for those who like to eat...a little too often

Foodist
by Darya Pino Rose

I can't go all gaga over this book--there were a couple of things that bugged me.  For one, I wished she'd used more citations.  I respect Darya Pino Rose and I trust her research.  But when she snaps out a fact like, "eating too little causes the body to go into starvation mode," I want to know a couple of things:  where's the research? And what's the current definition of "too little"?  If this is an established scientific theory, then I would assume it applies to anorexics or persons in a famine.  But what about a slightly overweight woman eating 1400 calories a day?  1200?

I'd liked to have seen a citation for this one: "An ideal breakfast has a low glycemic load and contains a good amount of protein."  Oh, wait!!!  There WAS one.  Objection withdrawn.   But what about his one, "Weather and soil quality are the biggest determinants of the nutritional value of agricultural products (including the animals that feed on the plants)."  So genetics is a minor determinant?  And predation, or the lack thereof?

As I said, I trust her research and it may have been her publisher's fault that the book was so short.  I wonder why they didn't choose the style of using insets (those square boxes of extra material that they put in some books) to include some of the extra information that I wanted to read.  For the "weather and soil" fact, they could have given her a page or half-page to describe some of the research backing this up.

My other annoyance, which I cannot not fault her for, involves my old expectations vs. actualities tangle.  When I read "real science", I was thinking more "nutritional science and physiology" and less "psychology."  After she pointed out that people can thrive on all sorts of different diets, she didn't talk much about nutritional science and even less about physiology.  Instead it was all about brain and society.  The Habits And Rewards chapter was very interesting in this regard.  To live healthfully, our brain can be our worst enemy.  She's all about making it our best friend.

The reason I was looking for nutritional science and physiology is that I still have conflicting thoughts about The Zone and some other diets which increase protein and possibly fat at the expense of carbohydrates.  Now, I know The Zone does not consider itself a high protein diet but rather a balanced diet, yet somehow when we were doing it, I had to add a lot of protein in to get the ratio right.  People do lose weight on those kind of diets.  Some swear they keep it off without effort.  But is it really health-promoting for the long run?  I was hoping this book would give me some insight, but that's okay.  I'll keep looking elsewhere.

All that aside, she's written a great book. If you're a regular reader of Summer Tomato on the web then you may not find much that's new, but it's put together nicely.  (The part about her Dad was new and incredibly cool.)  I'll be re-reading this time and again, and maybe someday, just maybe, her habits can be my habits.

Personal note, skip if you wish:  I have a bad habit of calling my current eating regime a "diet" when speaking to people, just because it's a quick and convenient excuse for not taking the free cookies or for leaving half the food on my plate.  Bad me!  In my mind it's not a diet--it's the way I plan to eat for the rest of my life. We need a new word for this...she calls it "Healthstyle".  How about, "non-it"?  I can say, "I can't eat cookies, I'm on a nonit,"  i.e., no need it diet--my body has no need for cookies right now, so I'm not eating them.  Someday I might; not today.

Delicious!

Soul Food
Adrian Miller

Loved it. Did you know that in the 1700s, English aristocrats adored chitlins?  In slavery days, chitlins were eaten as much in the Big House as in the slave cabins and they weren't embarrassed about it.  I'm sure my ancestors (poor whites; couldn't afford slaves) ate them.  I think I might have eaten them once, but I don't remember exactly.

Since the book is about the origin and evolution of soul food in America, there are other dishes you'd expect like fried chicken, greens, and candied sweet potatos.  He describes each dish in a separate chapter, not skimping on how they became "black food" during and after the diaspora.  But he also includes dishes I'd never have considered iconically soulful, like macaroni and cheese--oh, sorry--mac 'n cheese--hot sauce, and "red drinks."   Who'd have thunk it?

Cool book. I don't expect to be trying any of his recipes.  For one thing, I am constitutionally unable to put sugar in corn bread.  My Mom would kill me. Some of the other dishes are things I love, like greens, but I've learned to like them just as much without meat as a seasoning.  But I bet I'd love every single one. 

Note: it's not a recipe book--it just includes one or two recipes at the end of each chapter, lagniappe.

(No) cooking adventure

I totally forgot to try something new this weekend, but at least I finally remembered to roast some seeds I'd bought a month ago.  Wish I could remember what kind of seeds they are.

So instead I made Hoppin' John, which in my opinion could have used a lot more Hoppin' and a little less John.  But I haven't tasted it.  Maybe that half of a jalapeno I threw in will add some.

Is there a Kingsolver Fandom?

