Reads for the curious elementary schooler and the partying college student:
Can I Eat That?
By Joshua David Stein, Illustrated by Julia Rothman
In this food-obsessed world, it is no wonder that a children’s book about eating soars above peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (though there is mention of chicken tenders). Author Joshua David Stein guides kids through dishes spanning from Japan (uni donburi) to the pickle store in the clever and informative Can I Eat That?
While telling readers that no, you cannot eat a tornado, Stein instead approves the edibility of tonnato (a tuna-based sauce from Italy), tournedos (a French steak cut) and tostada (a pizza-like fried tortilla of Mexico).
Using wordplay—“Do eggs grow on eggplants?” and “If I eat jelly … and I eat fish … can I eat jellyfish?”—Stein gives young eaters permission to question their next meal and find joy in exploring the new.
101 Hangover Recipes: Beat the booze with these tasty recipes for morning-after munchies
Compiled by Dan Vaux-Nobes
There are such elaborate, multistep dishes in 101 Hangover Recipes that even a non-hungover person wouldn’t find the will to pause the next episode automatically loading of BoJack Horseman and head into the kitchen. Thai beef noodle soup with 20-plus ingredients? Roast beef with all the trimmings? Fish pie? (This is a book by a Brit, after all.)
What’s compiled here isn’t so much what you’d want to cook when hungover but rather what you’d be happy to see in front of you, no work involved. (Also, ignore the all-caps headnotes riddled with bro-y sentiments and hangover cliches.) Instead of sorting recipes into chapters by type—Carb Loading, Breakfast, Hunger Busters—it could better serve hungover readers by rating the difficulty level of each dish.
Can you only slice and assemble? Make avocado toast or Nutella and bananas on brioche. Feel like cleansing before hitting the gym? Bring out the blender for Green Day, a brassica-fueled smoothie (because that family of broccoli, kale and cabbages contains glutathione, an enzyme known for eliminating heavy metals from the body). Feel like returning to the haze that brought you here? Find a number of boozy cocktails beyond the bloody mary or really up the stakes with hash brownies.
