A Vegetarian’s Culinary Adventures

DoZ enjoys reading Bill Buford’s culinary adventures in ‘Heat’ –

Despite his seriousness about the business of food, Buford is laugh out loud funny. He has a wonderful knack for self-deprecatory humor, and even though you’re supposed to feel sorry for him, or cringe, you can’t help laughing at how he ate hundreds of cubes of carrots (not all come out as perfect cubes), or how he burnt his fingers by throwing in ribs into some very hot oil (it didn’t occur to him to use a pair of tongs), or how he was made to walk around the kitchen holding a fish in a pair of tongs (because he’d failed to get fish off the grill).

- but regrets that, being a vegetarian, he couldn’t fully appreciate the reverence with which Buford treats meat.