Flight Behavior
by Barbara Kingsolver

Damn, she's done it again--made me bawl my eyes out.  Repeatedly.  Made me really care about a whole bunch of very different people.  Even the "bad guys" had their sympathetic points--you kind of saw where they were coming from even if you couldn't stand to agree with them.

And to top it all off, she mixed in her real humans/real emotions/real life situations story with a science lesson.  A lot of 'em, actually.

Is there anything this woman can't write?

I love Barbara Kingsolver.

?

Don't know why this was on my to-read list, but okay

Carnet de Voyage
by Craig Thompson

Cute little book of drawings from an overseas trip. His misadventures in North Africa were disturbing, but he was rewarded with Alpine beauty and serenity in Europe. I adored the drawings but didn't really warm up to the artist as a person.  But don't get me wrong--I'm sure he's a great guy: sensitive, adventurous, cool and funny.  I just think that pictures, not words, are how he tells his story.  The captions left me frustrated for understanding, but the drawings themselves told all.

Benetti's defense, Cappafera and Agrippa (or something like that)

As You Wish:

Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

by Cary Elwes, Joe Layden



Really good early on but it seemed to fizzle out by the end.  I wanted it to be twice as long.  But don't let that stop you from reading it. 

I was surprised to learn that the initial release had mediocre sales.  He speculated that was because the studio marketing department didn't know how to promote it.  In fact, one of the movie posters showed only the boy and his grandfather reading.  Did the idiot who created that only watch the first five minutes of the movie?

I also didn't realize how many stars and soon-to-become-stars participated in the cast.  That alone should have keyed the audience in that this was going to be really funny.  Not to mention full of swashbuckles.  I loved his story of how they prepared for the "greatest sword fight in modern times."

Finally got to use that Thai curry paste!

Butternut squash curry with green beans and spinach.

The cauliflower-lime rice I made to go with it wasn't nearly so photogenic. Didn't taste very good, either.  When I want rice, I want rice--not cauliflower chopped up to look like rice.  Remember my rant about homeopathic vegetable selections?

Adventures in eating 2016 edition

Long ago--infinitely long ago--I was blogging weekly about the new foods I'd tried. Although I dropped that habit, it seeming incredibly trivial to be chirping merrily about stupid things, I have started trying new foods again.  Darya Rose of Summer Tomato uses a "habit monitor" app to help her develop good lifestyle habits, one of which is trying new things.  I may not go the full app route, but I'll attempt to follow her good example in my own way.

(Like I really need new ideas of things to put into my mouth!)

Lately I've attempted four: sardines, fresh papaya, escarole, and farro.  Sardines were difficult. I'm not a fishy-fish kind of eater, even in my sushi choices, and sardines smell like a two-day dead carp on the riverbank.  But after I chopped them up, mixed them with panko, salt, egg, onions and lemon juice, then fried them into little cakes, they became almost good. Especially with a dollop of horseradish sauce on top.

The cat likes them without all that adulteration, but he likes tuna better.  The fresh papaya was even more challenging but I've learned my lesson.  If the store doesn't have a great big pile of really dark yellow-orange fruit without any green, don't bother.  It isn't ripe.  They say you can ripen it at home, but the first one I bought rotted first.  On the second one I was scared to wait, so I ate it after a couple of days. 



Or rather, attempted to eat it.  It tasted sour-ish and musty. I gave up.  For now.


The escarole was an impulse purchase on a really cold Saturday morning at the farmer's market.  The nice lady and gentleman from whom I'd bought some great spinach last year, had big bunches of it for only three dollars.  They suggested I not try to eat it raw since it was slightly bitter.



Maybe so--I tasted--but what some people call bitter, I call flavor.  In any event, I washed and simmered it with a small bunch of turnip greens and it was heavenly good.



Last comes farro. It's a grain in the wheat family. Soaked overnight and cooked, it has this kind of two-lobed shape like Kellog's sugar smacks.  It's slightly lower calorie than brown rice or quinoa.  And it's delicious with a scoop of searing hot posole on top.  Next time I'll try it with butter and honey and see if it can beat out oatmeal on a level playing field. 
Game on.

Learning my age

The Mariah Delaney Lending Library Disaster
by Shelia Greenwald

Cute little book, dated but endearing.  It took me back to my days of listing books on paper; treasuring my moments in the library; loving to number and track and scheme to make money by lending it out at exorbitant interest rates.

The plot's awfully contrived but I don't think the young reader would mind. I'm not sure if they'd get it like I did.  But I need to quit reading kid's books--with a very few exceptions, I've outgrown them.

