Adventures in Eating:
Anthropological Experiences in Dining From Around The World
edited by Helen Haines and Clare Sammells
GT2850 .A48 2010
New Book Island, 2nd floor
Food: one of the those universal necessities in order to live. Everyone has their own tastes and dietary restrictions, whether they want to have them or not. Some people take their food very seriously [like those people that take pictures of their meals], while others just grab what’s around them to get them through the day. However, if you’d traveled outside of the country, you know firsthand how different the restaurant and/or cooking experiences can be. This week’s featured title takes us on a culinary journey around the world.
Haines and Sammells, anthropology professors, have collected the stories of anthropologists that study the cuisine and eating habits of other societies. Covering everything from the main course to the dining customs to dessert, the social scientists recount their experiences in fourteen different countries. I think that my favorite chapter is the one about a vegetarian in Argentina – a very meat-centric culture. It reminded me of Spain and their ‘vegetarian’ dishes that still had chunks of beef in them. Overall, the book paints an excellent picture of the variations of each culture’s relationship with food and dining.
Well it’s “diversity” (tho the bottom billion dont have that problem, not enuf to eat in the first place…) FRANCE itself, when student there earlier, I ait horsemeat in Paris bistro, “it tasted like beef only in overdrive.” Plus the raw seafood platter in Biarritz, these ugly cold truberances glarring at you while outside the autumn equinox high tides surged, a maritime surfeit… Tho even more weird was the breakfast of the frugal traveller: instead of paying many francks (now yourohes) for only a meeger frugil coffee and a kroissant, he dined in hotel bedroom on caffeine pill and tinned tuna fish on bread (before surrendering to reason)…And bicycling in Canton CHINA, stop for lunch at off-the-tourist-trakk food stand, mimick the action of stir-frying with hands and they understood… And then meaty BRAZIL: yes the 37 types of meat served at paridillia [sp?] in Manaus city of 1 million in the heart of the Amazon jungill, one type labeled as “of Portuguese origin,” I didn’t Ask for fear they’d Tell… And in Cairo EGYPT, who can forget the hotel’s menu in “English”: I well remember “Beef Bopiett,” “N. Spaghetti,” “Concomi Soup,” “Vine Leave,” “Furit in Season” (I am not making this up, they did)… But perhaps the moar exotic from cross-cultural and anthropological perspective, was the putatively-hyper-ethnic instance of in the U.S.A., “a white male wearing green polyester pants and eating a velveeta cheese sandwitch on white Wonder Bread…” The exotic close to home; the quotidian diurnal mundane become exotic, via Distancing… TIP: legumes (Mexican refride beans, Indian chickpea or lentil curry), with rice, make a grrrrreat evening meal main course. –30– CHESTER