“Food nourishes us not only physically, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually too.” That is an understatement when you have read A Moveable Feast. A Life-Changing Food Adventures Around The World.
The book, edited by Don George, is a Lonely Planet Book that illuminates the finest travel memories of chefs, food critics, poets and travel writers, 38 in all. It is our June reading for The Kitchen Reader, an online food book club that I joined almost a year ago. I cross over the book for Foodies Read 2014, also another online food book club.
Pico Iyer, a writer and lecturer educated at Eton, Oxford and Harvard, came to realize that after 17 years of roaming the globe, it was the only food I couldn’t see that really sustained me and only inner nutrition that made me happy, deep down. This realization is expressed through a number of food experience from quiche to Paris’s MacDonald’s, and rice and bean chips with adzuki beans to sweet-hot ginger candies, in his article “The Daily Bread.”
Culinary anthropologist Naomi Duguid, in “The Ways of Tea,” is very grateful to a Sherpa Family who offered her a bowl of milky buttery tea is Solu Khumbu at the Everest Mountains. Her tea saga continues with a Japanese-Nepali expedition where a young Japanese climber held a tea ceremony, an expression of friendship in freezing temperature.

The book's front and back covers listed names such as Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern, Mark Kurlansky, Matt Preston, Simon Winchester, Stefan Gates, David Lebowitz, Matthew Fort, Tim Cahill, Jan Morris and Pico Iyer.
Don George, the editor, explains that some of the 38 writers are best selling authors and some have never published before. Don is delighted that through their idiosyncratic perspectives, and voices they prove that food offers “a plethora of life-enriching gifts on the road.”
Andrew McCarthy, a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, has the simplest title among the 38 articles, “The Best Meal I Ever Had.” He begins with his account of an red-light district in Thailand, one that I would never expect in a food article. It ends with his story on how hungry he was only to enter a forlorn eatery past its opening hours. As simple as its title, Andrew finally was offered a fish soup, the best meal he ever had.

I rejoiced in finally finding at least one article about food travel experience in Indonesia by John T. Newman, the author of Scuba Diving and Snorkeling for Dummies. In “Long Live The King” Newman recalls his travel to Indonesia, tasting the queen of fruits: the mangosteen, and seeking for the king of fruits. Turns out, durian is the king of fruits. I finished reading the article with big disappointment as Newman grossly, recounts the smell of durian (putrescent corpses boiled in fetid effluvium and strained through the filthy sweat socks of 40,000 sufferers of terminal trench foot) and ends the article with how his friends grimaced and vomited after eating durian, a delight for many in the county.
As fascinated as I am by the penmanship of all the 38 authors, the editor of Moveable Feast, Don George, is my favorite. I met him at the 2013 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali. Attending an event called A Traveler's Lunch with Legends . I had a nice conversation with Don about his activities that span 50 years. His website Don George- Pilgrimages – Encounters – Illuminations is a traveler’s delight with information on 10 travel books that he wrote or edited and a number of free travel tips articles in mainstream media.

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Images: Don George; Shutterstock Images: Cover- Luiz Rocha, Durian - alphonsusjimos, Himalaya- v.apl.