Offbeat Food: Adventures in an Omnivorous World (Offbeat S) - Softcover

Alan Ridenour is a veteran freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Weekly, New Times, and numerous other publications. He is the head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Cacophony Society. A transplanted midwesterner, he makes his home in the Los Angeles area.

"If you're wild about food, and we are, you'll love this culinary adventure. Alan Ridenour takes us through history and around the world learning delicious tidbits that surprise and tantalize." -- MarySue Milliken and Susan Feniger, Chefs, Restaurateurs, Cookbook Authors, TV and Radio Personalities

"Offbeat Food contains hundreds of interesting, amusing (and, at times, unsettling) factoids about all things edible..." -- Foreword magazine

"Offbeat Food is a fun, informative, and very personal tribute to the history, comfort, and love we relate to food. -- Piero Selvaggio, Chef and Owner of Valentino, Los Angeles

"Reverend Al, who has honored my hometown with rampaging woodland creatures, murderous clowns, human barbecues, and Charles Mansons sculpted out of Swiss cheese has done it again." -- Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic, Gourmet Magazine

"The author serves up an intriguing assortment of foods that are little known or rarely consumed in America as well as familiar ones whose origins have long been forgotten." -- Michael Owen Jones, Chairman Folklore and Mythology Program, UCLA

"an extraordinary culinary journey through history and around the world..." -- Santa Fe New Mexican

...a lively introduction to food curiosities at home and abroad, much of it supported by scholarship in food history -- Gastronomica