Book review: Three food books you don't have to bother with

eat pray love by Elisabeth Gilbert
This is an interesting book, and the only reason it is in this category is that I don't think it is for everyone. It is a autobiography, telling the true story of a woman who leaves an unhappy marriage and lives 4 months in Italy to eat and promote decadence, 4 months in India to learn how to get closer to God at a Hindu center called Ashram, and then 4 months in Bali to find herself with a native healer. She also finds love again in Bali. The writing is excellent, a real delight, and she is especially good at writing about humorous situations as well as her own anxiety and impatience. I loved that. However, it is kind of a strange book, because the only person that feels real in the book is herself, none of the other characters. They are more like shadows. But her descriptions of eating pasta, pizza, and gelato in Italy wants me to go there NOW. So if you don't mind some God praying stuff, read it, otherwise read only part one and then go on to another book.

The year of eating dangerously by Tom Parker Bowles
This is the book I only read to chapter 2, then gave up on. If you think the author's last name is familiar, it is because 1) he is a famous British food writer, and 2) he is the son of Camilla Parker Bowles, now married to Prince Charles of the British royal family. No, Charles is not in the book, but his mom is, mentioned as someone that can cook, hates spicy food, and like good ingredients. The author writes a lot, far too much. It is like he thinks every little word and thought is of interest, but there really isn't any depth to anything. The first chapter is about baby eels, but he ends the chapter without eating one molecule from the eel, and the second chapter is about chilis in New Mexico, but you don't really learn anything about chili or find out what he thinks about them. It is just one long diatribe about being to a Fiery Food Festival eating too hot sauces, seeing people puke and say the f-word (lots of that in the book), and then just want to go home. Boring. Superficial. I gave up. If I writer can't even excite me about hot chilies and Santa Fe, the book is lost. I really tried to like it, but I couldn't.

Remembrance of things Paris, sixty years of writing from Gourmet, edited by Ruth Reichl
If you have been to Paris sometime in the 20s to 50s, maybe this book is fun for you. I wasn't even born then. The best essay in the whole book is the one by Ruth Reichl, about trying on a black dress! It is outstanding, but the rest is about as boring as Marcel Proust. But I read nearly all of it while I was stuck on an airplane. If you want to read about French food there are a lot better books. Too much is snotty, snobbish, and only the insiders would know what you mean. More Ruth Reichl, less old dusty stuff.
On a scale from one to 100, this book is a 5 and Comfort me with Apples by Ruth Reichl is a 99.

Book review: Comfort me with Apples by Ruth Reichl

"The wine was strong. The garlic was pungent... Before long the entire room as giddy with garlic euphoria. Wrapped up in fumes of garlic, we ate galantines of pigeon, duck, and quail with garlic mosaics. ...Platters of spring lamb were brought out, surrounded by three garlic-infused purees. We washed the meat down with oceans of deep, dark Zinfandel. "[in California at a garlic extravaganza]

"What is that?" I asked. "How dong", he said. "It is always cheap, and it is always hot. It is made of miscellaneous meat; it could be anything - snake, muskrat, baby lion. The recipe calls for lots of chilies, pepper, and spice to mask the flavor of the meat. " [ in Thailand tasting local food]

This little memoir called Comfort me with Apples is written by Ruth Reichl, the current editor of fancy-pantsy food magazine Gourmet (yes, we subscribe), and former restaurant critic for New York Times, where she dressed up in different wigs and costumes so the chefs shouldn't recognize her (as you can read in another great book called Garlic and Sapphires).

This book is how it all got started, how she lived in a house shared with friends in Berkeley, California, and one day was offered to start reviewing restaurants without really having any practice at it. It is several stories in one book, both a true description of the building of a career and its ups and downs and uncertainties and happiness and the love for food and the people that make and eat it. But also a description of the dissolution of her marriage at the same time. She talks honestly, funnily, and sometimes very emotionally about finding love, losing it, and in the meantime, eating good, comforting food, and less good food.

