Jason Epstein, on eating

The editor’s newly published memoir focuses on food

By Culinate staff

January 15, 2010

Talk-show host Charlie Rose interviewed longtime editor and publisher Jason Epstein earlier this week. Epstein recently wrote Eating, a memoir that looks back on his life through the prism of food.

In the interview, the two men don’t start talking about food until after 14 minutes (14:24, to be exact), but then Epstein recalls his early love of cooking:

My grandmother lived in a big, windy farmhouse on a hill in the city. And in the wintertime it was freezing in that place. There was a wheezy old furnace that didn’t do much good.

So we all sat in the kitchen where there was a big black coal stove — wood stove, actually. And I would sit on the wood box next to the stove to keep warm and watch my grandmother take pies out of the oven and stews and everything she was making.

And I felt very safe and cozy in that situation. The wind is blowing outside. The snow is piling up outside the house, and I don’t have to be anywhere but in the kitchen.

So it made a profound impression on me which I’ve never got over. I’ve always associated it with safety, comfort, warmth, love.

(No time to view? Read the transcript instead.)