Today the topic is WAY serious.
It’s about traumatized childhoods, inappropriate giggles, and smells that are so offensive they make you want to kill the offender.
FARTS.
Particularly, the really bad, ranky, putrid, crawl up your nose and pull your eyeballs inward death defying type.
Whenever I think about this, I think about this man.
He’s my father. Looking like he did when I was about 9 years old. He was/is so handsome, but boy could he let one rip. Geez.
He looks all mean and scary in this picture. But really he was the biggest, softest, most lovable dad ever. Except for when he got the poots.
Then you’d want to run for the hills, or else you’d make like Jack and splat all over the floor from the noxious fumes. Which he thought was HILL-ARE-REE-US. In the big brother vain of thinking, he’d follow us into a room, let her rip, leave and lock the door behind him and set off to giggling.
Not very funny Daddy. He’s somewhere in the world snickering about this as we speak.
And so this brings me to 2011. An age in which I have my own kids. Kids that I would like to shelter from the evil perils that roam this earth. I’d like them to have a better life than I had. One in which they can run, play, and go to college, without the worry that somebody’s bung blast might be used as arsenal retaliation.
A silly mother’s wish?
Cookbook authors Wayne Chen and Gary Goss say NO. I can have my cake, and no farts too. Or less smelly ones anyway.
They’ve written the Fart without Fear Cookbook: Comfort Food for Uncomfortable Times, and their aim is to help YOU and ME and MY DAD cook all our favorite comfort foods without all the harsh pooting after effects. And if we must poot, then they’ll show us how to manipulate the recipe to make less offensive air biscuits.
Each recipe is given a rating based on an Odor index. One rating based on cooking using traditional ingredients, and another rating based on the authors modified less odoriferous version.
The book is very funny, with great tips to tame the beast within. The cookbook is full of a variety of comfort food recipes including brownies, cakes, cookies, Shepherd’s pie, Lasagna, Boston Baked Beans, Potato Skins w/ Cheese and Bacon, Wontons, all sorts of sandwiches and much more.
However, the book didn’t contain an index, which I find essential. Nor did it have any lovely pictures to accompany the recipes, which is something that I really enjoy in a cookbook. But then again farting is very serious business. Maybe there wasn’t anytime for taking pictures.
Bottom Line: If you toot when you have fruit, or make a bomb when you eat a Wonton, and your spouse is after the kill when your belly gets its fill, then I think you may want to check this book out. It has great scientific insights, home remedies, and helpful hints to help your rup raps be a little more bearable.
Retail Price: $16.95
Cost to Me: Free