She travels to Paris, to China, and to Thailand to write about the food and the people, and her book manages to create living people. You see living dining tables heaped with wonderfully smells of garlic, lamb, fruits, French cheeses, wine, and fresh-picked vegetables in front of your eyes. I loved this book; it sustained me on a long airplane trip where they didn't even serve peanuts anymore. (And yes, there are recipes in it too!)

Hur gick det sen?

”Från mjölkbutiken klockan fem, ett litet mumintroll gick hem.
En kanna full med mjölk han bar och vägen lång och kuslig var och vinden suckade och ven i skogens alla mörka trän.
Det var ej långt från skymningen.
Vad tror du hände sen?”

"From the milk store at five o'clock, a little Moomintroll went home.
A jug filled with milk he carried on the road long and eerie and the wind sighed and whined in all of the forest's dark trees.
The dusk was not far away.
What do you think happened next?"

I was reminded of this children's book by this post, since they both have parts of their pages cut out. In Tove Jansson's illustrated book "Hur gick det sen?" (What happened next?) holes are made in each page so one gets a partial view of the next page, pulling the story forward and keeping the suspense high. The cutouts can be a hole in a treetrunk, a window or the background of the trees in a dark forest.

View of a page, borrowed from a good blog post about book design at Nittonde stolen (in swedish).

There is a new translation into english of this book by the acclaimed poet Sophie Hannah, but they kept the original english title "The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My" which sounds a little dull to me. But her interpretation of the story seems good judging from this snippet:

"Here’s little Moomintroll, none other,
Hurrying home with milk for mother.
Quick, Moomintroll, it’s nearly night.
Run home while there’s a bit of light.
Don’t hang around in woods like these.
Strange creatures lurk between the trees.
The wind begins to howl and hiss.
Now, guess what happens after this..."

I haven't read this book since I was a little kid, but I have vivid memories of Tove's great illustrations and the curiosity of what would happen next. I think I'll have to visit the section of children's books at the library soon. If I disguise myself with a beanie, shorts with suspenders and a slingshot in the back pocket no-one will notice. :)

/O.K.
(Listening to while posting: AFX - Entrance to Exit)

Quote of the Day

I am "reading" (listening on CD's) Thirteen Moons the new book by Charles Fraizer.

In the story Will, the main character, is speaking with Bear the chief of the Cherokees'. Bear asks Will to translate the Bible for him. Bear then makes this comment:

"In the end he (Bear) said he judged the Bible a sound book. Nevertheless he wondered why white people were not better than they are having had it for so long. He promised just as soon as white people achieved Christianity he would recommend it to his own people."

I wonder too...

By the way the book so far is simply outstanding!

Book review: Remove Child Before Folding

I recently bought a little book I am going to regift* that is called:

Remove Child Before Folding: the 101 stupidest, silliest, and wackiest warning labels ever
by Bob Dirigo Jones

This is a collection of real warning texts from items being sold in the US. They were sent in by people to Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, a group that is concerned about stupid lawsuits for things that should just have been common sense not to do, or were pure accidents.

The book is funny, of course, but also sad. That companies can't sell safety alarms for hot tubs because the liability insurance costs would be too high, for example. Same with some baby seats that are very safe and common in Europe, but because of the suing-happy American culture they are not being sold here. Some Americans just want to blame everything on someone else, even the rain, the lack of rain, or that they slipped in a puddle. Some bad stuff just happens, you know. I am not talking about the real wrongdoings of course, I am talking about the stupid things, things that can be avoided by some common sense or were just plain accidents. As a result, lots of companies put warning labels on their items to fend off liability suits, probably often after they got sued. So people actually did some of these things and then blamed the company. Here is a selection:

Baby stroller: Remove child before folding.

