Review of "Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am today" by Valerie Bertinelli

 

Valerie Bertinelli

Valerie Bertinelli has been in the limelight since her teens, when she starred in the popular sitcom 'One Day at a Time.' Valerie became even more famous when she wed Eddie Van Halen, co-founder of the American rock band Van Halen. Valerie went on to star in the sitcom 'Hot in Cleveland', and is now seen on the Food Channel, where she hosts the cooking show 'Valerie's Home Cooking' and is a judge on 'Kids Baking Championship.'


Valerie Bertinelli (center) in One Day at a Time with Bonnie Franklin (left) and Mackenzie Phillips (right)


Valerie Bertinelli married Eddie Van Halen


Valerie Bertinelli (center) in Hot in Cleveland with Jane Leeves (left) and Wendie Malick (right)


Valerie Bertinelli on Valerie's Home Cooking


Valerie Bertinelli with fellow judge Duff Goldman on Kids Baking Championship

Valerie's success - and prominent place in the public eye - came with a price, however, and she was always self-conscious about her weight. Valerie constantly felt the need to lose 10 pounds (or occasionally more), and was continually unhappy about her appearance. Valerie would compare her self-described hourglass figure to actresses she worked with, like Mackenzie Phillips on One Day at a Time, and Wendie Malick and Jane Leeves on Hot in Cleveland, and (in her own eyes) she came up short.

Now in her 60s, Valerie is tired of the self-doubt and she says 'enough already.' Valerie doesn't just talk about coming to terms with her weight though. She reminisces about her life, family, marriages, home, son, career, and more. Valerie also shares insights about achieving happiness and contentment in life.


Valerie Bertinelli is striving to be content

Sadly, Valerie touches on grief as well. Over the years Valerie lost her father and mother, and in 2020 she lost her best friend Eddie Van Halen. Though Valerie and Van Halen (who she calls Ed) divorced in 2005 - after twenty-five years of marriage - they remained very close, and Valerie deeply mourns Ed's passing.


Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen

Valerie met Ed when she was nineteen, and the attraction was instantaneous and mutual. The couple was portrayed as "a bad-boy rock star and America's sweetheart", but privately Ed was shy and Valerie was boisterous. Valerie believes she and Van Halen were soulmates and would have stayed together but for Ed's drinking and using drugs, which she calls "crazy, cliché eighties-style behavior."


Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen

Valerie and Ed had a son Wolfgang Van Halen (Wolfie) whom they both adored, and this kept the couple connected even after their divorce and remarriages to other people.


Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen with their baby Wolfie


Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen with their son Wolfie

Valerie writes about some of her fun experiences with Ed, how much she enjoyed cooking for him, and their ongoing (platonic) love. Valerie also touches on Ed's decades-long battle with cancer and his death in the hospital, surrounded by loved ones. Even now, Valerie still feels connected to Ed.....if only in her dreams.

Valerie is buoyed by her son Wolfie, who followed his father into the music business.


Wolfgang Van Halen

Valerie and Wolfie are close, and Valerie enjoys lavishing her delicious culinary creations on Wolfie and his girlfriend Andraia. Valerie first learned to cook from her Nonnie, aunt, and other women in her family, and often thinks about their cappelletti in brodo, gnocchi, and homemade bread.


Capelletti in Brodo


Gnocchi


Homemade Italian Bread

After Valerie married Ed, she learned southeast Asian recipes from Ed's Indonesian mother, who taught Valerie how to prepare Bami Goreng and Ketjap Sambal. Now of course, Valerie creates her own recipes for her television show.


Bami Goreng


Ketjap Sambai (dipping sauce)

From the outside looking in Valerie seemed to have had a very successful life. When Valerie hit 60 though, she felt she wasn't really happy. Writing about that time, she says, "I feel like I have neglected myself while spending my entire life doing what I think will please everybody else. Publicly, I have pretended to be the bubbly, upbeat, all-American girl everybody wants to believe I am, but in private I have rarely thought of myself as anything but a failure." And Valerie decided to do something about it.


In public, Valerie always appeared cheerful and happy

With the help of a mind coach, Valerie was able to learn how to deal with emotional pain without using food as a crutch. And she learned to see happiness not as an end goal, but as something to strive for every day. Valerie had her epiphany during the Covie-19 pandemic, so much of her healing had to be done alone.

