Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad

by Doris Friedensohn

Overview

What do we learn from eating? About ourselves? Others? In this unique memoir of a life shaped by the pleasures of the table, Doris Friedensohn uses eating as an occasion for inquiry. Munching on quesadillas and kimchi in her suburban New Jersey neighborhood, she reflects on her exploration of food over fifty years and across four continents. Relishing couscous in Tunisia and khachapuri in the Republic of Georgia, she explores the ways strangers come together and maintain their differences through food. As a young woman, Friedensohn was determined not to be a provincial American. Chinese, French, Mexican, and Mediterranean cuisines beckoned to her like mysterious suitors. She responded, pursuing suckling pig, snails, baba ghanoush, tripe, jellyfish, and anything with rosemary or cumin. Each rendezvous with an unfamiliar food was a celebration of cosmopolitan living. Friedensohn's memories range from Thanksgiving at a Middle Eastern restaurant to the taste of fried grasshoppers in Oaxaca. Her wry dramas of the dining room, restaurant, market, and kitchen ripple with tensions—political, religious, psychological, and spiritual. Eating as I Go is one woman's distinctive mélange of memoir, traveler's tale, and cultural commentary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813124025
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	07/21/2006
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Editorial Reviews

"It is a lovely memoir whether eating couscous in Tunisia or khachapuri in Republic of Georgia."—Connie Martison, Beverly Hills Courier

Beverly Hills Courier

A heady mix of cultural interactions and insights all linked with a fascination of and appreciation for food.

California Bookwatch

In an engaging series of memoir essays, Friedensohn (emeritus, women's studies/American studies, New Jersey City Univ.) shares with us her lifelong quest for new cultures, foods, and tastes. The cornucopia of the world's foods has excited and challenged her for the last 50 years. Her emphasis here is on ethnic foods, food markets, and entire neighborhoods where "American food" is foreign food. Today, many of us can travel to taste the world's foods without leaving town, but Friedensohn is not content to limit her essays to the United States; she also includes her food experiences in Tunisia, Austria, Mozambique, the Republic of Georgia, Nepal, and Mexico, to name just a few of the countries where she discovered the pleasures of strange foods and how they could bring people from different cultures together. Luckily, Friedensohn's sharp insights avoid academic pretension. Instead, her collection reveals the soul of an insightful and sympathetic woman, examining the relationship between culture and food. Recommended for American culture, travel, and food collections in large public and academic libraries.-Olga B. Wise, Austin, TX Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Both the travel writing devotee and the food memoir lover will relish [it].

Best of Bergen

In quiet tones, Friedensohn describes meals eaten and friendships formed over the years, both in the United States and abroad.... An enjoyable volume.

Weekly

Reads like a refreshing breeze redolent of delicious foods.

author of My Kitchen Wars Betty Fussell

In quiet tones, Friedensohn describes meals eaten and friendships formed over the years, both in the United States and abroad.... An enjoyable volume.

Publisher Weekly