Review: The Comfort Food Diaries by Emily Nunn

Goodreads Summary:
In the tradition of Elizabeth Gilbert and Ruth Reichl, former New Yorker editor Emily Nunn chronicles her journey to heal old wounds and find comfort in the face of loss through travel, home-cooked food, and the company of friends and family.
One life-changing night, still reeling from her beloved brother's sudden death a few weeks earlier, Emily Nunn was dumped by her handsome architect fiance and evicted from the apartment they shared, losing in the same moment all sense of family, home, and financial security. After a few glasses of wine, heartbroken and lost, Emily, an avid cook and professional food writer, poured her heart out on Facebook. The next morning she woke up with a terrible hangover and a feeling she'd made a terrible mistake, only to discover she had more friends than she knew, many of whom invited her to come visit and cook with them while she put her life back together. Thus began the Comfort Food Tour.Searching for a way forward, Emily travels the country, cooking and staying with relatives and friends, among them renowned chefs Mark Bittman and Ina Garten. She also travels back to revisit scenes from her dysfunctional Southern upbringing, dominated by her dramatic, unpredictable mother and her silent, disengaged father. Her wonderfully idiosyncratic aunts and uncles and cousins come to life in these pages, all part of the rich Southern story in which past and present are indistinguishable, food is a source of connection and identity, and a good story is often preferred to a not-so-pleasant truth. But truth, pleasant or not, is what Emily Nunn craves, and with it comes an acceptance of the losses she has endured, and a sense of hope for the future.In the salty snap of a single Virginia ham biscuit, in the sour tang of Grandmother's Lemon Cake, Nunn experiences the healing power of comfort food, and offers up dozens of recipes for the wonderful meals that saved her life. With the biting humor of David Sedaris and the emotional honesty of Cheryl Strayed, Nunn delivers a moving account of her descent into darkness and her gradual, hard-won return to the living.

My Review:
I was initially interested in this title because I love hearing what is considered comfort food to different people. It's such a wonderful conversation and it always strikes such nostalgia. At the beginning of the book I found myself unable to feel too sorry for the author Emily Nunn when I thought she was simply boo hoo-ing over a break-up, but as she continues to peel back the layers, I realized she was taking a very introspective look at her entire life. When she shared stories of her narcissistic and distant mother, her brother's struggles with his sexuality, or her addiction to alcohol I found that I, like all of the friends and family who reached out to her, wanted to comfort her. As she goes on what she dubs her Comfort Food Tour, she learns which foods someone finds comforting and why. Nunn also points out that different foods bring comfort at different points in our lives. Looking back I would say that my grandma's chicken and noodles or goulash (both served over homemade mashed potatoes) brought me the most comfort. The dishes were delicious but I am also transported back to her happy, little, yellow kitchen. So many dishes bring me comfort now that I'm not sure I could narrow down my selections. What about you? What are your comfort foods?