The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Katherine Flinn

This book is a memoir of a Kathleen Flinn. She was working in the corporate world and lost her job. She was at a crossroads of what to do and with the encouragement of her boyfriend, she decided to follow her lifelong dream and move to Paris to attend the famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. Sh
e always had enjoyed cooking. She had been living in London, but did not speak much French. The book was a nice little tale of her finding her passion and fulfilling a dream. She did not want to be a chef but wanted to write about food. She goes into lots of details about her time in school, the classes, chefs, other students and the techniques she learned and used for cooking. Some of the details were over my head. I mean I love to cook and bake, but French cuisine and technique is often very different from what we eat in America. It got to be a little boring at times to read some of those details.
But, I enjoyed seeing Kathleen find her way in Paris, make friends, learn the culture. Her boyfriend, who became her husband, was sweet and I enjoyed the parts about them and their growing love for each other.
I really liked that this book was a memoir. Again, while the cooking parts were sometimes to long and boring, I enjoyed the story and find it inspiring that this person went after her dream and passion. And there were several recipes in the book that I would like to try out. And, I learned the proper way to cut an onion so you don't cry. from the book-
"Turning a simple task into a thing of beauty, with a chef's knife, he cut a peeled onion in half at the root. He places one half cut-side down on the board and cuts thin vertical slices toward the root but not through it, keeping the onion intact. Twisting the blade flat, he cuts thin slices across, parallel to his cutting board, stopping before he the root end. Then he slices across the top of the onion down, and perfect tiny cubes tumble onto the cutting board"
And a quote from the end of the book-
"As in cooking, living requires you taste, taste, taste as you go along- you can't wait until the dish of life is done! The joy of life is in the trip, and the station is a dream that constantly outdistances us."
She is a very talented writer and I enjoyed her writing style. She shared the good and the bad, the hard times and fun times and there were times in reading this that I laughed out loud. It was overall a very entertaining read.