Iron: Never iron clothes while being worn.

laser printer toner: Do not eat toner.

wood router: This product is not intended for use as a dental drill or in medical applications. (A Texas man tried and sued)

fishing hook: Harmful if swallowed.

Adidas track suit: Please be aware that sliding too fast across indoor floors could cause friction burns where floor, suit, and skin meet.

DVD player: Do not swing from the product or pull it.

Propane torch: Never use while sleeping.

Self-defense pepper spray: May irritate eyes.

* regifting = when you give away something you got as a gift yourself, not necessarily because you don't like it, but maybe because you think the other person will like it even better, or it is something you already have tried/read/ etc. Recycling in action, really. In this case, I actually bought the book for myself, and now I am giving it away so more people can laugh at this.

Book review: Second nature by Michael Pollan

I have just finished the book Second Nature by Michael Pollan, a writer famous for his books Botany of Desire and An Omnivore's Dilemma (books I have yet to finish). I was really eager to read this book, written about 10 years ago, but it was a disappointment. Not in the sense that it was bad writing, in fact, it is excellently written, but the thoughts are hard to follow and there are a lot of words and not much analysis. I had to push myself to finish the latter half of the book. But if you are into garden philosophy, and are not too easily bored, then read it!

He talks about things like 'what is wilderness?', 'the American lawn', and the feel in us to control nature. The title of the book comes from his suggestion that a garden is a kind of second nature. There are plenty of historical references and discussion of the difference between American and English gardening mentality, which is quite interesting. The problem is that in the end you are left without any conclusion - it is like a long evening discussion over one or two bottles of wine and the next morning you don't remember what you decided or if you decided anything at all.

He got a lot of criticism for the book, both from ecologists and gardeners. For example, the review in the Library Journal reads:
"Pollan, executive editor of Harper's and self-proclaimed amateur gardener, has written a book that is by turns charming and annoying, insightful and shallow, droll and banal. His collection of a dozen essays arranged by season is based on his experiences over a seven-year period in his Connecticut garden, along with vignettes from garden history. Unfortunately, Pollan's text is characterized by dubious and unsupported generalities, self-conscious humor, and extended, labored metaphors, and his lack of gardening authority dooms the book to superficiality. Experienced gardeners and devotees of garden literature will find little here that is original."

A few quotes from the book itself:
"Without the editing of our perceptions, nature might prove unbearable." (think - the killing of a mouse by foxes, heartbeats of owls, and suffering during droughts)

"Suburban America has been laid out to look best from the perspective not of its inhabitants, but of the motorist. " (He is referring to the omnipresent lawns, lack of fences and hedges, flower borders along the house and the vegetable garden hidden in the back, and I completely agree with this.)

"Domination, translated into suburban or rural terms, means lawn. A few acres of Kentucky bluegrass arranged in a buffer zone between house and landscape, a no-man's-land patrolled weekly with a rotary blade. [...] A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule."

The last comment reminds me of the culture of fear here - fear of ticks, fear of snakes, fear of nature, fear of all things unknown, fear of immigrants, fear of terrorism, and so on, and on. Most people around here seem to think that only if you are a conformist and not wander out in nature or into the wild world, you are safe... Of course, nature and the world has a tendency to get into your life anyway, it is just part of their nature.

With American gardens, here are my pet peeves:
* too much lawn!
* no pretty fences along roads
* too little vegetable and herb gardening
* too much leaf blowing
* too many gasoline-powered tools at dinner time
* too many deers and groundhogs
* mulch vulcanoes around trees
* ridiculous landscaping using non-local stone, colored plastic mulch, and plastic edging between borders and lawn
* pink flamingos and stepping stones made out of concrete and bought at HomeDepo...

Also, personally, I think large, hybrid roses are completely overrated, hummingbirds are amazing, and I would love to have a pond for frogs and dragonflies. Anyone want to come here and help me dig?

(The photo is from my idea of a garden, a livable place for people, plants, and creatures and pretty for all. Photo by LS)