reviews
Braai & Potjie:
Flavours &
Traditions
Sophia Lindop
Jacana • 978 1 4314 2201 2
This is a lovely-little coffee-tablemeets-cookbook handbook on all
things braai and potjie related. It
is filled with lovely pictures of the
dishes to be made with instructions,
recipes and general guidelines on
how to get the best out of this style
of South African cooking. And even
if you are not going to adventure
into a different style of potjie at your
next opportunity, it still makes for an
entertaining and informative read.
South Africa:
Flavours &
Traditions
Sophia Lindop
Jacana • 978 1 4314 2199 2
Along with he similarly designed
Braai & Potjie book, this little
handbook is delightful in its imagery,
layout and rich information – and
that's all in addition to the classic
dishes which are presented in their
historical, cultural and regional
context. Everything you've always
wanted to know, from koeksisters
ODYSSEY 70
•
DIGIMAG
to waterblommetjie soup, recipes
and all.
Sugar Free: 8
Weeks to Freedom
from Sugar & Carb
Addiction
Karen Thomson & Kerry
Hammerton
With dietician Tamzyn
Campbell
Sunbird • 978 1 9202 8982 9
This one is for the sugar addicts
among us. Just in case you don't
know, that includes well over 80%
of people, perhaps even 90%. It
was said by a leading American
dietician and nutritionist in the 1980s
that if sugar had been 'invented'
or 'discovered' any time from the
1960s onwards, it would have been
classed as a 'drug' and treated as
such, so powerful are its affects on
our metabolisms. It is the ubiquitous
sweet taste of sugar – or perhaps
some replacement – that has crept
into just about every aspect of
the prepared food and beverage
industries. In some fashion, we are
all victims to the pervasive use (and
almost inevitable abuse) of sugar.
Many of us grab quick snacks in
our hurried lives, not realising that
the much-processed carbohydrates
we are consuming are just slightly
longer sugar molecules which, even
before they reach our stomachs,
are already being snipped up by
our digestive enzymes into sugar
molecules which rush immediately
into our bloodstreams, thereby
giving us a 'little energy boost', but
also triggering a rollercoaster ride
for our hormonal system which must
then try to 'catch up' by releasing
insulin to make up for the influx of
far too much sugar all at one time.
This cycle repeats and repeats, with
many daily mini 'peaks and troughs'
in our blood-sugar levels, eventually
wreaking far greater damage across
nearly all our systems. Perhaps
the holidays are not a time to get
off sugar once and for all (and not
replace them with questionable
alternatives which may or may not
be safe for longer-term human use),
but when is a 'good' time for such a
thing. Read this book, understand
what sugar does to one's body and
then decide if it's time for you to
join the growing ranks of recovering
sugar addicts.