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Jessica Fechtor

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Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home Kindle Edition

by Jessica Fechtor (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 549 ratings

Editors' pick Best Cookbooks, Food & Wine

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A national bestseller and winner of a Living Now Book Award, Stir is an exquisite memoir about how food connects us to ourselves, our lives, and each other.

At 28, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage, and thinking about starting a family. Then one day, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell, the sight in her left eye, and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved.

Jessica’s journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was able to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she drew strength from the restorative power of cooking and baking. Written with intelligence, humor, and warmth, Stir is a heartfelt examination of what it means to nourish and be nourished.

Woven throughout the narrative are 27 recipes for dishes that comfort and delight. For readers of M.F.K.Fisher, Molly Wizenberg, and Tamar Adler, as well as Oliver Sacks, Jill Bolte Taylor, and Susannah Cahalan, Stir is sure to inspire, and send you straight to the kitchen.

Print length

290 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Avery
Publication date

June 23, 2015
File size

3710 KB
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Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"[Fechtor] writes with clarity and obvious joy about the foods that have meant so much to her." ---Kirkus

About the Author

Jessica Fechtor writes the popular food blog Sweet Amandine. She is a PhD candidate in Jewish literature at Harvard University, where she has received numerous awards for her research and teaching. She lives with her husband and daughters in San Francisco, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I am on the floor.

My back is flat against the ground, and so are the soles of my feet, and my knees are up and swaying. Someone is holding my head at the temples. “Jessica, it’s Ilana.” She says it the Canadian way, with a flat first a. Lavish, lamb, Atlantic.

My knees are swaying.

I turn my head and vomit into her lap. The hotel gym guy comes with orange Gatorade. He is tall and waxy with a bird face and dark hair that’s more thin than thinning. He wants to know if I’ve had any breakfast. “A banana,” I tell him, and he nods as though he suspected as much. He bends at the waist and wags the bottle over my face for me to take it. I vomit again. Ilana doesn’t flinch.

I’m at a graduate student conference in Stowe, Vermont, a town wedged deep in the valley between the Green Mountains and the Worcester Range. I am twenty-eight years old. Ilana is a colleague. I’ve seen her at these conferences over the last couple of years, and we’ve shared meals, but that’s all. I’m grateful for the pad of her thigh.

I see my friend Or. We’d planned to run together along the country roads that morning, but a crack of thunder had sent us to the gym instead. He stands over me now in a tank top with a bandana tied low across his forehead. He looks like a pirate and says he’s going to call. The gym guy insists it’s not necessary, but Or calls.

An ambulance is coming.

It’s August and the sky is dark from the storm. I don’t try to get up. I don’t even think to try—it will be years before I realize the oddness of that—and no one offers to help me. Ilana is talking to me, and Or is talking to me, and Or and Ilana are talking to each other about me, and the girl who was on the treadmill next to mine is talking to someone, the gym guy maybe, about “what happened.” I can hear the spit moving around in her mouth as she speaks. She sounds breathless and scared and I want her to be quiet. Someone at the opening session the night before had mentioned that he was training as an EMT and they bring him in. He looks me in the eye, expressionless, then steps away.

My knees are swaying.

I’ve had migraines before. The pain feels similar, so I assume that’s what this is. I’ve never fainted, though, and it has never come on so fast. A flash migraine, then. Is that a thing? I can’t decide if I’m supposed to be scared.

Or is asking me whom he should call and I tell him my dad, no, Eli. I give him my husband’s number and watch him dial. My head hurts so badly, and I think that if I can relax my body, get really quiet, I can make it better. Ilana says, “She’s not talking anymore.”

The paramedic arrives. He shines lights and asks if I remember the fall, and I do.

I was running on the treadmill, when I felt a painless click in my head. There was an odd trickling sensation along my skull like a rolling bead of sweat, but on the inside. Then the room went gray and the earth sucked me down. I knew I was about to faint. The red stop button seemed suddenly far away. I swiped at it, but there was no time to step off the machine. Someone says I hit my head on the way down, and I wonder if the belt was still moving when I fell. I can no longer sway my knees; the paramedic’s in the way, so I start rubbing his leg instead.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m rubbing your leg.”