Valerie describes things she does to improve her mood as follows: [When] I get anxious I go for a walk. I have tea. I page through magazines. I read. After a while, I pour myself a glass of wine, sit outside, and try to meditate. By then, I am definitely calmer, but still engaged in a debate with my more insecure, critical self, that asks, 'Why didn't I go on a diet and lose five pounds? Or ten?' Valerie then endeavors to silence those voices, assuring herself that her family and fans love her no matter what. And she tries to find joy, happiness and gratitude over and over again, every day.

Some of Valerie's tips are: tidy your mind; exercise; eat lots of fruits and vegetables; be kind; try new things; laugh loudly and often; be grateful; love; and more.




Valerie Bertinelli at home

Valerie include lots of personal anecdotes in the book, such as a description of a wonderful trip to Italy with her second husband Tom Vitale;


Valerie Bertinelli and her second husband Tom Vitale

attending Van Halen concerts to watch Ed (then Ed and Wolfie) play;


Young Eddie Van Halen performing


Eddie Van Halen and Wolfgang Van Halen performing together

spending time with her mother;


Valerie Bertinelli with her mother

writing her cookbook;


Valerie Bertinelli's cookbook

watching football on TV; taping her cooking show; being a Jenny Craig spokesperson; enjoying her pets; rebuilding her beach house; watching cat videos on TikTok;


Valerie Bertinelli likes cats and cat videos on TikTok

listening to Wolfie's new songs; grieving Ed's death; splitting from Tom; and much more.


Valerie Bertinelli loves listening to her son Wolfie's music

Valerie's narrative is a bit meandering and repetitive, but it shows her to be a lovely, modest, caring woman who wants to help others by sharing her experiences. I think many people would find inspiration in this book.

Valerie loves to cook and includes a smattering of recipes in the book. Some of the dishes are:

Hot Spinach and Crab Dip


Lasagna


Sicilian Chocolate Love Cake


Tuna Egg Salad Melts


Upside-Down Citrus Cake


Thanks to Netgalley, Valerie Bertinelli, and Mariner Books for a copy of the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Review of "The Unfamiliar Garden: A Sci-Fi Novel of Suspense" by Benjamin Percy

 

This review was first posted on Mystery and Suspense. Check it out for features, interviews, and reviews. https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/th...

This is the second book in the Comet Cycle Series, about the consequences of a comet passing close to the Earth. Each book works fine as a standalone.

When the comet Cain speeds across the sky, people gather en masse to watch the spectacle.....





.....and experts on television ominously explain that comets have long been associated with disasters like tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, pandemics, and more.



Then the comet passes out of sight and people forget about it. Until a year later, when the Earth rotates through the debris field the comet left behind. For days, meteors fill the sky, and meteorites rain down on Earth.



On the second night of the meteor shower, Professor Jack Abernathy, a mycologist at the University of Washington, plans to hunt for mushrooms in the woods outside Seattle. Jack's wife Nora, a homicide detective, is on a case, so Jack takes the couple's eight-year-old daughter Mia with him. Mia is reluctant to venture into the dark spooky woods, so Jack promises to buy her graphic novels and jelly-bean candy, and Mia traipses along.



Jack parks Mia on a stump playing a game on his phone while he crawls around nearby examining the forest floor. Jack glances up at Mia once, sees she's fine, and goes on with his work, snapping photos, taking measurements, making notes, and collecting mushroom samples.



Later, when Jack is finished for the night, Mia is gone.

One result of Mia's disappearance is the dissolution of Jack and Nora's marriage, which - in any case - is a union of opposites. Nora is rigid, organized, and controlling while Jack is easy-going, permissive, and spontaneous. And the loss of Mia tears them apart.

Five years after Mia vanishes, following the Covid pandemic and a long drought in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle is once again experiencing high rainfall. Fungi are spreading and mushrooms are sprouting everywhere.



Detective Nora Abernathy is called out to a nature preserve in West Seattle, where the body of a mushroom hunter has been found, a man whose eye has been gouged out and whose skin is cross-hatched with lacerations that look like foreign writing.



The murder appears to be a copycat killing, mimicking the modus operandi of a man - now in prison - who went on a murder spree after the meteor shower.

Meanwhile, Jack's graduate student Darla brings mushroom samples back to the mycology lab, starts feeling sick, throws up gray gunk, and goes home.



Later, when Jack goes to Darla's apartment to check on her, the floor is covered with blood and muck, and Darla - with fingers bent into claws, gray slime spewing from her nose and mouth, and teeth gnashing - tries to bite him.

