COMFORT FOOD FOR BREAKUPS

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COMFORT FOOD FOR BREAKUPS
The Memoir of a Hungry Girl


A widely syndicated sex advice columnist recently offered up this nugget of truth: men may constantly hanker after sex, but deep down, what women perpetually crave the most are carbohydrates.

Perhaps Marusha Bociurkiw, the author of Comfort Food For Breakups, longs for both. Bociurkiw -- filmmaker, teacher, foodblogger – fills the pages of her little red book with mash notes to such edible pacifiers as chocolate cake, soup, pasta, cabbage rolls and perogies. Sandwiched in between these she layers memories of grandmother, mother, father, and friends, not to mention the occasional comfort found in dimly lit lesbian bars.

As it flits between locales in Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, her text muses upon the ways in which food intersects with a nexus of hungers: for intimacy, for sex, and for home. In essence it is a Canadian memoir more than a westcoast one, yet many of our local foodie icons can be found here: grilled salmon, oysters, Portobello mushroom burgers at the Templeton Diner, shopping for Oyama sausage at the Granville Island Public Market, feasting on a picnic lunch of Natural Pastures Cheese from the Comox Valley.