Saturday, September 26, 2015

Power Hungry

I’m kind of obsessed with this book.  I can just look through this thing when I’m stressed or bored and think of all the power bars I could make, humming, rocking back and forth. I love to bake but I often break out in fat, it's quite alarming I assure you.  I wasn’t a huge power bar eater before this, but I am now. 

Discovering hemp hearts has turned me into a Woody Harleson-esque hemp advocate.  Hemp was recently illegal to grow in the U.S.  I suspect it’s because the plants look exactly like marijuana.  It’s like banning sugar cubes because they look like crack rocks. It would be interesting to see a Manhattan made with a crack rock.  I would call that a late 80’s Manhattan. But I digress.  Hemp hearts have no THC (well a tiniest fraction of a percent).  But I’m pretty sure buying a pound of weed is cheaper than a pound of hemp hearts. My favorite recipe in this book uses a cup on hemp hearts. I'm really glad a certain place called Jader Toes started carrying them, I ripped up my application for a second mortgage just in time.  

Camilla Saulsberry has a lot of cookbooks.  I’m like what’s going on over there?  She’s also a Mom and teaches Pilates or something of that ilk.  Yet there are about two hundred different power bars in this book when you count all the variations.  And then she’ll crank out a totally different cookbook, the next year.  One has 500 quinoa recipes. What kind of system is she working?  Does she have a secret team of people working on these things like Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time series?  I wonder if they will they continue to produce recipes after she dies.  Maybe she can contact George R.R. Martin on how to produce a new book every 18 months.  I think they should team up, Danerys and the Dragon Power Bars.  They could have a little cinnamon for the fire.  I could have a whole nerd joke based cookbook. Well, Tolkien started this idea with the Hobbits and their damn second breakfasts. 

Drinks: I drink my power bars with green tea but that's not very exciting.  I'm going to post a cookbooks review once in a while so this we can call the Hungry Narrator series. I'm not going to post a recipe like a food blog because that's tedious (and easy to screw up)--just get this book and make some.  Not all of them have hemp but you should try it--the first taste is free.      

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Beyond the Beautiful Forevers

Are you up to date on your Prozac, therapy and/or brownies? Because if you're not, don't even think about reading this book. Beyond the Beautiful Forevers is a non-fiction book about living in a Mumbai slum. More heroes die in this book than in a season of Game of Thrones.

Even before I read this book I sometimes wondered if a little Bangladeshi kid could survive on all the stuff I throw away. The water when I wash my garden stuff and all the food when I clean out the fridge.  I am trying to be more mindful of the food I waste but I still think a kid could live on what I toss.  He may not enjoy eating less than active yeast with a Worcestershire sauce chaser.

Beyond the Beautiful Forevers is written in a compelling narrative style.  It's less about explaining how and why these people are so poor but more about their own personal stories.  It's like a depressing Housewives of Beverly Hills.  Well, that's depressing too, actually. This is depressing in a different way. It's not a bad book but I think this would work better as a documentary. Even better would be a Werner Herzog documentary. We'd be sad, thrilled and scared in one weird emotion. Let us call that Herzoged.

If you interested in this kind of thing, I would recommend Peter Menzel's book Material World (you've probably seen it) where the families put out all of their possessions in front of their house.  It turns out people in poorer countries have a lot of bowls. I feel like Apple is developing an iBowl.  It holds, scoops, measures, stores and is both wireless and portable. (It's just a bowl with an Apple logo that costs $60).

Drinks: I picked this recipe up from a English language based Indian website which had metric measurements. I did the conversions for you... Green Leather: Muddle a slice of ginger and three sprigs of cilantro to release the juices. Then add 1.5 oz gin, 1/4 ounce of lime juice and 1/4 oz of simple syrup and fill the glass with crushed ice.  Add a dash of orange juice and Sprite (I say that is optional--I would use club soda).  Or read this with whiskey and brownies in hand...and keep 'em coming.