Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days

by James Salter, Kay Salter

From the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author James Salter and his wife, Kay, amateur chefs and perfect hosts, here is a charming, beautifully illustrated tour de table: a food lover's companion that, with an entry for each day of the year, takes us from a Twelfth Night cake in January to a champagne dinner on New Year's Eve. Life Is Meals is rich with culinary wisdom, history, recipes, literary pleasures, and the authors' own memories of successes and catastrophes.For instance: The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night? Reflections on dining from Queen Victoria, JFK, Winnie-the-Pooh, Garrison Keillor, and many others? The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini? How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party?and whom not to? John Irving's family recipe for meatballs; Balzac's love of coffee? The greatest dinner ever given at the White House? Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m.? How to cope with acts of God and man-made disasters in the kitchenSophisticated as well as practical, opinionated, and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others. "The meal is the emblem of civilization," the Salters observe. "What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?"

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Cooking, Cookbooks, Memoir, Food and Drink, Food Writing

464 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2006

About the author

James Salter (1925 - 2015) was a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Salter grew up in New York City and was a career officer and Air Force pilot until his mid-thirties, when the success of his first novel (The Hunters, 1957) led to a fulltime writing career. Salter’s potent, lyrical prose earned him acclaim from critics, readers, and fellow novelists. His novel A Sport and a Pastime (1967) was hailed by the New York Times as “nearly perfect as any American fiction.”

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

With an entry for each day of the year, I will be reading this daily style, savoring each entry like a good meal. I sent this book to a friend that loves to cook and who takes joy in the process in hopes that we both can share some conversation this coming year over the love of food.

I will not post everyday but may share thoughts on what I'm reading now and then.

January 1st speaks to how much of our lives celebrations revolve around food.

"It is a habitual ceremony"
When I first decided to lose weight many years ago I bemoaned the fact that you had to eat unlike giving up other bad habits. I lost the joy of celebratory food. This reminds me well that many of the best days in life are those meals that signify an event be it wedding, christening, holiday and even the repast of death.

January 2nd talks about The Jules Verne restaurant and The Eiffel Tower. What a special place to share a meal. Lucky those who have...

May 29, 2014
Though I have continued to read this it hasn't proved to be quite the book I thought it would be. I was looking for a more personal narrative of food related stories. The book is entertaining. It is what it is and for what it is, it is fine. I will not be adding to this review.

[Eva Gogola · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book a hundred and five stars. Cover to cover, it was one of my favorite books. First, you can't go wrong with the subject: food. The authors are married, adorably in love and very knowledgeable about meals. The book reads in short spurts, one or two passages for each day of the year. Some days cover history, others recipes and yet other personal anecdotes. Every day, every month, is a delight to read. It made me interested in wine for the first time in my life. The book also contains a thorough index and lovely illustrations.

This is a book that I would definitely want to have in my personal library. The only downside to this book is that I was constantly hungry. Even so, I found myself more inspired to explore, make and share food.

[Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

james salter is a brilliant novelist, and this book of days (of food) is a selection he and his wife kay salter have collected and written of the many years of married life, in aspen and long island, and paris, cooking, eating, dinner parties given and attended, romantic meals in restaurantes etc. but frankly the "facts" are fuzzy and the recipes are mostly taken from others and not so unique. the illustrations though are super, and the book was designed and made by callaway, so the physical book is a treasure,and fabrice moireau is a genius who can say more in a teeny tiny portrait of a french breadshop than salters can in chapters on bread.
so 5 stars for the book. 2 or so for the contents. if one is interested in more substantial and accurate foodie books see larry osborne The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World and steingarten It Must've Been Something I Ate: The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything and buford Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
and leave j salter to his fictions All That Is

[Chef · Rating 2 out of 5]

The promise of this book, at least according to the foreword, was exciting: a journal of meals, shared by a couple (one of whom wrote the excellent A Sport and a Pastime), and the anecdotes that emerged from each.

The reality of this book is less than exciting: a calendar of birthdays, death days, and loosely threaded connections to people within the world of food. There are also some scatterings of personal travels, but all are Euro-centric and bourgeois (oh, yes, pleeeeease do regale us with another tale of dining in Paris!). There is also wine. So much of it. Too much of it.

