Thursday, August the 11th, 2005
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Many years ago, I decided to experiment by living on a subsistence diet of gruel for a while. (I do hope my readers understand that this is a true story.) I think I was pandering to my ascetic, puritanical streak. For the duration of the exercise, I eschewed all other foodstuffs, even to the point where I was tempted neither by pap nor by slops. Around the same time I read somewhere that krill was the Food of the Future. This appealed to me hugely, but gruel seemed easier to come by than krill.
This is by way of introduction to my recent discovery of another alleged Food of the Future, in the form of poi, a thoroughly exciting dish from Hawaii. Poi is made from the taro plant, which is apparently the fourteenth most cultivated crop on earth. The root or corm of the taro is cooked for hours and hours and then pounded into a sticky goo that has the consistency of library paste, which makes it especially appealing to those of us who are bookish. One of the other great things about poi is that you can dispense with cutlery, as it is shovelled daintily into the mouth using your bare hands.
So if you are on the lookout for a sour paste to serve as your staple diet, poi seems to be the thing. Maybe after eating a delicious bowl of the goo, you may wish to engage in fire dancing, fire twirling, fire spinning, or fire swinging, for all of which you can use fire poi. If you wish to know more, I suggest that you join an online fire twirler community.
Food and fire… who ever said Hooting Yard was not a repository of essential information for a fulfilling life?
Hooting Yard on the Air, September the 7th, 2005 : “Horse Begone” (starts around 28:58)
Hooting Yard on the Air, April the 11th, 2007 : “Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From the Stars, Chapter Thirteen” (starts around 15:43)