“That’s all right. You keep rubbing.”

He tells me to fold my arms across my chest, that they are going to strap me to a board and carry me to the ambulance. It’s very important, he says, to call out if I need to vomit so that they can flip me over in time. The thought of that, of hanging facedown in the air and vomiting, the thought of being dropped, is at this moment the most terrifying thing in the world.

I start this story here, on the floor of a conference center gym, because it now seems the most obvious place. But it wasn’t obvious to me then that a start had occurred at all. I thought my fall from the treadmill was a dot on a plotline already under way, the one about the literature student at a conference who fainted, missed the morning’s events, got checked out, and returned, red faced and sheepish, in time for lunch. I didn’t know then that when I slipped from that moving belt, that dot had also slipped and become its own point A.

What a click in my head, and a moving belt, and a headache that knocked me down might have to do with butter, and flour, and eggs at room temp, and hunger, and love, and a kitchen with some- thing to say, I couldn’t have known that day. How a detour could become its own path, I would never have believed.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00USMCINC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Avery (June 23, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 23, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3710 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 290 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #736,549 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #160 in Biographies & Memoirs of Chefs
- #1,567 in New Age Mental & Spiritual Healing
- #2,189 in Medical Professional Biographies

Customer Reviews:
4.4 549 ratings

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B. Pennington

Exceptional

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2020

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What a beautifully written memoir! I'm so happy to have had the pleasure of reading Jessica Fechtor's story and hope this isn't her only one. Very rarely do I find myself completely immersed in a book anymore, especially to the extent that I can't stop turning pages, but that was the case with this narrative.

This is a courageous recounting of Ms. Fechtor's experience involving a medical emergency at the age of 28, requiring immediate, as well as several subsequent neurosurgical interventions. She chronicles each event from the onset of the problem, the initial surgery, unexpected complications, a second surgery, her hospital stay, rehab and discharge. When she finally returns home, she faces recovery and adaptation to new limitations. Some months later, another surgical procedure is necessary and finally, a last one for corrective purposes.

Ms. Fechtor writes with an eloquent grace, yet her prose is simple and profound. Intriguing recipes, interspersed between chapters are a delightful contrast to the seriousness of her medical ordeals.

Such a fluent, moving novel from an exceptionally talented writer. I would enthusiastically rate this at more than 5 stars, if possible. Thank you, Jessica Fechtor!

6 people found this helpful

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Natalie Thingvold

A light and easy read.

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2024

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I lost my sense of smell after having Mono so her also experiencing it is what initially attracted me to the book. I am also a foodie and love to cook and enjoyed her descriptions of cooking techniques and ingredients. The recipes she included were also great. But I did feel the writing was a little overly nerdy wordy, over thinking everything, excessive. Still a good memoir.

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Amitai Adler

A must must must read

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2015

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Jessica Fechtor is someone I've never met in person, and yet I know that when we finally do meet, we'll need to hug. I've just started reading her memoir, _Stir_, and I literally won't put it down.

Reading is very very hard for me: it hurts my eyes, since they don't track smoothly or evenly (since my own brain aneurysm). This is something I don't really talk about. Because I used to love reading. And now I barely ever read anything longer than 1-2 pages.
Except for something very very special. I'll say to my husband, "I'm actually going to *read* this" (as opposed to skimming, or reading reviews, or listening to it on Audible...). It's my version of a high compliment. It's like saying, I want to read this enough to jump hurdles to do so.

And Jessica's book *is* something very very special. Her writing is beautiful, honest, poetic in its precision and delicacy and power. Her writing makes me want to write. Her story is told in a lyrical and haunting and frank tone that invites the reader in. And then invites the reader to share a story, too. Reading _Stir_ is like sitting down at the kitchen table with a trusted and beloved friend. A generous friend. A friend who knows how you like your tea.

Jessica, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
It goes without saying that you all should buy it now and start reading immediately.

