Go everywhere, eat everything. 30 countries. 12 months. Loads and loads of food. Everyone I told about the book went – WOW! Wish I could do it. Since most of us possibly won’t do it, the next best thing is to read the book. Eat my Globe by Simon Majumdar – the son of a Bengali father and Welsh mother who’s grown up on thin lentil soup (he calls it LSD- Life Saving Dahl) and black pudding (blood, barley, spices and back fat in beef intestine) and everything in between. And he’s grown up to love it to the extent most don’t, or perhaps don’t realize, or aren’t good enough to articulate. Its incredible the way he leaves his well-paying desk job with a publisher in London and crisscrosses the globe with Big Red- his backpack that’s big and red. Talk about original.
He blogs about his project and ppl the world over open their homes to him, to show their local cuisine and culture. In this day and age, an immensely generous gesture. Places where he doesn’t find a family or friend, he sits alone in restaurants and eavesdrops! By his own admission – “I love eavesdropping. It’s a family tradition.”
And he obviously loves food. The Great Majumdar, for whom many animals have died, samples everything from braised dog and stir fried rat in Yangshou to fermented mare’s milk in Mongolia and roasted crickets in Malaysia. If you aren’t hardcore, you might get bored with the detailed description of how these meals were prepared. But the guy is funny and the idea so grand, you want it lap it all up. Even the crazy bits that make you go arrghhh!
China: ‘I expected squat toilets. I even expected a smell like hell’s anus. What I did not expect was half a dozen holes in the ground straddled by Chinese men grimacing and groaning as they worked hard to extrude their daily bread in open view. It got worse, a lot worse. Some of the men thought that this was the perfect opportunity to have supper at the same time and were eating bowls full of noodles’
Aaaarrrrrrrghhhhh!
Its a good book. Must also check Majumdar’s blog Dos Hermanos that he writes with his brother TGS – The Great Salami aka Robin. Will talk about him some other time. Happy reading!
