What do you think?
Rate this book
Great Grub from the Meerkat Café: A Safari Cooking Adventure in Your Own Burrow
Reading 85.3 Flesch-Kincaid grade 4.5
Meerkats and other animals, birds, and insects from southern Africa's Kalahari Desert star in this engagingly illustrated cooking safari for young people. Funny, "wildly" educational, and sometimes yucky facts about these creatures are accompanied by recipes such as Dung Beetle Pancakes (using either real dung beetles or breakfast sausages), Sun Spider Bundles (using either real sun spiders or tuna), and Spaghetti with Grasshopper Heads (using either real grasshoppers or peas). The author guides safaris in southern Africa, directs a meerkat wildlife center, and is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London.
Meerkats and other animals, birds, and insects from southern Africa's Kalahari Desert star in this engagingly illustrated cooking safari for young people. Funny, "wildly" educational, and sometimes yucky facts about these creatures are accompanied by recipes such as Dung Beetle Pancakes (using either real dung beetles or breakfast sausages), Sun Spider Bundles (using either real sun spiders or tuna), and Spaghetti with Grasshopper Heads (using either real grasshoppers or peas). The author guides safaris in southern Africa, directs a meerkat wildlife center, and is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London.
48 pages, Hardcover
Published March 30, 2020
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 18, 2021
When the daughter-in-law next door sends a message asking if you can take the two grandsons for a couple of hours and feed them lunch, it will be very helpful to have a copy of Great Grub from the Meerkat Café: a Safari Adventure in Your Own Burrow on hand. It solves the problem of what to do for entertainment and what to eat for lunch all at the same time.
This is not a book to be read from beginning to end but a cookbook with embellishments or a nonfiction book with flourishes. Each spread has a section of information about the meerkat or one of its neighbors, an African proverb, and a recipe from the Meerkat Café.
The boys and I picked a couple of recipes. The first, of course, was a sweet as we prepared the Mud Dauber Toffee Bars. Since we were not able to round up the 6 ounces of mud dauber wasps the recipe called for, we took the suggested substitution of 6 ounces of chocolate chips. While we waited for them to bake, we read the information on the page describing Meerkat mobs and Mud Dauber homes and families. Then we discussed the entry’s African proverb, “The better the sweet, the more wasps to eat.”
Our second recipe was Dung Beetle Pancakes. We substituted crumbled bacon for the 8 dung beetles called for in the original recipe since we don’t seem to have any of the beetles on our place. Our very entertaining information focused on the dung beetles’ diet of poop and their tendency to play with their food. The proverb brought a laugh, “Every Dung Beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother.”
I recommend this book for any caretaker who wants to enjoy entertaining boys, or even girls. I will leave one word of warning. The next time the mother asks if you can take the children for a while and feed them lunch, one of them may ask the same question I got. “Are we eating at the Meerkat Café?”
Maybe today we’ll do Centipedes in Blankets or Muffins with Red Velvet Ant Filling.
This is not a book to be read from beginning to end but a cookbook with embellishments or a nonfiction book with flourishes. Each spread has a section of information about the meerkat or one of its neighbors, an African proverb, and a recipe from the Meerkat Café.
The boys and I picked a couple of recipes. The first, of course, was a sweet as we prepared the Mud Dauber Toffee Bars. Since we were not able to round up the 6 ounces of mud dauber wasps the recipe called for, we took the suggested substitution of 6 ounces of chocolate chips. While we waited for them to bake, we read the information on the page describing Meerkat mobs and Mud Dauber homes and families. Then we discussed the entry’s African proverb, “The better the sweet, the more wasps to eat.”
Our second recipe was Dung Beetle Pancakes. We substituted crumbled bacon for the 8 dung beetles called for in the original recipe since we don’t seem to have any of the beetles on our place. Our very entertaining information focused on the dung beetles’ diet of poop and their tendency to play with their food. The proverb brought a laugh, “Every Dung Beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother.”
I recommend this book for any caretaker who wants to enjoy entertaining boys, or even girls. I will leave one word of warning. The next time the mother asks if you can take the children for a while and feed them lunch, one of them may ask the same question I got. “Are we eating at the Meerkat Café?”
Maybe today we’ll do Centipedes in Blankets or Muffins with Red Velvet Ant Filling.
October 2, 2020
Adorable illustrations of meerkat families and their friends accompany this very clever book of recipes-- but for your sake, you may want to use the alternative ingredients suitable for humans, rather than all of the insect delicacies that these little critters love. In addition, there's many meerkat facts and African sayings. My favorite thing I learned from this book is that meerkats are also referred to as "sun angels" and "little earth men"! I love these little earth men so very much, and I hope you do too!
December 9, 2024
Started out cute, rapidly became tedious.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews