by Sasha Martin
I was just plain bowled over. From page one she had me. This book had been described as "one woman's quest to cook around the world," but there's a whole lot before that. You could almost call the cooking part an anticlimax--I think the book really set out to explain why she felt the need to cook a meal from every country in the world. And it did explain it, admirably. She had one of the most screwed up weirdo childhoods you'll ever encounter, barring actual abuse. Abuse wasn't the problem--it was stupidity!
I'll let you read for yourself why she started the cooking quest--no more spoilers. The only thing I might have liked was a little more detail about the blog she wrote and about her recipe selection. How did she choose a menu from a country like India or China, which have lots of regional cuisines that we Americans all lump into one? But it turns out her website is still out there and possibly the blog archives are, too...yep. globaltableadventure.com Maybe it will tell....I see that its organized by country, but that's the order she cooked in, so okay.
One of the most amusing parts of the cooking adventure was how she found the ingredients even though she lived in Tulsa, which ain't all that big and is not at all a big immigrant center. I live near a larger city with a lot more people and I'm still trying to locate black mustard seeds. Obviously you can order such things online, but she found local sources for foods you wouldn't imagine, and often, she even found the people who knew how to cook them. Call that part two of her adventure.
Despite all my talk of food, that's not the point of this book. It's not for 'foodies', but rather, for anyone who enjoys memoirs.
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