Going clear mad and no stomach for it

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
by Lawrence Wright

I slugged through almost half of this and just couldn't take it anymore.  I don't fault the research or the writing, but I couldn't stomach the subject matter.  It reads like a horror story--a madman makes up an ridiculous (but detailed) cosmology, founds a religion based on it, and stupid people believe him.  This stuff makes Christianity look benign.

My struggles started in the part one of three, that described L Ron Hubbard's life up through the early years of the church.  At that point it was beginning to target specific celebrities in Hollywood, hoping to recruit them as prominent spokesmen.  And share their wealth, of course. 

He was a total lunatic. How was he not committed to a psychiatric hospital? He jumped from one interest or adventure or love affair to the next, with no pattern or logic or even the tiniest bit of humanity that I could discern. I could almost view him as a psychopath who drew other loony, sadistic or masochistic individuals to himself, and along the way, attracted a sad number of the emotionally disturbed.  Teenagers trying to find their place in the world; losers who could never get ahead; and of course, that sorry prey for every "charismatic" religion in the world--
 
People who never learned to think critically.

By the time the church's founder died and it was facing hard knocks in Hollywood I couldn't sustain even a prurient interest.  Sorry.

Abandoned.

Irritating but lovely

The Same Sky
by Amanda Eyre Ward

It agonizes me to say anything bad about such beautiful and important stories, so let me get it over with.  If the alternating chapter/character method of telling two person's stories at the same time irritates you as much as it does me, I'd suggest this: Just read every other chapter and then go back and read the missed ones.  I don't mean this to be a spoiler but I don't want you to go along like I did, hoping for something that will never happen.  My anticipation ruined the book for me.

The stories are beautiful because they're so real, so hopeful in a world of hopelessness.  They star a group of people that you frequently want to hug.  I want them in my dining room, sharing a bowl of posole and a steaming hot cup of chocolate.  I applaud an author who can make characters come alive so well and tell stories that we need to hear. 

Suffering...and redemption?

Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese





Did I have the wrong idea about this!  I thought it was something about a man's travels through the Middle East to discover his father. There's a man and a father in here, and discovery, but beyond that I was dead wrong.

It begins with two nuns trained in nursing traveling to a mission somewhere in Africa. On the ship there is also a surgeon traveling to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.  Typhoid erupts among the ship's crew; there are no modern medical supplies on board; and the surgeon is so dehydrated from seasickness that he's unconscious when the nuns seek him out to get help. 

And from that perilous beginning we journey on though the lives of one of the nuns, the surgeon, two doctors, the head nun at the hospital, and two twin boys, identical in form but very different in certain mysterious ways.  If you think I've said too much, I'm sorry, but you could have gotten all this from the book cover.  Which contains spoilers, IMHO--don't read it.

 I don't know how a person comes to write such an amazing book.  If I tried to do so, it would be to have an opportunity to put parables of wisdom into the mouths of simple folk, and tell them as innocently as Ghosh told the story of Abu Kassem's slippers.  Worth the reading just for that story. But be prepared to suffer as these people suffered, and rejoice in their strength to endure and conquer their own pain in the service of others.

My fault (I hope) in not getting it

Gracefully Grayson
by Ami Polonsky

Short but heartfelt story of a young girl born into a boy's body.  I enjoyed it--what there was of it--but I wish she'd been a little more introspective.  You feel like she jumped from one impulsive decision to another, never looking forward and never looking back.  But wait--this is a pre-teen!  That's perfectly normal adolescent behavior.

But still, there wasn't much emotion in her.  It was all bottled up...or else a failure on the part of the author to empathize with her imaginary creation.  I don't know.  I wonder what other people thought?

Anyway, that's all I can say without stealing someone else's ideas.

Savor, don't soundbite this one

The Old Iron Road

An Epic of Rails, Roads, and the Urge to Go West 

by David Haward Bain

History lesson--travel essay--family journey.  All here--everything I enjoy most in a whopping big volume.

And I did enjoy the heck out of it, even though I found it slightly hard to keep reading.  I don't know why, but that probably has something to do with me rather than the writing.  It's the kind of book you want to pick up on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you're got your whole life in front of you to savor it.  But before you do, get a really good book of maps and keep it handy.  Not a phone, either. You need great big maps with rivers that have names.  Google maps on a computer might be okay.

It's mostly about the author and his family's trip to follow the path of the first cross-country railroad, but it includes some fascinating stories of the California and Oregon pioneers, too.  Lot of detail and plenty of anecdote.  Bravo,