I thought this would be a fun foodie memoir to read during a difficult time (my father-in-law just died and my dad is freshly out of the hospital after a long stay) but The French Ingredient: Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time by Jane Bertch was a big disappointment.

For some reasons my quotes and notes won’t post to GoodReads and I’m exhausted but here are some thoughts. It was a strange book.

I never got a sense she knew anything about food or cooking or enjoyed it much beyond a cheese plate. Her cooking school seemed to be purely a business/money making venture.

Which is fine but I felt like was trying to pretend it wasn’t. The fact that it did appear to be a purely business idea and not one born out of a passion for teaching people how to cook, I found it bizarre that at first she thought it would be for French people living in France not tourists.

I would have liked to have known where the money came from for the venture—I’m assuming the boyfriend with family money who became her business partner but I don’t think she made that clear.

I didn’t feel like she treated the employees well. Why were they all contract workers? Why did she bully them into working against their doctors’ orders when injured? If they were so important, why weren’t they full time employees? Why couldn’t she even bother to look if she could find someone to fill in when a worker was ill or away from work? She just doesn’t want to put in the effort.