Steingarten, Jeffery. It Must’ve Been Something I Ate: the Return of the Man Who Ate Everything. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
Reason read: October is the month the vegetarians celebrate their kind…or something like that. I also needed a book with a six (or more) word title for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge.
Confessional: my view of Mr. Steingarten has been colored by other reviews calling him pompous and “casually offensive”. Indeed, here are a few examples: even if said in jest, he wants to take credit for getting people to eat out of their comfort zones. He has a strong humble brag going on about the time he had a half pound bag of Oshima Island Blue Label Salt on his kitchen counter. The comments made me pay attention to every time he said something disparaging about women or demonstrated mock insecurity. In truth, it got a little annoying to be so hypersensitive to ego remarks like, “Where were you when you tasted the most delectable and expensive fish in the world? Me, I was in L.A.” (p 13). Good for you, Steingarten. There have been a lot of what I call, “Have you…? I have!” statements.
But all of this is not to say Steingarten was not informative. I learned that cheese is not the source of your lactose intolerance and the monosodium glutamate will not give you a headache.
I have never been a fan of one collecting all his or her previously published essays to bring them out as a “new” book. It’s just recycled words. To continue to pick on It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, I don’t know how you can index Parmesan cheese a dozen times and not once put Italy in the index. Not even Parma makes a mention. Steingarten mostly focuses on French cuisine and French influences. He completely ignores Spain, Germany, and Italy (even though he has whole chapters on Neapolitan pizza and Parmesan cheese).
As an aside, I did agree with one statement, “Pizza is perfect food” (p 367).
Author fact: from everything I can tell, Steingarten is still a food editor at Vogue Magazine. Does anyone else flash back to Carrie from Sex and the City and her dealings with the editor from Vogue?
Book trivia: It Must’ve Been Something I Ate is not new material. It is a compilation of essays already regurgitated published elsewhere. I said that already.
Playlist: Cole Porter, Vivaldi, and Beatles’ “Revolution 9”.
Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything about It Must’ve Been Something I Ate but she called his column wide-ranging and entertaining. So…same thing, I guess.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Food For Thought” (p 91). Interestingly enough, the proper title is It Must’ve Been Something I Ate although it is indexed as It Must Have Been Something I Ate”. No shortcuts for Pearl!
~*LunaSea*~ 