Connecticut-bred Lia Huber may have grown up with a potato and ship appetite; she traded veggies for beef with her sister at dinner. But it was the ancient Greek, Italian cuisines and cultures of Mexico and Central America that influenced her to change to a healthier, happier  lifestyle.

(All photos courtesy of Nourished) Though claiming to always have been the most passionate diner at the table, citing Food spotting her shirts to prove this, food nevertheless never fully satisfied her. nd so she set out on a personal quest change this.  In her words, “Hunger comes to us in many forms; we long to be satisfied not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well.  Nourished, A Memoir of Food, Faith & Enduring Love (with recipes) traces her journey.

Huber, who at the same time earned the reputation of well-respected recipe developer, food & travel writer,  entrepreneur and activist for good health.  Her accomplishments are many and fearless.  Even as a new college graduate she went to live with a family on Corfu, learning the language while taking care of her new Greek boyfriend’s father and cooking with the family at their souvlaki stand.

In return for her work, she starts to understand what food means in terms of nourishment – starting with the astonishment at the simple deep gold yolk of an egg being fried in olive oil. She revels in the sharing of communal meals.

Ever the pragmatist, Lia choses to marry a compatible guy also on a similar spiritual quest guy who she met in a religious setting who shares similar beliefs. And so it is through the years that she comes to learn different forms of very natural cooking in different countries including Costa Rica, Paris, Guatemala, Italy and even Minnesota.

Every by books end, it seems a mystery why Lia, still relatively unhappy, needed a thousands of miles to realize that eating natural food with more vegetables and grains than meat might be healthier than a high carb, starch diet.  And similar the question is not answered about why she are up eating such junk food when her financially well off east coast family  prepares made-from-scratch pasta meals as as part of their traditions, and engages in cross country flights to a Maine summer home for live grilled lobster feasts.

But, as with her instinct  to live with the family in Corfu, her idea to assail famous sausage chef, Bruce Aidells, who she casually met at an IACP conference, for a job contact, and her inspiration to move to Central America, Lia also had the talent, drive, determination and sheer guts to see all of them through though we have only snippets of how this happens.

This is not a book like Eat, Pray, Love, with an arc and a separate focus in each section,  where you can root for an eager seeker who finds answers.  Instead, doubting herself is second nature to Huber through to the end.  “I could feel the exhaustion stalking me, looming in the shadows like a wildcat readying to pounce.”

Huber’s writing starts out unevenly, with a disturbing penchant for comparisons.  Examples: ripping (a bagel) open like a book” and “a woman with a face as wrinkled as a bunched-up linen jacket”.  However, by her tale’s end, the writing is smooth, glossy.   Describing mole at a local restaurant outside of Oaxaca, she writes, “one bite tasted like chocolate, the next like cinnamon, the next tobacco.  Yet it was lighter and thinner in consistency than any other mole I’d had.”

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