Hungry Planet: What the World Eats
I didn’t come upon this wonderful book in the usual way, which is to say drooling over it in a bookstore or browsing on Amazon. Instead, my sister sent me a forwarded e-mail with the subject line reading something like “Count Your Blessings.” Now I don’t typically open these types of e-mails, but my sister doesn’t typically send them, so I proceeded, curious to see what had piqued her interest enough to pass it along to me.
What followed was a series of maybe 6 photographs, each featuring a family surrounded by a week’s worth of food. That is, the food that family would consume in a typical week. Among those featured were a German family, an American family, an Italian family, and a family from Darfur. The variety, diversity, and quantity of food displayed was eye-opening, to say the very least.
With a little bit of back-tracking through the forward list and some research online, I found the source of those captivating pictures: Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio’s incredible book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. As the back cover says, the book covers “30 Families. 24 Countries. 600 Meals. 1 Extraordinary Book.” And it truly is extraordinary—the gorgeous pictures and engaging text take us to dinner tables from Bhutan to Cuba to Egypt to Poland and to the United Kingdom, and many stops in between. “Family Recipes,” “Field Notes,” and country profiles are provided for each country.
To me, there is just something so appealing about seeing what other people are eating (another reason I love grocery shopping). Here, folks from a broad assortment of cultural and ethnic backgrounds are photographed with their daily bread (and every other imaginable comestible, from musk ox to muskmelon) arrayed in rainbow-like profusion around them — absolutely compelling. Peppered throughout the text are word and photo essays (the “Street Food” photo assemblage features pictures of colorful bags of cotton candy directly above a shot of trays laden with silkworm pupae and seahorses-on-sticks).
The recipes themselves are local food favorites, provided by family members; many have details that are unique and sometimes poignant: “Ermelinda Ayme Sichigalo’s Locro de Papas” recipe, from Ecuador, calls for “Lamb, 1 bite-size piece per person (if available).”
This is one “recipe book” that really belongs on the coffee table; it’s that beautiful.
Image from Just Hungry.
