Book Review : White Jacket Required.

One of my inspirations in looking for a cooking class was having just finished White Jacket Required by Jenna Weber.  This wonderful memoir illustrates Jenna's recent experience of choosing to go through culinary school after she realized that jobs were too hard to find with her background in English. The book truly gives you an inside peak at life in cooking school, and it's easy to fall in love with passionate, funny Jenna as she writes about the hilarity (and sometimes heartbreak) of her experiences during that time.

Jenna goes into detail about her daily routine at the culinary academy, from brutal wake ups to brutal instructors. She writes about the switch from be enrolled in "cooking" school to her real passion "p&b" (pastries and baking). She often refers to her semester spent in Paris, where she fell in love with food in a whole new way, and learned a new, more European appreciation of it. The book ends with Jenna finding a dream job with her new set of skills. Wonderful recipes are sprinkled throughout the book, each having a special connection to the chapter that precedes it.

Jenna's love of cooking goes all the way back to childhood, and she recounts stories of baking in the kitchen as a young girl that remind me of some of my own experiences :)

Since the beginning of her cooking school experience, Jenna has kept a blog called Eat Live Run, which has now reached national fame. She used to post stories and updates about culinary school, but as her life as changed, the subject matter has, too. Now you can find her amazing recipes and sweet updates about family life (she just had a little boy a month ago). When looking through Jenna's recipes on her blog, you can see that wholesomeness and freshness are hugely important to her. You won't find a lot of "junky" recipes and though her blog is no longer themed around "healthy living," it is clear that she is of the school that if you put good stuff into your body, you get good results out of it too! Eat well to feel well.

I don't think I'll be enrolling in cooking school anytime soon but this book definitely encouraged me to find time for one of my deepest passions, which is to be hard at work making up my own recipes or new tastes. Definitely a must-read, especially if you find yourself to be culinarily inclined!