Eyeball Tacos and Kangaroo Stew : Life-Changing Meals in Far-Flung Places

Travel writer and incorrigible foodie Anna Kaminski indulges her obsession with food in some of the most unlikely places imaginable, exploring the timeless power of sharing a meal with strangers to create connection, from spam and cassava with the crocodile-skinned men of Papua New Guinea to burgers with death row inmates in San Quentin prison.

"Listening to the gentle lapping of the river, I ponder the strange fate that brought me, a Soviet kid from a small Russian town, right here, to this very table in the middle of the Surinamese jungle on this particular night." From early childhood spend in an akademgorodok (purpose-built academic community) in the USSR, Kaminski has been obsessed with food. Fuelled by ancestral wanderlust, as an adult she put her obsession to good use, contributing to several dozen Lonely Planet and Rough Guides guidebooks and traversing six continents in search of sustenance and something even less tangible. Part-memoir, part-travelogue, "Eyeball Tacos & Kangeroo Stew" explores a life less ordinary through the prism of memorable meals, from sharing burgers with death row inmates in San Quentin Prison to feasting on spam and cassava with the crocodile-skinned men of Papua New Guinea''s Middle Sepik, and being adopted by an Aboriginal family in the Outback over a pot of kangaroo stew. Through breaking bread with strangers and travel to the further corners of the former Soviet Union and beyond, the author discovers that her roots stretch further than she''d ever imagined and that kinship can be found in the strangest of places.