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Practically
Useless Information
Food & Drink
By Norman Kolpas
(Rutledge Hill Press, 2005)
Did
you know that June 8 is National Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day?
Or what a “shingle with a shimmy and a shake”
is? Or how to make a Cincinnati “five-way”?
It’s all here in Practically
Useless Information: Food & Drink,
a trivia book by food writer and cookbook author Norman
Kolpas. Kolpas, who wrote the book for people who “go
for the sidebars first,” has filled this small hardback
with the kinds of random culinary and potable material you
would find in cookbook or magazine sidebars. Facts range
from wacky, such as how to slice a banana without removing
the peel, to practical, like the cooking temperature of
various meats.
For
food lovers and trivia buffs, this book makes for an interesting
addition to a cookbook shelf. Although many will never use
the information in the book (except for maybe a Trivial
Pursuit game), the random facts are interesting enough to
keep you preoccupied for a while. “The contents are
entirely arbitrary, dictated solely by the kind of oddball
stuff that fascinates me and is likely to draw my attention...
It’s the sort of useless information that so many
people really can’t live without,” Kolpas said
of his book. He
has also written another book for the “Practically
Useless Information” series called Weddings,
which features quirky facts about marriage customs and ceremonies.
Reviewed
by Nancy Huang
(Updated: 12/18/08 SB)
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