When friend told me about this book in December, my comment was: I’m not ready to read this yet.  Still not sure I was ready, this is from the first page:  “With that, I lost a job that I was desperate to quit. I felt relieved yet rejected to the point of being crushed, not unlike when a boyfriend has the gall to break up with you before you break up with him.  I pushed open the door of the hotel, my head held high, pleased that I did not break down at the news”.

The book continues with the story of Kathleen Flinn attending Le Cordon Bleu Paris, following a lifelong passion with cooking.  It’s a nice story, eat chapter has a recipe (you get hungry reading this).  Much of the experiences are expected (finding an apartment in Paris, its hard and the chef's are mean), some are charming (the homeless man giving the same critique on her food as the chef at school), and some intriguing. The students at Cordon Bleu were from all over the world, which I found interesting compared to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), where another journalist (Michael Ruhlman) attended and wrote a book, The Making of a Chef. The CIA students were much less international, generally striving to become celebrity chefs and seemingly less passionate about cooking.  Last, I would have liked to know more the boyfriend/husband.  He puts his consulting job on hold, moves to Paris with her, and takes a French class and explores the city.  That seems to be something I could aspire to.