culinary identity crisis

I’ve been wanting to start writing about food for a while now. Everything about it fascinate me – where it comes from, how it’s prepared, who prepares it, the occasions it’s prepared for, the benefits it might have, the texture, how it's presente and, of course, how it tastes! As I was preparing dinner tonight, I thought of taking a picture of my drink to share with a few friends. As I sat playing with the beverage and the camera while trying to nibble my still-warm meal, I decided it was finally time to start writing. The meal in front of me seems like an appropriate first posting, because it has such an identity crisis. And since my primary addictions are experimenting with food and traveling, my meals inevitably reflect my wanderings.

A colleague just dropped off about 5 kilos of fresh wild berries that she bought from roaming vendors while hiking around the nearby mountain. I’ve been using them in anything and everthing possible. Tonight I was crushing them in my glass to make some modified juice, and then thought, “If I’m going to spend the time crushing berries with my fork, I might as well make a caipirinha!” And what a perfect way to finally taste the Malawi gin sitting in the kitchen…. No wonder I’d been putting it off. It’s way potent. Not tequila potent, but more like ethanol potent. Maybe we should keep it in the medicine cabinet. I think I have a buzz just from sniffing the bottle. But hey, it’s Saturday, work just ended, and the sun is setting beautifully over that berry mountain, so what the hell. Besides, I’m reading a book in Portuguese right now, so a Brazilian drink seems most appropriate.

Dinner is leftovers, but it’s oh-so-tasty. A classmate who just returned from Thailand brought me authentic Thai curry spices. Deeh-lisshous!!!! (Gracias, mujer.) I’ve mixed it with vegetables from the local market and chicken I bought from the Pakistani guy who owns the town’s main restaurant. I’m eating it all with tortillas. That’s right, they have tortillas here. And I don’t care if they call them chapatti, or if they are supposed to be like naan or some other Pakistani/Indian bread (they’re so not), they are perfect replicas of Mexican tortillas. All this, topped off with a piece of chocolate from my favorite San Diego chocolatier – Eclipse’s Moroccan Spice Dark Chocolate. Yumm