Odyssey Magazine Issue 4, 2015 | Page 70

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.