eat, pray, love

elizabeth gilbert (2006)

i'd heard a lot of buzz surrounding this book. i love books about food (check) and travel (check) so i knew i'd like this one. it is a #1 NY times bestseller afterall. while i don't normally read things that are very recent and have been wanting to read a lot of classics on my list, this one fell into my hands. once i started, it was practically over.

many of the issues in this book i cannot relate to: marriage, divorce, life at 35, and meditation. this is not to say i've never meditated or wanted to, i've just never been successful at it. after reading this book i realized i've never worked at it. so the story, liz is a writer. this is a non-fiction/memoir/travel book. she was married and at 30 was supposed to want children, but she did not. she had a breakdown, got divorced, got a lover, ruined that and so became depressed. really depressed. eventually she decides she needs to take this journey. a yearlong journey to find herself in three different places: italy (eating and pleasure), india (prayer, meditation and devotion), and bali (looks to find balance but finds love!).

i was immediately in love with the way she writes. i enjoy reading spiritual books and love learning about culture and religion. they are important to me even if i don't practice anything. right now i am too lazy/busy. that is my excuse and someday when i honestly and truly want to search within myself for deeper meaning or become one with myself/god/whatever, i will. for now - i'm busy.

i feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby - i just don't care what it puts me through. because i adore it. because it's mine.

travel is something that you experience. it changes you. you can go on vacation and you can be a tourist but to travel is something totally different. it is about getting to know locals, customs, ideas and non-stop learning. i want to travel, a lot.

this book was about travel as much as it was her personal life. she went through these travels talking about her relationships, troubles, sex, and love.

i disappear into the person i love. i am the permeable membrane. if i love you, you can have everything. you can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time - everything.

it is interesting to get into the head of a divorced 35 year old writer, falling in love, trying to decide whether or not to have sex with her new boyfriend.

yet the whole time, while falling in love and eating for pleasure, her spiritual quest was ever-present. she had gone to india to live and study at the ashram of her Guru. at first she spent days fighting herself (and relationship/life demons) while trying to meditate or pray.

there's a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. in the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time.

of course i'm not going to divulge the secrets of the books or the deep spiritual ideas, but it's there.

lastly she traveled to bali to learn from a balinese medicine man. he's a smallish brown yoda-like character who was very entertaining. while she kept practicing her indian yogic meditation, he offered up a different type of meditation.

why they always look so serious in yoga? you make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. to meditate, only you must smile. smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. even smile in your liver.

it is a great book that is worth all the attention and praise. it's written well (even though i don't really know what that means) and is funny. i think anyone can relate to her stories, even if you don't like food, travel, praying or love stories. it's about meeting people, relationships, enjoying life and figuring things out. these are things everyone deals with.

a cook's tour: in search of the perfect meal

anthony bourdain (2001)

okay so maybe i'm a little obsessed but the man writes some interesting things. he keeps me reading. after kitchen confidential i had to have more. trust me, there is still more to come!

this one is about finding the perfect meal...in the world! so two of my favorite things put together: food and travel. how can you go wrong? well you really cannot. he goes to the ends of the earth to find interesting meals and ones he'll remember forever. i tend to read a lot at night too when i'm really hungry, doesn't help the hunger. he wrote this while filming for a series on the food network so some of the places he visits and things he eats, he does it for television. and he's not too excited about it. take the bird's nest for example. after having one of the best seafood meals of his life in vietnam, they make him eat it:

bird's nest soup is made by hacking up a whole rock dove (pidgeon), putting the meat, bones and all, into a drained coconut, and then cooking it with the soaked nest, an assortment of Chinese medicinal herbs, dates, scallions, ginger, and the swallow's eggs. the coconut milk is poured back in and the whole thing is steamed for four hours. it's disgusting.

i just love reading about food, i can just taste the flavors. he has about thirty different stories and some are amazingly perfect meals while others are "for television". i guess he has to get the trip paid for somehow! he goes to cambodia to a "gun club" where he shoots .45s, AK-47s, M16 and whatever he wants really. there is a sign that says:

please don't point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot.

how awesome. it's part-travel adventure, part-food adventure. he goes to portugal to the family of his boss. they fatten a pig for him for months. then while he's there they kill it.

i learned, for the first time, that i could indeed look my food in the eyes before eating it - and i came away from the experience, i hope, with considerably more respect for what we call "the ingredient." i am more confirmed than ever in my love for pork, pork fat, and cured pork. and i am less likely to waste it.

the thing about people eating meat in many other countries is that they do not waste anything. they used everything. had the blood, every organ, head, snout, and even used the bladder (blown up) as a ball for the kids to kick around! there are a few instances where he describes eating those parts of an animal i would never consider food or have any desire in trying. i'm all for trying anything once but some of those things make me want to vomit. my favorite chapter is probably the one on tokyo, of course. japanese love their food. one of the craziest and best movies on food is tampopo, a movie about making ramen (among other things). so when tony goes to tokyo and basically just eats great food, i can just imagine. i don't even eat fish but reading this made me want to. i should appreciate my culture more. eating sushi and drinking sake for lunch. then going and eating yakitori with a bunch of sarari-man. then he goes to experience the ryokan. now i've had the good fortune of staying at one of these places and it is truly amazing.

no experience is more guaranteed to make you feel like a nine-hundred-pound ape than a kaiseki dinner for which you are inadequately briefed. i was very jittery.

especially for a tall (6'4") guy, japanese eating on the floor is uncomfortable if you are not used to it. now kaiseki are meals meant to reflect the region and season. it's a multi-course meal with many colors, textures, flavors and yet very simple. each dish is served in a different plate to accentuate flavor/idea of the dish. he had too many dishes to count and it all sounded so good i could taste and smell it.

you know you're having one of the meals of your life but are no longer intimidated by it. consciousness of time and expense go out the window...you become a happy passenger, completely submitting to whatever happens next, confident that somehow the whole universe is in particularly benevolent alignment, that nothing could possibly distract or detract from the wonderfulness of the moment.

wow! sounds so good to me. he also goes to mexico where all his cooks are from and eats everything and has a great time with his buddies in their element, with their families. but of course is forced to eat iguana, for the sake of television. yuck.

next to natto, it was maybe the worst thing i'd ever had between my teeth...the texture was like chewing on GI joe - if joe had been resting at the bottom of a long-neglected turtle tank.

he goes to california and visits vegans. he hates vegetarians and doesn't mind mentioning it often. but he went and had vegan food, bad vegan food. i totally understand his take on vegetarians now, especially since i have been one from time to time. i just love meat too much. but what he said about the extreme of veganism was even more true.

i'd recently returned from cambodia, where a chicken can be the difference between life and death...to look down on entire cultures that've based everything on the gathering of fish and rice seemed arrogant in the extreme...and the hypocrisy of it all pissed me off.

i've come to realize in the past couple months that even though i know i could be a vegetarian and not eat another piece of animal ever...i don't want to. i enjoy eating it. since i am privileged enough to be able to make that very decision, i will. i am very lucky to be born here and not have to fight for my next meal. i don't go to bed hungry every night (well i do but it's not because i don't have food but because i'm always hungry!!) and i don't have to kill my own pigs. while there are many exotic foods out there to be tasted, the perfect meal is a combination of things. smell, flavor, ambiance, experience, people, and taste. you could have the perfect meal here with friends and family or thousands of miles away with strangers who become friends over a couple beers (or vodka). when i travel it's to experience these things. i can't wait!