Dawn Lerman’s father isn’t the only larger-than-life personality in her memoir, My Fat Dad.

The book chronicles Lerman’s growing-up years, when her father, Al – a top Mad Man-era advertising copywriter who weighed 450 pounds at his heaviest – put his family on a succession of fad diets with him. His name may be unfamiliar, but the slogans he coined – including “Coke Is It” and “This Bud’s for You” – are anything but.

My Fat Dad was published last September by Penguin Random House’s Berkley Books, and was designated the Jewish Book Council’s non-fiction “pick of the week” earlier this summer.

Lerman – a nutrition consultant, mother of two and writer for the New York Times’ “Well” blog – has written a book that brims with detail, has no shortage of Jewish content and includes a few recipes at the end of each chapter, all related to the story. They run the gamut from traditional Ashkenazi favourites to decidedly non-kosher dishes.

Lerman’s adoring maternal grandmother, Beauty, a self-described culinary Jew who taught her how to cook, was a petite woman with a large presence in Lerman’s young life. Beauty dispensed an abundance of love and philosophy while she and her granddaughter prepared food together on weekends. She also helped Lerman understand her mother, who had no interest in cooking and could be critical of the daughter who was so different from her. Beauty’s love of fresh ingredients and her belief in eating everything in moderation had a long-term impact on Lerman.

Her grandmother’s improbable name was a result of the author’s misunderstanding as a young child, when her mother’s mother, delighted to see her, would greet her excitedly, “My little beauty.” Lerman would repeat the last word, thinking it was her grandmother’s name. In time, others in her circle used it too.

After Lerman’s family moved from Chicago to New York when she was nine, the weekly visits to her grandmother’s house stopped, but Beauty stayed in close touch, sending a recipe card and a $20-bill every week, so that Lerman could shop at ethnic food stores and then cook for the family, which now included a younger sister.

READ: MY GRANDMOTHER BEAUTY’S CHICKEN SOUP WITH A KICK

The book is filled with vivid details about the food and people Lerman encountered, including two memorable mentors – a homeless man and the lunchroom lady at Lerman’s school.

“I remember everything,” the New York-based author told The CJN, explaining the quantity of specific information that animates the book. But, she noted in a late July phone interview from Rhode Island, where she had just given a book talk, she also kept daily journals from the time she was a preschooler until she was 16. Before she learned to write, she would fill the journals with pictures.

“I used to sit and watch my family, and think, ‘Omigod, this could be a sitcom.’ I would always write down the dialogue. There’s a lot of material – my feelings, if my parents were fighting, or if I was hungry, or sad.

“I really didn’t edit out that much,” she said of the sometimes unflattering depictions of her mother, for example. “I tried to include what I thought would resonate with other people.” Happily, her mother has since become her “biggest cheerleader.”

Lerman, who studied TV and film production as an undergraduate, originally set out to write a children’s book about nutritional snacks, but as she began adding stories to the recipes, the book changed form.

When she approached the New York Times to propose a column on snacking, she included her backstory about growing up with an overweight father. She felt it bolstered her qualifications. But it turned out the paper was interested in the “fat dad” stories, not the snacking column. Eventually, at the request of readers, Lerman started to include recipes, and the column led to her book deal, she said.

She hopes her book will help “create happy memories around food… It’s about creating things that you love and finding ways to tweak them so they’re healthy, so it nourishes you emotionally, physically and spiritually.”

To find time to cook from scratch, Lerman recommends preparing food on Sunday, letting children help, and incorporating little extras throughout the week.

Cooking Beauty’s chicken soup “brings me back into my grandmother’s kitchen,” said Lerman, who has adapted the recipe for her vegetarian daughter.

She said her father, who is now vegan and weighs less than half what he once did, told her after the book came out, “You’ve come a long way, Baby.” It’s the slogan he came up with for Virginia Slims.