18 people found this helpful

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J. Paulus

which tells you a bit about how much I like this book

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2015

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This is my first amazon review, which tells you a bit about how much I like this book. I'll also confess that I have only made it through a couple chapters after it arrived yesterday, but felt compelled to report on it immediately given my first impressions so you can experience this dazzling debut without delay. This book is remarkable to me on at least 3 levels (as a lazy & impatient cook with high standards, a medical professional, and a human). First, the food. Jessica Fechtor has a knack for sharing recipes that are deceptively simple (in terms of work required, and with ingredients close at hand in most kitchen cabinets) but end up yielding completely elegant tastes. Case in point is her "Marcella's Butter Almond Cake" recipe (butter, eggs, flour, sugar, almond and vanilla extracts... GO!) that rendered my partner basically speechless in appreciation. Second, and maybe not why you came to check out this book, but equally significant, is her reporting on her experiences as a patient. I'm not sure I've ever read something as chilling as her description of what it felt like in her head when the vessel ruptured, and this book could be essential reading for clinicians-in-training for a compelling and detailed account of what their very ill patients might be fearing, or celebrating. Lastly, Fechtor presents as an incredibly likeable, sensitive and quirky-smart narrator - you'll want to root for her and her young marriage, and be on her baked goods distribution list.

19 people found this helpful

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Bonnie Brody

Jessica is a real mensch!

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2015

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Jessica Fechtor is 28 years old and in the prime of her life when she suffers a brain aneurysm while running on a treadmill. Her life was at its peak - she is a graduate student at Harvard, married to the man she loves, and living a an adventurous and intellectually fulfilled life.This memoir follows Jessica through her travails as she has her first surgery, suffers an infection and complications, and is deformed because part of her skull has to be removed.

Jessica, however, is a survivor, someone who knows how to thrive despite what is thrown at her. For awhile she allows herself to feel self-pity but, ultimately, she finds her sense of self in the kitchen. Her life is filled with memories of food she remembers from her grandmother, meals she's shared with friends, and she starts a food blog.

This wonderful memoir allows us to share Jessica's journey to wellness along with some of her favorite recipes. She is an example to all of us. Life is unpredictable and unfair. It's all we have though and the choices we make with what we've dealt define us. Jessica is a real mensch!

3 people found this helpful

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Denver Hawkeye

One of my favorite books, reread multiple times.

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2021

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This is a beautifully written account of a life ruptured by illness and painstakingly rebuilt into something fuller and richer than what had come before.

2 people found this helpful

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livin' the life in AZ

it was not one of my favorite club books

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2016

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First and foremost, I wish Jessica continued health!

In light of all that she and her family endured, I feel I should not be candid. However, it was not one of my favorite club books. We did take inspiration from her recipes and put together a lovely book club dinner.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Devoy

Great read

Reviewed in Canada on February 29, 2020

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A great book to read and some great recipes throughout the book

P Sleep

Beautiful, strong, unique

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2018

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I loved this!

I’m a bit of a foodie so the beautiful way she described how certain meals and dishes helped at such a difficult time in her life really made sense to me. I found the concept very powerful.

The book takes places as Jessica is 28, in a young marriage and thinking about starting a family. That’s exactly where I am, and I was slightly concerned the whole thing might terrify me. However, the wonderfully strong way in which she comes across was more empowering then anything else. Sometimes stories such as this have a slightly bitter tone: “life can be a real bitch who will screw you up when you least expect it!” however this wasn’t the attitude portrayed here.

I also loved that I learnt a lot about Jewish culture. I live in rural England, so it’s not something I have ever come across before. Those parts fascinated me.

I read a fair bit, so people often ask what I’m reading. I literally couldn’t describe this! It’s so wonderfully unique. A complete joy to read!

Stacey

What a strong women she was, tks for sharing ...

Reviewed in Canada on September 30, 2017

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What a strong women she was, tks for sharing those recipes with your readers, am passing the book over to my friends.

lyssa

Not as I had hoped but that's my fault...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2017

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Another of my 'Reading Challenge 2017' selections, I like food writing and thought this would be an interesting and novel perspective. It was an easy read, very accessible style, but the author's Jewish roots and community feature very strongly particularly in the recipe, many of which require ingredients that aren't readily available in the UK. The book did pique my interest in the author sufficiently for me to check out her blog; this has not been updated since 2015 suggesting that her PhD is now a greater focus or that she has moved on from food blogging which would be a shame if only for her readable prose and gentle humour.

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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Jessica Fechtor

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