{"product_id":"educating-alice-isbn-9780812973600","title":"Educating Alice","description":"This funny and tender book combines three of Alice Steinbach’s greatest passions: learning, traveling, and writing. After chronicling her European journey of self-discovery in Without Reservations\u003ci\u003e,\u003c\/i\u003e this Pulitzer Prize—winning columnist for the Baltimore Sun quit her job and left home again. This time she roamed the world, taking lessons and courses in such things as French cooking in Paris, Border collie training in Scotland, traditional Japanese arts in Kyoto, and architecture and art in Havana. With warmth and wit, Steinbach guides us through the pleasures and perils of discovering how to be a student again. She also learns the true value of this second chance at educating herself: the opportunity to connect with and learn from the people she meets along the way.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Highly recommended . . . The beauty of [Steinbach’s] narrative . . . lies in her luminous descriptions. . . . But it is her perceptive looks into the lives and minds and hearts of the people she meets through her studies that bring her settings to life and make this collection of essays truly engaging.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e–Library Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Steinbach makes such a life look highly desirable. . . . Her stories are powerfully seductive to anyone who’s ever been tempted to get up and go, following interests wherever they may lead.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e–\u003cb\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“A delicious experience . . . This book will entertain, educate and perhaps inspire readers to make their own journeys.”\u003cbr\u003e-–\u003cb\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I loved \u003ci\u003eEducating Alice\u003c\/i\u003e....Alice Steinbach may visit some of the world's most popular tourist cities but she does not follow the ordinary tourist route. Oh no! Down the back alleys Alice Steinbach goes, slipping through side doors and riding on employees-only elevators; dropping huge, slippery salmon on the floor of the Ritz Escoffier Ecole de Gastronomie Francaise and charming retired geishas into showing her their prized kimonos, wrapped in rice paper and stowed in boxes in the attic. Ms. Steinbach must be who Henry James imagined when he advised novelists to try to become 'one upon whom nothing is lost.'\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eSarah Pritchard\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCrackpots: A Novel\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In these uncertain times, the smart thing to do is stay home and read \u003ci\u003eEducating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman. \u003c\/i\u003eAlice Steinbach has more fun than anybody, whether chasing sheep in Scotland, or taking cooking lessons at the Ritz in Paris, or swinging to a salsa beat in a down-at-the-heel cafe in Havanna, or taking a writing course in Prague, or studying landscape architecture in Provence, etc. etc. etc.--- Alice’s etceteras are limitless, and what all of us, surely, have always wanted to do ourselves. What is more, no matter what she does or who she sees or how hilarious the encounter, she is a lady to her toes.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eJane Geniesse\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePassionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A brisk and companionate tour of the Paris Ritz, ancient streets of Kyoto, the Scottish Highlands, inner Prague and Renaissance Florence, in search of the secrets of French cooking, Japanese dance, sheepherding, writing and painting. Alice Steinbach’s travel memoir serves up, in savory detail, the tricks and ingredients of these trades, even as she reveals steps in the intimate dance of an epistolary romance of her own.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eJean McGarry\u003c\/b\u003e, Chair of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars\u003cb\u003eALICE STEINBACH\u003c\/b\u003e, whose work at the\u003ci\u003e Baltimore Sun\u003c\/i\u003e was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, has been a freelance writer since 1999. Currently a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, she has taught journalism and writing at Princeton University, Washington and Lee University, and Loyola College. She lives in Baltimore.Cookin' at the Ritz\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA light snow was falling as I left my hotel and hurried across the  narrow rue Cambon to the employees entrance of the Hotel Ritz. It  surprised me that I had learned only two days earlier that such a door  even existed. How, I wondered, in all my years of exploring the streets  and passages of Paris had I missed it? After all, back doors were a  major interest of mine. And so were side doors and courtyards hidden  behind green gates and anything else that concealed the private Paris  from me. Once, I spent two years writing letters and making phone calls  before being allowed to visit the mysterious Maison de Verre, a house  on the Left Bank designed in the late 1920s by the French architect  Pierre Chareau. Compared to that heroic effort, gaining entrance to the  back door of the Hotel Ritz was a snap: I had simply enrolled as a  culinary student in the Ritz Escoffier École de Gastronomie Française.