Thursday, January 15, 2009

Food

One of my favorite things about our travels has been exploring new cultures through food. And as we all know, I love to eat. The food has been amazing in every country, and even more amazing have been some of our interactions with street vendors and restaurant owners. One of my favorite was in Cambodia at a night market. After a supremely delicious dinner of fried noodles made on a wok over a lone wood burner, roadside of course, the staff started bringing us samples of exotic looking fruits. We had a great time attempting to communicate which fruits we had in our country and they really enjoyed introducing us to new ones.
Last week I had an interesting food experience on the island of Ko Phi Phi in Thailand. Bo and I took a long tail boat to a remote beach on the island to have breakfast and enjoy our last morning there. At this point I was noodeled and fried-riced out, so I was looking for something different. Beef and red peanut pancake? Hhmm, sounds interesting. I imagined Banh Xeo, which Bo's mom makes--it's a Vietnamese egg/omelette/crepe type thing that you eat with beef, herbs and sauce. It's awesome. The term pancake, I have come to learn, is often interchangeable with crepe or rotee or even omelette, so I thought there was hope. What I got was a pancake sandwich. Nice fluffy flapjacks, ala USA. The stuffing between the pancakes, you ask? It resembled a nice beef stew with pinto beans. Word to the wise--red peanut apparently means pinto beans. So I had a nice stew and pancake breakfast. It was not all that bad, though I would not recommend ordering it.
And Cindy, just for you--we tried the stretched squid! A fully dried squid is heated over an open flame and then in Vietnam, beaten with a stick while squating by the side of the road, or in Thailand, run through a rolling/stretching device on a cart. It is then served with a chili sauce. It pretty much tastes like squid-flavored cardboard. Bo likens it to squid jerky. Ordering the squid and watching the process is more enjoyable than the actual consumption. It's definitely an experience.
Some of the best things we ate were things we'd never seen or heard of before. Unfortunately, we only wrote some of them down. I'll never forget the experience of walking up to a street vendor's cart, having no idea what I'm doing or ordering, pointing, smiling, laughing with the vendors that think I'm crazy, and ending up with one of the most amazing culinary treats of my life.

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