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<center>**TL:DR: This awesome book is a trip around the world looking through a foodie lens.  Do yourself a favor and read it!**</center>

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My journey into the world of literacy started in a kitchen, many long years ago. There, in my Papa's arms, he carried me around the room, pointing to the seventies-fabulous wallpaper adorning the walls and drilled toddler me repeatedly. 

*"Teapot" "Flower" "Orange"* (Grandma's wallpaper had words you see).

And as reading and food are two of my most favorite things ever, it seems fitting that I learned to read in a place where food was made. Why am I rambling about this whole learning to read in a kitchen thing you might be wondering, well, because today's book review topic combines some of the things I love best, food, reading, and adventure!

*Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer's Guide* by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras is a book like no other. It's an atlas of our love affair with creating things to eat. I'm pretty sure it is one of my favorite books ever, and here's why.

One: It's written like a travel field guide. The book is divided by continent, starting with Europe and ending with Antarctica. By the time you are done reading the guide, you feel as if you have completed a food-themed grand tour of the epicurean human world. You come out the other side of the tome's 439 pages feeling as though you have taken a journey that has stretched the boundaries of what you thought you knew about food. Or at the very least you are probably hungry.


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Usually, I devour books. For many years I read one to two books a day. They taught me to read with a stopwatch in first grade, so I read *fast*. This book however, is like a fine cheese or wine, after cracking the pages open and wading in, I decided I wanted to savor the *Guide* like a fine comestible, and that's exactly what I did.

Over the course of the past two weeks, I sat next to my woodstove every morning, silky cup of coffee in my hand, and poured over the pages like the information vampire that I am. As I devoured the pages, day after day, five categories emerged for me.

Things I want to do. Things I want to see. Things I learned. Things I've tried. Things I'll pass on.

For instance, after having been tricked into eating bull testicles by my ornery uncle when I was six years old, I am most definitely not interested in trying lime cured testicles, which are a thing in Guatemala (pg. 361). Hard pass.

Then again, I would gladly give a bovine teste for chunk of spit roasted cake (pg. 51, Lithuania) or a slice of wild desert melon (pg. 207, Namibia). My mouth drools slightly when I think about trying out a bread loaf stuffed with curry (lucky South Africans, pg. 207!). And I am absolutely dying to know if an ice cream bean really does taste like ice cream! (pg. 401, Peru).

Then there were all the things I learned. There was the time the Soviet Union paid Pepsi in warships (pg. 48), the sad tale of The Coconut Cult (pg. 223), and the face-cringing tale of The Sourtoe Cocktail from the Yukon (pg. 252). FYI: You will make lots of fun faces as you read the *Gastro Obscura*.

One of the most enjoyable parts of my journey through the *Gastro Obscura* was coming across food entries that I had tried or experienced. My childhood in the wilds of Alaska really paid off in the seafood experience department because I have snacked on the glorious ruby red flesh of Sockeye salmon (pg. 284), seen a geoduck up close (dissected one for fifth grade science class) (pg. 274), and have eaten A LOT of sea cucumber (My uncle is a fisherman and dives for them in the winter, pg. 277). 

The obscure seafood delights weren't my only experiences though, I'm well-versed in Plate Lunches, (pg. 279, Hawaii) as my husband lamented about a lack of them in his life soon after we were married (He's Hawaiian). And one of my all time favorite experiences, Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa, Arizona, was mentioned in the book as well.


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And that brings me to things I want to see. Good travel books should inspire you to want to see things, to explore culture and geography that is unlike your own. There you'll find elements of commonality which reaffirms your shared humanity along with taking in new experiences that stretch you beyond your habitual, patterned norms.

The *Gastro Obscura* excelled at this part! I'm dying to see The Ancient Persian Ice Houses (pg. 85, Iran) and The Last Wild Apple Forests (pg. 108, Kazakhstan). Closer to home, The Richmond Night Market (the largest Asian market in North America) is just across the border in neighboring Canada. I adore Asian food, almost as much as I adore the spirit of diaspora humans. Throughout the book there are tales of folks who took a part of their culture with them no matter where they went or what they endured. The Japanese in Brazil, The Indonesians in the Netherlands, the Basques in Idaho, and so on. It was fascinating to come upon entry after entry that showed how one group made something, got uprooted, then combined it with what was available where they were at, and made something that fused the new and old. 

Perhaps that's why I get so excited about food, and why I loved the *Gastro Obscura* so much. Our need to eat will exist as long as we do, and our ability to innovate and craft things to eat will go on and on. Which of course means that the *Gastro Obscura* is not a sole dish, rather part of a buffet that keeps on giving. If you love to eat and you love to explore, I am beyond sure that you will love this book!



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<center>*And as most of the time, the pictures in this post were taken on the author's probably not as hungry as she is after writing about all that food, iPhone.*</center> 

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