The most bothersome part of the book, however, isn't the construction. It's the food history, which is largely a whitewashed one. One day out of the 365 (one!) is dedicated to a broad generalization of Indian cuisine. Africa and Mexico are usually only mentioned in the context of European explorers. Very few (if any?) of the recipes come from a cuisine that doesn't have origins in Europe or America.

If life is meals, but those meals are myopic, how rich, truly, is that life?

[Joanna]

Not for me, but if you're a rich entertainer who loves caviar and high-dollar champagne, by all means.

[Rene · Rating 1 out of 5]

If only they had adhered to their enticing introduction- I looked forward to descriptions of menus, food items, cooking tips, dinner conversations / gossip. Unfortunately they did not.
Pretentious and repetitive are two words that kept coming to mind as I continued reading. I wanted to give up but as this book was gifted to me I felt the need to finish.
I wonder who was their target audience? Definitely not anyone I know.
Frustratingly all over the place even on the same day or within the same story.
As I vented to my husband “I’m sure Anthony Bourdain would have happily used this to fuel the fire of any pit he was grilling on.”

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the concept, though a lot of the info seems like questionable hearsay upon further verification...but I guess as a sort of an unauthorized oral history of the world of food and the snobs who love it, it's great.

[Dipra Lahiri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A giant of the American literary landscape writes with his usual elegance about his other passion - food. Ranging across history, literature and the occasional recipe, these short entries (one for every day of the year) are just delightful.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was the illustrator of Life is Meals that led me to the book. I'm a big fan of the watercolor work of Fabrice Moireau, who's illustrated several gorgeous sketchbooks of major cities, various regions of France, and other exotic locations. In this book, Moireau seems to have had his hands tied a bit. The illustrations are small---little, precise cameos scattered through the text. Still, I love anything Moireau does and this book is no exception. I had not read James Salter before and I'm very glad to have been introduced to his crisp, clear writing. I started reading this book in the normal way, page after page. I now dip into it from time to time, to see what Salter has to say on any given day. (Today's entry is on the illustrious chef Auguste Escoffier.) This is a delightful book-- always informative, often witty, well written, and beautifully, if sparsely and quietly, illustrated.

[Theresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few bits were interesting. I liked learning more about the difference between the various colors of peppercorns, and info about which fruits ripen after they are picked and which don't. It was mildly interesting reading about famous people and their relationship with food. But mostly, it was irritating. I do not care for food, it's purpose is to sustain life and meet emotional needs LOL. So their fixation with food was incomprehensible to me, plus it is amazing how much inappropriate content they were able to shove into their anecdotes. And the alcohol! my gosh, haven't they ever heard of water or milk!

[Marilyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book--I generally enjoy these types of books where there is a short entry for each day--kind of like a journal. However, I had to look at the date of publication to determine whether this one was written in the 1970's or earlier. It was a bit outdated and the authors' have the opinion that there is NO red wine that goes with chocolate. I should have stopped reading it at that point--ALL red wine goes with chocolate.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this would've been the perfect "snack" book -- pick it up and have a bite now and then -- I treated it like Thanksgiving, gorging myself.

I learned a ton of random food and drink trivia, marked some recipes to try and really, really wished James and Kay were in my inner circle. Their attitude toward food -- hell, toward life -- is exactly the philosophy I'm embracing these days.

I plan to liberally quote, cook and loan.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Considering that I will happily eat leftovers out of my hand over the sink if nobody's watching, I'm probably not this book's target audience, but I really enjoyed it. The whole book is a love letter to a life spent richly experiencing food and it's charming throughout, with individual entries ranging from ancient history to useful advice to personal memories. Highly recommended.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one of those books that has an entry for each day, to be read bit by bit. I got through January and decided that while it was nice, it wasn't worth the feeling of plodding through page after page.

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pleasant, desultory sort of read, full of interesting tidbits and occasionally not so interesting tidbits. It's a nice book to have on your coffee table if you're interested in food and wine, but don't go looking for tremendous depth here.

