Care and Feeding

A Memoir

De: Laurie Woolever

Narrado por: Laurie Woolever

A candid, funny, and occasionally devastating memoir of a woman making her way through the food world, navigating addiction, a cultural reckoning, and an unexpected tragedy

In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there’s more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.

Behind the scenes, Laurie’s life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all—from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli—while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.

As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie’s mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life’s work that she truly values: care and feeding.

©2025 Laurie Woolever (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers

Great story

This is a great story- working in the food and beverage industry is a lot to handle and extra tough for a person with addiction issues. I admire Laurie’s honesty and frankness about her struggles and appreciate hearing about some behind the scenes in this difficult tumultuous world

Outstanding story

Interesting and hugely inspiring story! Thank you Lori for sharing! Extremely well written. Kept me wanting more.

Candid look at a life in food.

I loved the genuine tone and delivery of this book. Laurie has a knack for storytelling!

Harrowing and Honest

Woolever fearlessly shares just how unsavory, lost and sad the life of an addict can be. A frustrating listen as you struggle to understand why she is so self-destructive, selfish and lost throughout. The contrast and similarities between her bosses is interesting but low key in the grand scheme of things. I hope she continues to fight off her demons.

Absolutely obsessed.

This book is phenomenal. As some reviews mention, the narration starts off a bit slow—but just like a car on a cold morning, it simply needs a moment to warm up before hitting full speed. Once it does, the writing is nothing short of breathtaking. Lyrical, evocative, and deeply satisfying, this book delivered everything I had hoped for in Blood, Bones, and Butter but didn’t quite find. A truly remarkable read.

Well crafted memoir, slow narration

Honesty, clarity, and efficiency are all things I look for in a memoir. Carr and feeding has all of those things. My only criticism is the absolute snails pace of the narration. I’m not sure why the publisher didn’t compress this a bit to make it flow a bit better but I had to listen on 1.6, and I could have gone much faster. Bad post production, but I still enjoyed it.

Raw, honest, courageous

Excellent narration by the author. This story must have been so difficult and painful to write - and the author does so with incredible candor and personal accountability. Bravo.

Tale of Self-Destruction

First and foremost, I respect the author's honesty. She puts every bad decision/action out there (they are countless), painting herself as a selfish, self-destructive, damaged person. This is a story of addiction -- alcohol, drugs, and sex. It's also a story of recovery, a journey that the author has begun.

The insight into the restaurant industry was interesting but wasn't the main focus of this story. Most of us have read about creepy, misogynistic, narcissistic chefs, so there was nothing new in that regard. Well written, the book moves along at a good clip.

The author should have passed on narrating the book. She sounded bored and affected at times.

I had no sympathy for her, but that wasn't her intention. However, I listened to the entire book---it was like watching a train wreck.

Rioting well told life story with a happy ending

Became fond of deliberate calm narration through so much trauma. The author kept her voice quietly strong. I lived the book.

Honest and wonderfully written!

I liked everything about this book, and though I don’t always like narration by the author, in this case I did!