychiatric nurse. Then she qualifies her life as Before and After: Sexual abuse that started when she was only 6-years old. When it stopped, when her father walked in on the young man raping her, he was unable to respond, and forever she’d thought she’d seen disgust in his eyes. -BUT- she got enough distance, and she tells us that: Just see what I do now! Just watch me shine!
Inspirational, no?
And then she goes into how difficult it was to be lesbian in Jackson, Mississippi, and how she even got fired from a job; she just takes it, says nothing, cuz life in the South is like that. In a later incident, after a harrowing episode where an ex-girlfriend threatened suicide, she takes the gun away from her, puts it in her bag, gets caught with it later. Better to get busted for a weapon and pay the fine, but do NOT say it came from a girlfriend—God knows what would happen, so she stays silent.
Several people complained that Cora goes into way too many of her drunken sexual escapades, and I kinda sorta agree as the book is called Cooking as Fast as I Can, leading one to believe that this is more a memoir of her time as a chef rather than as a horny sot. But it’s not all graphic, and some of it is pretty funny (Such as the time she whips up a diVINe menu for a hot Italian bartender, and it proves to be an almighty aphrodisiac!). And, again for what is to be a cooking memoir, she goes on and on about her dysfunctional relationship with her wife…
… which is where I started wanting to throttle her… because she’s sooooo clueless about interpersonal relationships. She’s out “Building Her Brand” and doesn’t understand that maybe her wife’s passion for hot yoga and becoming an instructor is just her wife wanting to be something more than the woman stuck at home with four kids, waiting whilst Cora is traveling over 280 days of the year, lobbying for more air time on The Food Network. She doesn’t understand that maybe a family that she chose to have deserves some of those days of the year.
We get a lot about her hookups. We get a lot of lists about just what she served at what restaurant or for what show. But when it comes to her family? It’s all about how her wife is crazy. And then she thinks to add maybe three paragraphs for each of her sons.
Uhm…?
Plus, she’s drinking the beJESus outta her life, and she tells us that she goes to AA, but sobriety just is not in the cards right now. After all, with such a crazy wife, with four kids (Which she CHOSE TO HAVE), home life, not to mention the stress of the kitchen, of travel, of each tv show, deMANds that she drink. She has to have alcohol in her life, never mind that she acts crazy herself when she’s drunk, is prone to fits of rage.
Then she whines whines whines about it all. Then she calls her poor Mom and weeps and sobs and rages. Most probably three sheets and a pillowcase to the wind. As a matter of fact, for every difficult thing she undertakes, she looks for a way out and has to call her Mom, who then patiently talks her off a ledge.
ExHAUSting.
Sure, she has mouthwatering lists of the food she’s created, which had the Cooking-Hating Foodie in me delighted. But her amoral hijinks, her comPLETE lack of self-awareness, her CONstant blaming of the women in her life who’ve dropped everything to follow her around the country, heck! the whole freaking world, left me jacking up my usual speed from x1.2 to x1.6 to x2 to x2.4 then I just HAD it with her moaning and axes to grind, and I went to x3 to get it the HECK OVER with. When Rick Lewis from Audible (Who still has NOT updated their app!!!) said they all hoped I’d enjoyed this program, I Howled: Nooooooo! Thank GOD it’s over!!!
I’m happy there are women chefs out there who’ve blazed trails, who’ve joined the celebrity status of men, who are AWEsomely cooking some creative food, really I am. It’s just that Good Cow, do NOT Build Your Brand 24/7 then wonder why your wife is feeling ignored and left out, and if you DO do THAT?
Do NOT write a book about how you whine and weep to your mother that people aren’t being nice to you!
puff! puff!
Oh, and Cassandra Campbell was fine. Nice touch with doing only a slight Southern drawl, Ms. Campbell…
puff! puff!
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.