Absolutely Fobulous

If you’ve eaten at McDonald’s outside the US, you’ll know that the American chain can be pretty creative with localizing its menu. This month, McDonald’s announced perhaps its most impressive effort to make sure everyone can eat its burgers.  Starting in India, Mcdee’s will launch 100 percent vegetarian restaurants.

“The issue in India is, a vegetarian is a strict vegetarian,” said Rajesh Kumar Maini, head of communications for McDonald’s in India. “There have been instances that I’ve seen where a person who’s vegetarian would not even sit with a person who’s eating non-vegetarian food.”

And so the restaurant is taking the strictest of vegetarians head on.  Apparently, the prime locations for Mickey D’s veggie venture are religious sites.  For example, the chain plans to open at Vaishno Devi, a famous Hindu cave shrine that attracts millions of pilgrims each year.  Nothing like digging into a juicy McAloo Tikki burger after a day of prayer.

In all seriousness, while I realize it’s all in the fast food chain’s plan to dominate every corner of the world, I gotta give the corporate giant credit for its creativity and market research…even if it means my favorite Aloo Tikki (spicy fried potato) has been transformed into a McDonald’s burger.

Link

I just finished Ruth Ozeki’s mind-blowing novel, My Year of Meat, and want to highly recommend it to all you bookworms out there!  New and used copies of it found here at Amazon.com here and Barnes & Noble.com. (Note: it was first published in 1988 with the slightly different title, My Year of Meats).  It’s would be a great Christmas gift, perfect for after you’ve gorged yourself on plates of Christmas dinner roast beef and prime rib.

I know, I know.  You’re probably like, “Oh no, this one of those crazy pro-vegan books, right?”  Far from it.  But I will admit that, as someone who is infamous for eating steak for breakfast (medium rare, please, and on the rare side!), it rocked my meat-loving world.  I still can’t bring myself to eat beef again… yet.

It’s about Jane Takagi-Little, an aspiring documentary-maker, who produces a Japanese TV show about “the wholesomeness and deliciousness” of American beef, which unknowingly connects her with Akiko Ueno, a Japanese housewife who lives on the other side of the world, diligently cooking each “Meat of the Week” for her demanding salaryman husband.

Complex, funny, eye-opening, and heart-wrenching, the story effortlessly interweaves issues on American culture, Japanese women, health, and, of course, what goes into my beloved medium-rare sirloin steak.

The book is even in eleven languages and published in fourteen countries. It won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Award, the Imus/Barnes and Noble American Book Award, and a Special Jury Prize of the World Cookbook Awards in Versailles.  Seriously, read it!

Learn more about author Ruth Ozeki on her website here.