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow here I was, on a snowy morning in February, about to enter the  hotel not as an outsider but as an insider, a thrilling prospect. After  all, I told myself, anyone willing and able to pay seven hundred  dollars a pop to stay overnight could walk through the Ritz's imposing  place Vendôme entrance. But only those carrying an employee's  identification card were allowed through the back door on rue Cambon.  Still, as eager as I was to begin what seemed an adventure, the truth  is I was nervous about what to expect on the other side of the door. A  French security officer who would turn me away? A snooty chef who would  laugh at my limited French vocabulary? Classmates who would criticize  my chopping and dicing techniques? A sudden, humiliating announcement  from the schools Directeur that, for undisclosed reasons, he had  revoked my student status?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was in this Kafkaesque frame of mind that I pushed open the plain  unmarked door and stepped into a small vestibule. A security guard  sitting in a small room behind a counter stood up and carefully gave me  the once-over. Immediately his stern appraising demeanor made me think  of my root canal dentist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Bonjour,\" I said with fake nonchalance, holding out my photo ID in  such a way that my thumb covered any evidence of a very bad haircut. He  nodded and reached for the card. I watched as he looked at it and  frowned. Was it my bad haircut that offended? \"Is something wrong?\" I  asked. His response was to look at my face and then at the photo,  comparing the two. He repeated this twice. Face-then-photo.  Face-then-photo. Just as I started to explain that I'd drastically  altered my hairstyle-for the better-since the photo was taken, a buzzer  went off. A clicking sound followed as the gate to the long basement  corridor unlocked and, with a wave of his hand, the guard motioned me  through.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo this was it, then, the moment when I became a part of the venerable  Hotel Ritz. After descending a flight of stairs, I looked down a  corridor so long I couldn't see the end of it. What I could see,  however, was a small army of employees engaged in a whirlwind of  activity. Fascinated, I watched as men in crisp white uniforms picked  up crates containing hundreds of bottles of Evian water and florists  pushed carts filled with lavish arrangements of lilies, tulips, and  irises. As I moved deeper into the corridor I saw workmen carting off  worn pieces of Persian rugs and cabinetmakers moving a hand-painted  Chinese chest marked \"For repair.\" Service staff carrying covered  silver breakfast trays entered and exited the service elevator. Some of  the employees nodded to me in a collegial way as they passed by. I  nodded back, trying to conceal my excitement at witnessing all the  daily routines necessary to run a world-class hotel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI continued on through the long corridor, past the sparkling white tile  and stainless-steel kitchen classrooms of the cooking school, to the  locker rooms where students changed into their uniforms. After a few  minutes of struggling with the key, I unlocked the door on the right  marked \"Women.\" When I opened it a blast of hot, steamy air hit me; it  smelled like the warm dampness I breathed as a child when changing  clothes in the locker room of the YWCA pool.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInside the small, L-shaped room there were thirty-five bright blue  lockers, a few narrow benches, and an adjoining space with a toilet, a  shower stall, two sinks, and a mirror. On a small table in the corner  someone had left a hair comb and a large roll of Tums-a bad omen,  perhaps, to find in the locker room of a cooking school. After locating  the locker assigned to me-Number 210-I opened it and saw hanging inside  the uniform I'd been fitted for on the previous day. The room was empty  so I began to undress quickly, hoping to finish suiting up before my  classmates arrived. Call me insecure, but I preferred not to meet my  colleagues for the first time wearing only my underwear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe uniform was formidable. First, I removed the sturdy closed-toe  shoes students were advised to wear and stepped out of my khaki pants.  