[Melissa (Semi Hiatus Until After the Holidays) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book with short vignettes for each day of the year about food, meals, and different people. I learned so much from this book!

[Catrien Deys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just great fun and some info that was really new to me.

[Ritattoo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting facts but somehow boringly written

[Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled on this at a used bookstore and when I was checking out, the proprietor was raving about James Salter. Which was funny, because I picked the book for the subject and format – I had never heard of Salter!

He’s known for his novels, apparently, but he and his wife, a journalist and playwright, are also great lovers of food (and the travel that often accompanies that love). Life is Meals is a year-long journey of recipes, food facts, food history and personal memories.

I’d give a huge portion of them five stars. I loved learning where certain recipes or meals came from, how a particular cheese is made or the history behind some dinner tradition. I was less interested in personal recollections of meals with the famous, the love lives of world-renowned chefs or the entries on wines, which I buy infrequently. But no day’s entry is longer than a page or so. If you find yourself mildly uninterested in a few, here and there, it’s still no burden to breeze through them.

I knew from the introduction that the Salters were my people: “We put the book together not to be definitive but rather to appeal to those for whom eating is something more than a mere necessity. It’s not meant to replace favorite cookbooks but instead, in a way, to complement them, to give them further context and, in the course of doing it, to give a year, perhaps more, of pleasure.”

I loved this January 16 advice, in an entry about giving dinner parties: “Tidy the bathroom guests will use, clear clutter, and let it go at that. Devote yourself instead to the elements that will actually be memorable: the food and the conversation.” (Actually, the whole dinner-party series of entries was pretty delightful and genuinely helpful.)

There are rules for houseguests and for waiters and for bakers. You can read about the freshness of fish and avocados and bread, alongside the eating habits of famous authors, actors and world leaders.

An April entry on manners admits that table rules change with time. “The true mark of courtesy is for the host or hostess to casually commit the same mistake as the guest to show that it is perfectly all right. The opposite of this once took place at the White House after lunch when President Calvin Coolidge, a taciturn man, put some milk into his coffee and slowly poured it into his saucer. His guest politely imitated him. Then Coolidge reached down and put the saucer on the floor for the cat.”

Under the April 20 entry, “John Irving,” I wrote “I love everything about this.”

I discovered my daughter was born the same day as legendary chef Alice Waters.

I learned chef’s jackets are double-breasted so they can be “buttoned either way to hide stains.” (Why aren’t all my clothes double-breasted??)

I put stars all around an Elspeth Huxley quote in an October entry: “You cannot sell a blemished apple in the supermarket, but you can sell a tasteless one, provided it is shiny, smooth, even, uniform, and bright.”

I don’t do a lot of books that are designed to be read in tiny bits through a full year, but I’m glad I enjoyed this one that way, instead of plowing straight through it. My daily two or three minutes with the Salters were something to look forward to.

And here’s the thing, flipping back through the book to write this, remembering all I loved about it, the few entries that didn’t put me over the moon don’t seem like that big of a deal. If you love food and travel and interesting people, you’re going to enjoy this book.

[Monica Ionita · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has its fair share of positives and negatives, so it could be just as well a 2-star or a 3-star review.
It tends to contain 1/3 personal anecdotes of dinners, food and travel, with a few recipes, 1/3 historical or pseudohistorical references with some culinary connection and 1/3 gastronomical references.
The personal anecdotes are quite frankly terribly snobbish and feel show-offy and forced. The authors keep listing trips to France, expensive wines, Aspen dinners and name drop guests at dinner parties in a manner that is insuferable. The story of the birth of their child in France, when they decided to dip his lips in fine wine immediately after birth like old kings did is a snob's dream.I laughed at it, a lot.
The snobbishnes continues in the choice of historical tidbits that center around France or writers. The stories themselves are ok but the authors pass the vibe repeatedly that their reference point of sophistication is France and try just too hard to make it clear they are intellectuals of high refinement.
On the positive side, the illustrations are lovely. The menus and recipes are quite simple and effective, and if you manage to ignore the insufferable wine-boasting, the pairing ideas are noteworthy.
The gastronomical articles suffer occasionally from the American preocupation with cholesterol and 'health' recommendation, but overall read easily. It's a nice coffee table book more than a continuous lecture.

