" M.F.K. Fisher meets Brain on Fire in this exquisite memoir of a 28-year-old food blogger who cooks her way back to health after a near-fatal aneurysm Jessica Fechtor was on top of the world: a Harvard graduate student, happily married, and thinking about starting a family. Then, while attending an academic conference, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. Multiple surgeries left her skull startlingly deformed. She lost her sense of smell, the sight in her left eye, and her confidence about who she was and what mattered. Jessica's journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was strong enough to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she learned about the restorative powers of kneading, salting, and sifting, that foodhad something to tell her, and that it felt good to listen. For readers of Molly Wizenberg, Tamar Adler, Laurie Colwin, and Ruth Reichl, as well as Oliver Sacks and Jill Bolte Taylor, Stir is a memoir (with recipes) of what it means to fix what's broken and live with what can't be fixed, to nourish and be nourished, to remember what it is to be hungry, honor that hunger, and learn how to feed it"--