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OP: Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet

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by Lora Brody

Little, Brown and Company, 1985. Hardcover. Good. First printing.

Lora Brody, who began her cooking career as a caterer in the Boston area, is the author of over 20 books. Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet: A Memoir with Recipes (1985) was her first.

The stand alone essays, delightfully punchy and refreshingly brash, are each punctuated with the chocolate recipes which find themselves as side characters in each story. A chocolate pecan ice cream roll, for example, plays a minor but important role in the recounting of Brody’s high school reunion where she smugly tells off her unrequited high school crush. 

In another chapter, she describes the challenges of adjusting to the hoity-toity milieu she was forced to enter through her husband’s work as a lawyer—adventures ranging from choking on a fish bone at the Troisgros’ restaurant in Lyon and dodging antisemitic remarks from waspy Bostonians. Chocolate angel pie—a “delectable combination of silky smooth chocolate filling” in a chocolate cookie crust, topped with both a cream cheese frosting and a chocolate glaze—was an over-the-top effort to impress until Brody’s self-confidence blossomed on its own.

Our copy is a first printing. Shelfworn with dampstaining to the lower fore edge of the book block and to the bottom edge and spine of the jacket, but clean inside. We’ll just call this a Good reading copy.



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