Then I pulled on a pair of heavy cotton houndstooth-check trousers. My  sweater came off next. It was replaced by a starched white  double-breasted chef's jacket with double rows of buttons and the name  of the school embroidered in blue on the left. Then came the  napkin-like neckerchief that had to be tied in a very specific way.  Next, I wrapped a starched white apron around my waist, tied it in  front, and then tucked a thick white side towel under the apron string  on my left side. By this time I was perspiring heavily.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinally it was time to don the flat, starched white hat worn by  students. I approached the hat with some trepidation. I still had not  gotten over the humiliation of being told by the sympathetic French  laundress who fitted me that I would require a very large hat. \"A size  21,\" she said sadly. \"There is no larger.\" Also I had no idea of how to  wear this hat. Pushed back on my head like a beanie with hair showing?  Or pulled down over my forehead, just above the eyebrows? Either way,  it was not a becoming look. I decided to wear it in the more severe  position: very low on my forehead, almost to my eyebrows, with all my  hair covered. Somehow, it seemed more professional that way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI looked at my watch; it had taken twenty minutes to suit up. I made a  brief detour to the mirror and stopped to stare at myself. The person  staring back, the one who was supposed to resemble a culinary student,  looked in fact like a Red Army nurse, circa World War II. Actually I  sort of liked the look. I fancied myself as looking very much like the  Hemingway heroine in A Farewell to Arms, despite the fact she wasn't  Russian and the story had nothing to do with World War II.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo complete the uniform I pinned on the nametag which, I had been  warned at my fitting, \"should in all cases be worn every day.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith half an hour to kill I headed for the employees' cafeteria, where  I was entitled to eat at a student discount. The pretty, softly lit  room was almost empty, so I sat down with a cup of latte and studied  the dishes we would prepare over the next four and a half hours: sole  fillets with a mandarin sauce; boeuf Bourguignon, waffle potatoes,  souffléed potatoes, chocolate and orange mousse. We would also learn to  prepare meat glaze and demi-glace. I flipped the pages containing the  recipes, trying to familiarize myself with the conversion of  measurements and weights from the European metric system into its  American equivalent, a daunting task. Added to that was the further  hurdle presented by having the course conducted in French with  simultaneous translation into English. Between the foreign metric  conversion and the foreign language translation, I saw the potential  for big mistakes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIndeed I had spent the night before worrying about whether I would  measure up to the standards of the Ritz Escoffier Cooking School. After  all it had been more than twenty years since I'd studied classic French  cooking and almost as long since I'd cooked at that level. So, to be on  the safe side, I had enrolled in a course listed in the school's  brochure as designed for the \"beginner to intermediate student.\" Still,  the name alone-The César Ritz Course,-named after the hotel's  founder-was intimidating to someone who grew up in a Scottish household  where Grandmother dragged out the Wee Scottish Cookbook when company  was coming and a fancy dish like steak pie or leek soup was called for.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI worried too about meeting my nine classmates, all of whom had started  the six-week course together, beginning in Week One. I, on the other  hand-having neither the time nor money for the full course-chose the  option of starting halfway through the course in Week Four. What this  meant, of course, was that I was the New Girl in Class, subject to all  the disadvantages accruing to such an identity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKitchens are dangerous places. Within minutes of beginning our  classroom work, two students caught on fire. Or to be more precise,  their long side towels caught on fire. Real chefs, it turned out, don't  use potholders. When something hot has to be handled they use their  sturdy side towels. Which is exactly what Bruce and Paulina were  doing-removing a huge stainless-steel pot of fish stock from the gas  burner-when flames erupted. The blaze was put out quickly and no one  seemed concerned. Except me.Author of Without Reservations [quote] --Entertainment Weekly","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303311855845,"sku":"NP9780812973600","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812973600.jpg?v=1767725878","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/educating-alice-isbn-9780812973600","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}