Description:
If you lived, say, in Sarajevo or Beirut at a time when it was best advised to hurry through the streets bent over in such a way that you presented the smallest possible target, a pistol in one hand for protection, what would you eat? There you are, running through your day, not walking. There's no time to cook, and hardly any time at all to shop. And you only have one free hand. What are you going to eat? Diane Phillips shows the way with It's a Wrap. With more than 100 recipes, she shows us that it's possible to take just about anything your heart might desire, wrap it up in a neat, edible package, and call it food. One-handed food. So, okay. You don't live in Beirut, but since you've grown used to talking on the phone with one hand and driving with the other, that nagging question about what you're going to eat now that you've sworn off fast food fats and calories looms up ahead like a bottomless sinkhole on a rain-slick highway. And along comes Diane Phillips. Just wrap your heart's desire in tortillas, lavosh, or pita, phyllo, puff pastry, or pasta, crepes, wonton wrappers, seaweed, or leafy green vegetables--a.k.a. lettuce--the possibilities are all but endless. Prosciutto-wrapped Strawberries, for example. Or Chicken Caesar Pita. Or Chinese Chicken Salad wrapped in a tortilla. Or a Roast Beef and Stilton Wrap. Feel like breakfast, but on the go? How about an Omelette Wrap? Oh wait. That wouldn't work because you don't wrap the omelette in anything. The omelette is the wrap. Get it? The omelette isn't just an omelette anymore. It's a wrap, albeit not one you're likely to pick up with one hand. There is some good food between the covers of It's a Wrap. There's even a good idea at work here, because there are wonderful traditions for wrapping foods in cultures all over the world. This particular approach, however, is like skipping a stone across the water when the good stuff is truly beneath the surface. --Schuyler Ingle
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