Jim Gaffigan by Nathan Gelgud, 2014.

Jim Gaffigan had a brilliant idea for his second book. He wrote about fatherhood in his first one, Dad is Fat, and the only thing he loves as much as his family is food. So it was obvious. He'd write an edible book. Publishers didn't go for that, so he wrote Food: A Love Story.

Gaffigan never misses an opportunity to praise his supportive wife, with whom he collaborates on his comedy and his books. But in Food, he writes about a different love affair -- the one he has with eating. He indulges it three times a day. And then, he tells us, three more times at night. He's not too picky about how he expresses his love. He's not a foodie, he writes, but an "eatie." He doesn't necessarily want the best burger, but the best, closest burger. If you ask him about the last two meals he's had, two of them will be cheeseburgers, and the third will be something he ate when he couldn't find a cheeseburger. Suicide hotlines should suggest cheeseburgers as their first piece of advice to callers. More poetry should be written about cheeseburgers.

But Food isn't entirely about Gaffigan's most beloved foods, which include steak, barbecue, cake, and the bratwursts he looks forward to devouring every summer. Gaffigan also discusses foods that he finds perplexing and a little gross, like poutine and gyros, as well as stuff that he just can't stomach, like oysters. Seafood in general turns Gaffigan off, especially lobster, whose culinary origin he links to someone wanting an excuse to eat three sticks of butter. Lobster and other shellfish are "seabugs" to Gaffigan, and they belong to the "Seabugland" section of his book, one of a stretch of chapters that break down the country into regions of food. Other areas include Super Bowl Sunday Foodland and Mexican Foodland.

Gaffigan's inclusion of a chapter devoted to the Hot Pocket comes as no surprise, given that a series of jokes about the frozen food aisle curiosity propelled him to standup stardom years ago. Food: A Love Story reads almost like a compendium of standup bits about food, an extension of the dubious achievement that has people yelling "Hot Pockets!" at him in airports to this day. But he can't really complain; in fact, he admits to still buying Hot Pockets. One can only assume it's when there's not a cheeseburger -- or an edible book -- nearby.

Nathan Gelgud illustration inspired by Jim Gaffigan's new memoir about food, 2014.