Ellie Mathews

At first, Ellie Mathews made me want to enter a cooking contest, making me think it was easy enough to win, with her self-deprecating humor. Then, close to the end of the book she mentions what a close knit community the cooking contest field is and I thought "Why bother? These people do this all the time." Also, she tries to hard to appear humble; she's almost protesting a bit too much about her down-homeness.

On the whole, an interesting and insightful look into the world of cooking contests.

… (mehr)

While this was a breezy, fast read and a fairly good memoir, I couldn't shake the feeling that the author had a desperate need to be seen as "salt of the earth," and that this book was written, in large part, simply to counteract her perception that she was seen as cold and calculating when she won the Pillsbury Bake-Off. While her tales of recipe development and the hubbub that surrounds cooking competitions were amusing, they were interspersed with a jarring combination of "oh, really, I'm just normal folk!" protestations and an oddly holier-than-thou tendency to talk about Goodwill clothing, living without electricity, and eating "real" ethnic food. The juxtaposition was odd, and ended up making me completely baffled - I still don't know whether I love the author, or loathe her.… (mehr)