Ravenous: A Food Lover's Journey from Obsession to Freedom

"Ravenous is among the most engaging, fun, and insightful books about appetite you'll ever read. A wonderful mélange of memoir, recipes, the exploration of food production--topped off by uncommonly delicious writing."-- Sue Halpern, author of Can't Remember What I Forgot How can I, a food lover and lifelong overeater, learn to be satisfied? That is the question Dayna Macy asks in her memoir, Ravenous. Like many of us, Macy has had a complicated relationship with food all her life. As she heads toward midlife and a size 18, she decides to change her relationship with food from the inside out by embarking on a yearlong journey--from her childhood home in up-state New York and back up the California coast--to uncover the origins of her food obsessions. To understand why she craves certain foods and not others, Macy travels across the country, meeting the people who know the finer points of her passions--the olive farmer, the sausage maker, the chocolatier, the artisanal cheese maker. She deepens her understanding of what food means to her by learning where it comes from and pay-ing close attention to the effects it has on her--both physical and emotional. Along the way, she forages for wild plants, tours a certified humane slaughterhouse, learns to practice mindfulness with a Zen chef, re-visits her beloved Slim Jims, and learns to listen to her body through yoga. Recounting memories from her youth, Macy looks at the nostalgia deeply em-bedded in food and the powerful forces of family and tradition that shape our diets. Delving deeper into the spiritual under-pinnings of eating, she examines what it means to be satisfied--and forges her own path to balance and freedom.