Audiobooks by Kathleen Flinn

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir of Food and Love from an American Midwest Family

A delicious memoir from the author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry In this family history interwoven with recipes, Kathleen Flinn returns readers to the mix of food and memoir beloved by readers of her bestselling The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good explores the very beginnings of her love affair with food and its connection to home. It is the story of her Midwestern childhood, its memorable home cooks, and the delicious recipes she grew up with. Flinn shares tales of her parents’ pizza parlor in San Francisco, where they sold Uncle Clarence’s popular oven-fried chicken, as well as recipes for the chili made by former army cook Grandpa Charles, fluffy Swedish pancakes from Grandma Inez, and cinnamon rolls for birthday breakfasts. Through these dishes, Flinn came to understand how meals can be memories and how cooking can be a form of communication. Brimming with warmth and wit, this book is sure to appeal to Flinn’s many fans, as well as readers of Marcus Samuelsson, Ruth Reichl, and Julie Powell. “An award-winning nonfiction writer and journalist’s recipe-packed memoir of her Midwestern childhood…A warm, quietly poignant treat.”—Kirkus Reviews

Kathleen Flinn (Author), Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

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The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How A Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into

After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, writer Kathleen Flinn returned with no idea what to do next, until one day at a supermarket she watched a woman loading her cart with ultraprocessed foods. Flinn's "chefternal" instinct kicked in: she persuaded the stranger to reload with fresh foods, offering her simple recipes for healthy, easy meals. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School includes practical, healthy tips that boost listeners' culinary self-confidence, strategies to get the most from their grocery dollars, and simple recipes that get listeners cooking.

Kathleen Flinn (Author), Marguerite Gavin (Narrator)

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The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooki

In 2003, Kathleen Flinn, a 36-year-old American living and working in London, returned from vacation to find that her corporate job had been eliminated. Ignoring her mother's advice that she get another job immediately or "never get hired anywhere ever again", Flinn instead cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream: a diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the touching and remarkably funny account of Flinn's transformation as she moves through the school's intense program and falls deeply in love along the way. Flinn interweaves more than two dozen recipes with a unique look inside Le Cordon Bleu amid battles with demanding chefs, competitive classmates, and her "wretchedly inadequate" French. Flinn offers a vibrant portrait of Paris, one in which the sights and sounds of the city's street markets and purveyors come alive in rich detail. The ultimate wish-fulfillment audiobook, her story is a true testament to pursuing a dream. Fans of Julie & Julia, Almost French, and Eat, Pray, Love will be amused, inspired, and richly rewarded by this seductive tale of romance, Paris, and French food.

Kathleen Flinn (Author), Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

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