Strange things start happening all over the region. A restaurant delivery boy arrives at an apartment, sees blood seeping out beneath the door, and is snatched inside; the corpses of a family of four are found in their backyard, their bodies etched with cross-hatched markings; a father frantically calls 911, saying he's not sure if he needs an ambulance, the police, or a priest, but there's something desperately wrong with his daughter; and much more.

After receiving dozens of phone calls about odd phenomena, Detective Nora Abernathy herself encounters a dog weaving down the street, teeth covered with blood, eyes rimmed with fungal growth, and mushrooms sprouting from its nose and ears.



Nora's suspicions about what's happening lead her to contact her ex-husband Jack, and the two of them work together to investigate the scourge.



Meanwhile, a secret government organization is performing perverse experiments in an effort to weaponize the phenomenon.



Unexpected events bring the Abernathys and the government researchers together, and the book becomes an exciting thriller.

In addition to writing a good story, Percy provides fascinating snippets about fungi. For instance, the largest living thing on Earth is Armillaria ostoyae, a vast fungus that takes up almost 2,500 acres in the Pacific Northwest and is estimated to be over 8,000 years old.


Mushrooms sprouting from vast underground Armillaria ostoyae fungus.

And a rain forest fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis can invade the bodies of ants and control their behavior.


Ant with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus sprouting from its head.

The book is an excellent mash-up of mystery and science fiction that would appeal to fans of both genres.

Thanks to Netgalley, Benjamin Percy, and Mariner Books for a copy of the book.

Rating: 4 stars

Review of "Truffle Hound: On the Trail of the World's Most Seductive Scent with Dreamers, Schemers, and Some Extraordinary Dogs" by Rowan Jacobsen

Rowan Jacobsen is an award-winning American author who writes about nature, science, sustainability and food. Jacobsen has an agreeably jaunty writing style, and his narrative is fun-filled and sprinkled with popular references.

Author Rowan Jacobsen

In this book Jacobsen explores the world of truffles - aromatic underground fungi that resemble rough-skinned potatoes and grow in woodlands. In scientific terms, truffles are the subterranean fruiting bodies of filamentous fungi that have a symbiotic relationship with trees. The mycorrhiza (filaments) of the fungi transfer soil nutrients to trees, and the trees provide food for the fungi.


Truffles are underground fruiting bodies of filamentous fungi.

Truffles are culinary delicacies much prized by fine chefs and food cognoscenti; thus they're very much coveted and extremely expensive.


Chef Fabrizio Schenardi holding a plate of Alba white truffles.


Retail truffle prices in 2021

The most distinctive characteristic of a truffle is its scent, which stimulates delight and nostalgia in the human psyche. Jacobsen got his first sniff of a white truffle in a restaurant in northern Italy, and describes the fragrance as follows: "It was hardly a food scent at all. It was more like catching a glimpse of a satyr prancing across the dining room floor while playing its flute and flashing its hindquarters at you."


Rowan Jacobsen smelling a truffle.


Rowan Jacobsen compares the scent of a white truffle to a satyr prancing across the floor.

And a food writer portrayed the aroma of white truffles as "a combination of newly plowed soil, fall rain, burrowing earthworms and the pungent memory of lost youth and old love affairs." The perfume of white truffles has been described in more fathomable terms as having an "intense aroma of garlic, fried cheese, and gym socks"


White Truffles

Each variety of truffle has a unique fragrance, and the aromas are very variable. For instance, the smell of black winter truffles is characterized as "deep earth and forest floor, drenched in cocoa and cognac; layers of dried tobacco, sorghum and cured olive oil slowly unfold."


Black Winter Truffles

And Oregon white truffles have an aroma reminiscent of "a bouillabaisse of diesel [gas] and pine, mixed with salami, blue cheese, and a touch of model airplane glue."


Oregon White Truffles

The smell of truffles (apparently) appeals to animals as well as humans, because forest fauna dig them up and eat them, and truffle pigs and dogs trained to find truffles sometimes just scarf the fungi down themselves.


Pig rooting for truffles.

After Jacobsen's initial tantalizing whiff of the Italian white truffle, he decided he had to know everything about these subsurface delicacies, which - it turns out - grow all over the world. So for the next two years Jacobsen traveled to truffle-hunting regions, met truffle hunters and their truffle-sniffing dogs, joined truffle hunts, sampled foods flavored with truffles, interviewed mycologists, and had a rollicking good time.


Rowan Jacobsen with a giant truffle.

