Foodie Book Review: I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti by Giulia Melucci

It’s “chick lit” meets “food lit” in this light-hearted memoir of author Giulia Melucci’s life-long search for romantic love and winning recipes, all of which are included. Since her twenties, Melucci has known exactly which ingredients will make delicious meals, but, at forty, is still looking for the recipe for true love.

The recipes included in this book are ones that were woven into Melucci’s life, from the “Healthy Penne” she makes to impress a new crush who, she hears, likes “his food clean” to the “Pear Cake for Friends with Benefits,” a dessert she whips up to entice a man who doesn’t want to commit. Melucci is perfectly candid with the fact that most of her recipes were created to impress her boyfriends, or boys she wanted to be her boyfriends. She knows exactly how to create a meal that will please any man, and her pastas end up perfect, but her relationships—not so much. She dates an alcoholic, commitment-phobes of all ages and a few men who are just downright rude.

Melucci’s honesty will make readers blush—when writing about her past relationships, she doesn’t skirt over any of the details that a more “tough” woman might not want to recall, like when she takes off work to cook Seder for one of her boyfriends, or spends a small fortune on a plane ticket to Mexico to spend the holidays with his family, acts of love which are always a little bit embarrassing to admit after you realize he’s just not that into you.

Raised in Brooklyn, Melucci grew up with an Italian father, an Italian-American mother and four siblings. She learned to cook by watching her mother prepare large, three course dinners for the family and discovered her own talent in the kitchen after college, while living on her own in New York City and cooking for countless roommates, friends and boyfriends. Melucci writes, “I was elated every time I made something that turned out well; it seemed to happen so frequently that I was elated a lot!”

Melucci discusses food as tenderly as she does her past loves—possibly even more so. Readers realize that this is indeed a love story, not between Melucci and her undeserving exes, but between Melucci and the food she cooks. Melucci’s food is simple and, true to her Italian roots, mostly based around pasta. Some recipes only include four or five ingredients, and there’s no air of pretension to them, either—several are adapted from places like Epicurious.com and Bon Appétit magazine.

Without any shred of righteous anger of self-deprecation, Melucci admits that, for some time, she has “craved the stability of a permanent partnership,” but that “it hasn’t craved me.” Nevertheless, readers will want to give her kudos for cashing in on her heartbreaks—mixing her memories together as tenderly as she would her father’s minestrone to create this wonderful memoir.