[Edward Champion · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the finest prose stylists of the 20th century (and his wife) writing 365 snappy entries about food, cooking, and various other gastronomical matters? Where do I sign up? This book was a great joy to read. Some details I knew. Some I didn't. We see that the Salters are mannered (many of their restaurant tips and views on food are clearly derived by the quest for eloquence) with a cloaked blue-collar streak beneath it (merely canned tomatoes and not REAL tomatoes in chili?). And each entry is refreshingly concise, with that beautiful Salter prose. (There are many fine sentences here.) Some Goodreads types here have suggested that this volume is pretentious. But it didn't come across that way to me. Unless you think that anybody who drops tidbits on Brillat-Savarin and James Beard is a wanker by default. In which case I can't help you. Your problem is the anti-intellectual wraith who stares back at you in the mirror. For the rest of us, this is an unexpectedly enjoyable volume. Kind of bizarre that they never turned this into a calendar. I'd totally install a LIFE IS MEALS calendar in my kitchen if I had the option, ripping off each day with the same feral bliss in which I tear all my clothes off just before bedtime.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great concept and collection authored by the esteemed writers James Salter and his wife Kay (Eldredge). It originated conceptually from their own "dinner book" of keeping track of meals they prepared and hosted in their Aspen home. That evolved from simple meal lists and tweaked recipes to include anecdotes, reflections on the guests, commentary on the occasion and all manner of personal record to become quite a family keepsake. That in itself is a great idea - if I entertained more or rubbed elbows with famous people regularly. This edition is more generic, though it includes some stories unique to their family (the birth of their son and rubbing his lips with wine, friends who reciprocated recipes, travel food, etc) but here each day includes a short entry on the history of a food, a famous dinner party, literary or historical figure, a tried and true recipe or etiquette tip. Not a cover to cover read, but a great resource/gift/entertainment for a bookish foodie fan.

[Karla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the premise of “Life is Meals” but for me, it fell short. I found that I marked several pages to reference back to but overall it was written so historically and especially European history with a strong emphasis on France and French history, that I skimmed those parts. The Salter’s are living a very interesting life and are world travelers, meeting interesting people and eating interesting food. I am an everyday cook and I think this book is for true gourmet chefs. The Salter’s fall into this category - and what hosts they must be!

[John Stepper · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange and wonderful book! From recipes and cooking tips to historical food and wine facts (so many "Today I Learned!" moments) to celebrity anecdotes. "Eclectic" doesn't quite capture it. It's the kind of book you can dip in and out of, reading a few entries at a time. I enjoyed being in the company of James and Kay Salter.

p.s. I started reading this before I knew the co-author was James Salter who wrote "A Sport and a Pastime" which is a phenomenal book. getting a glimpse into such an author's dining and living experience made the book extra special.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved reading this every morning. I put this next to the microwave and tried to read the small excerpt every morning. I would love if Jasen and I kept a journal like this of meals shared with friends, conversations we’ve had, recipes that worked or didn’t work, history of food, wine. It was a lot of fun. Good gift idea for a foodie. There weren’t a ton of recipes I’d actually try but the recipes were such a small part of this book that I didn’t mind. I do plan on trying one or two, though!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the variety of entries and so many different viewpoints on foods, restaurants, wines and more. They historical entries were especially interesting, and definitely led to lots of googling for deeper dives. A fascinating look into the food history and thoughts on just how memorable meals can be.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely, easy read of a lively couple's recollections of delicious meals, touching memories, and relevant ancillary stories. I've upgraded my rating of this book after realizing how enjoyable its reading actually was. What a pleasure to have the Salters relate so many charming stories and anecdotes...remarkable.

[Vishal Katariya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strange book.. I kept it at my desk for a few months, thinking that whenever I felt like it I'll go and read a little bit. It's interesting, but also very fancy and elite. So I didn't enjoy it very much.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

due back at library before I could finish it.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite food books ever. The authors take disparate subjects around food and weave them all together into one magical whole that inspires and connects.