Jacobsen also researched the science of truffles and spoke to scientists and entrepreneurs trying to establish truffle farms. This is done by planting trees seeded with truffle spores and mycorrhizae, and is a very costly enterprise that takes years to bear fruit (so to speak).


Truffle farm

For his research Jacobsen traveled to Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Spain, England, the United States and Canada, and relates many stories about people he met, experiences he had, and anecdotes he heard. For instance, Jacobsen describes the start of the truffle industry in the town of Livade in Croatia as follows: One day in the 1920s, a local peasant brought a tavern owner a handful of ginger-colored tubers he's found in the woods and said, "Good day, sir, do you have any idea what these stinky potatoes are? I found them underground. My pigs love them. Too bad they're so repulsive." The tavern owner knew who to consult, the repulsive potatoes turned out to be very desirable truffles, and an industry was born.


Italy, Croatia, and Hungary have thriving truffle industries.


Truffle sellers at a market.


Truffle sales online

Though hunting and selling truffles is a legitimate occupation, it's still something of a clandestine industry in places, with deals going down in cash, in bars and parking lots....with flashlights examining the contents of car trunks. And in places like Hungary, truffle-hunting is reserved for privileged insiders who can afford to pay for licenses and permits. In fact truffle-hunting is a serious business in Hungary, which has a truffle museum, a Hungarian Federation of Truffling, Truffle Knights, a Patron Saint of Truffling (Saint Ladislaus), and a Grand Master of the Saint Ladislaus Order of Truffle Knights - a mycologist named Dr. Zoltán Bratek.


St. Ladislaus of Hungary


Dr. Zoltán Bratek is a Hungarian mycologist who's the Grand Master of the Saint Ladislaus Order of Truffle Knights.

Jacobsen describes going on a truffle hunt in Hungary, where he accompanied a truffle hunter called István Bagi and István's truffle dog Mokka, a black lab.


Istvan Bagi’s dog Mokka, a Labrador, searches for truffles in a forest near Jaszivany, east of Budapest.

Mokka is an exceptionally capable truffle dog who plunges into the woods, quickly returns to drop a black truffle into István's hand, then does it again. István tells the dog he doesn't want black truffles today, only whites, and the pooch promptly finds a poplar whose roots harbor white truffles, which István carefully digs out. Jacobsen writes, "For the next four hours, István and Mokka show me levels of truffle mastery I had no idea existed. Mokka crisscrosses the forest at a gentle canter, nose low, tail sweeping wide and slow....Through the day, the truffles keep coming. Big ones, small ones, stinky ones, but mostly nice and round ones." Truffle dogs are normally rewarded with lavish praise and treats, though Mokka occasionally rewards herself by eating a low-quality truffle István doesn't need.

Truffle hunting is big business, growing every day.....but inexperienced buyers should beware. For instance, in the 1990s some sellers mixed costly aromatic black truffles from southern Europe with unscented cheap (but similar looking) Chinese truffles, and charged top price. This scandal led to fines and a crackdown on the truffle industry.


Chinese Black Truffles

Folks who can't afford, or don't have access to real truffles, can flavor their food with cheap imitations - like truffle oils, salts, butters, sauces, honeys, zests, and so on.




Truffle products

Jacobsen uses these products on occasion and observes, "Every time, I regret it. The smell is a grotesque caricature of truffle, as subtle as a Yankee Candle store." The reason is that truffle oil has no truffle in it. It's just olive oil spiked with a synthetic chemical called 2,4-dithiapentane, which "gives a crude and heavy-handed impression of truffleness." Nevertheless, 'fake' truffle products are popular best-sellers in many circles.

For non-experts Jacobsen's book includes everything you want to know about truffles, including descriptions of different kinds of truffles; people in the truffle industry; tips for training truffle dogs; descriptions of truffle farming; resources for truffle experiences (truffle festivals and truffle hunts); and more. There are also lots of color photos and a helpful index at the end.


Monza is a Lagotto Romagnolo, a favorite breed for truffle hunting.


Margaret Townsend crisscrossing her family’s farm in Kentucky, following Monza, a truffle-sniffing dog hired for the day

This is a wonderfully entertaining and informative book for truffle novices and experts alike.

Some of the recipes in the book are:

Tarfufo Benedictus


Orange Salad with Truffle Vinaigrette


Chawanmushi Tartufi


Cacio e Pepe Con Tartufi Di Nero


Seared Scallops in Truffled Butter Broth


Truffle Duck


Tiramisu di Tartufi


Look yummy don't they?

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for a copy of the book.

Rating: 4 stars