Spanish Phrases for Dummies or Sharper Your Knife The Less You Cry

Spanish Phrases for Dummies

Author: Susana Wald

The fun and easy way to speak Spanish
With Mexico the #1 international destination for Americans, over 14 million secondary school students enrolled in Spanish classes, and Spanish the primary language in many neighborhoods from L.A. to Miami, this should easily be the most popular title in our new phrase book series, following in the footsteps of Spanish For Dummies (0-7645-5194-9), which has sold more than 300,000 copies.
Susana Wald is a writer, teacher, and translator.

Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

Author: Kathleen Flinn

A delightful true story of food, Paris, and the fulfillment of a lifelong dream

In 2003, Kathleen Flinn, a thirty-six-year-old American living and working in London, returned from vacation to find that her corporate job had been eliminated. Ignoring her mother's advice that she get another job immediately or "never get hired anywhere ever again," Flinn instead cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream-a diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the touching and remarkably funny account of Flinn's transformation as she moves through the school's intense program and falls deeply in love along the way. Flinn interweaves more than two dozen recipes with a unique look inside Le Cordon Bleu amid battles with demanding chefs, competitive classmates, and her "wretchedly inadequate" French. Flinn offers a vibrant portrait of Paris, one in which the sights and sounds of the city's street markets and purveyors come alive in rich detail. The ultimate wish fulfillment book, her story is a true testament to pursuing a dream. Fans of Julie & Julia, Almost French, and Eat, Pray, Love will be amused, inspired, and richly rewarded by this seductive tale of romance, Paris, and French food.

Publishers Weekly

When the author, an American journalist and software executive working in London, is sacked from her high-powered job, she enrolls as a student at the Cordon Bleu school in Paris. With limited cooking skills and grasp of the French language, she gamely attempts to master the school's challenging curriculum of traditional French cuisine. As if she didn't have enough on her plate eviscerating fish and knocking out pâtéà choux, she determines to write a book about her experience and gets married along the way. The result is a readable if sentimental chronicle of that year in Paris in which her love life is explored in great detail, dirty weekends and all, and cooking features as a metaphor for self-discovery. Some readers may feel disappointed that the narrator's encounters with French cookery remain largely confined to her lessons at the Cordon Bleu. On those rare occasions when she ventures into the food-obsessed city, the descriptions of meals are glancing at best. Although her struggles with the language and lack of knowledge about the culture lend comic elements to the story (once, trying to order a pizza over the phone, she said, "Je suis une pizza"-I am a pizza), they, too, constrain the author's culinary explorations. (Oct.)

. . seems destined to earn an honored place on the crowded bookshelves of many foodie readers.

Kirkus Reviews

An American expatriate follows her dream to study at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. When 36-year-old software executive Flinn got fired in 2003, she was faced with a choice: She could look for another job or pursue her passion. Actually, it's two passions: cooking, and a man. While a corporate wage-slave, she feared making a commitment to Mike back in Seattle. Now unemployed, single and with no country to call home, nothing held her back. She called Mike, drained her savings, moved with him to Paris and started classes. Part memoir, part insider's look at the famed culinary institute where the world's elite chefs have been trained in the art of French haute cuisine, the text takes the form of chronological chapters interweaving lessons learned at the school with lessons learned about life. We meet characters both eccentric and multicultural, from the seemingly bipolar Gray Chef to a roster of far-flung classmates. The range of students from Europe, America, South America, Asia and the Middle East makes it apparent that French cuisine is now global, but Flinn merely touches on that theme. It's not the only potentially fascinating topic she scants; she barely seems to notice that Paris now competes with London, formerly the butt of many jokes about bad food, as the home of superlative dining. Instead, Flinn attempts to use cooking as a life metaphor, a dicey tactic when your personal revelations mostly resemble outtakes from Sex and the City. The book is best when she sticks to cooking, France's culinary history, diverse regional traditions and the challenges of meeting the impeccable standards of Le Cordon Bleu's demanding chefs. A fascinating look inside a famed elite institution, unnecessarilygarnished with lackluster autobiography. Agent: Larry Weissman/Larry Weissman, LLC

What People Are Saying

Elizabeth Gilbert
I can never get enough of true stories about people who stop in the middle of their life's journey to ask, 'What do I really want?' and then have the guts to actually go get it. Kathleen Flinn's tale of chasing her ultimate dream makes for a really lovely book-engaging, intelligent and surprisingly suspenseful. (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love)

Michael Ruhlman
An engaging story about a fantasy fulfilled. It's Under the Tuscan Sun goes to cooking school. (Michael Ruhlman, author of The Elements of Cooking and The Soul of a Chef)

Bill Radke
A joy to read . . . A compelling story about learning to cook and learning to love at the same time, told with humility, humor, and passion. (Bill Radke, host of NPR's Weekend America)

Table of Contents:

Author's Note     ix
Prologue: This Is Not for Pretend     1
Basic Cuisine     5
Life Is Not a Dress Rehearsal     7
Lost in Translation     17
Culinary Boot Camp     25
Taking Stock     35
Memoirs of a Quiche     46
La Vie en Rose     56
No Bones About It     66
Splitting Hares     74
The Souffle Also Rises     83
As the Vegetables Turn     92
Final Exam-Basic     103
Intermediate Cuisine     113
Class Break: Spain     115
C'est la Vie, C'est la Guerre     118
A Week in Provence     128
Rites of Passage     134
The Silence of the Lamb     143
"I Am a Pizza for Kathleen"     150
A Sauce Thicker Than Blood     158
La Catastrophe Americaine     164
Bon Travail     171
Final exam-Intermediate     177
Superior Cuisine     183
Class Break: Normandy, then America     185
Back in Bleu     189
Great Expectations     202
Gods, Monsters, and Slaves     211
LaDanse     220
Bye-bye, Lobster     231
I Didn't Always Hate My Job     243
An American Hospital in Paris     249
Final Exam-Superior     259
Epilogue: Thanksgiving in Paris     271
Extra Recipes     275
Acknowledgments     279
Selected Bibliography     281
Index of Recipes     283
Menu Guide for Book Clubs     286