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I have been delinquent in getting up my getting fat posts. I have had two of them sitting on the back burner waiting for us to get to a place where I would have the time to finish them, an unforseen delay while they clear the roads over the Andes has given me that chance. I am slipping them into their proper places in the blog. If you want you can check them out at getting fat in Eastern Europe and barely maintaining my weight in Tunisia.

If I were searching for my food heaven, Argentina would be near the top of my list. San Francisco, New York, and Sydney vie for that title because of their vast and tasty selection of world cuisines. Beijing would show up on a short list because of the many varieties of Chinese food gathered in one city, Paris is fine but a little bit too gourmet. However, my American palate may have met its culinary soulmate in Argentine cuisine. My life of eating beef has prepared me for Argentina.

When I was a kid in the ’70’s, any beef beyond hamburger was seen as a special treat. I grew up with a reverence for beef; it was the expensive food we got only once in a while. A Sunday roast or a steak on the grill were two of my favorites and I harbored a misguided affection for “steak in a bag,” an unfortunate preference I won’t go into, but think of it as shake and bake with a sirloin steak. My love of beef was heightened when my grandparents moved to live near us. My grandfather ended his career as one of the leaders of the LA savings and loan scene (long before the scandal) but in his early years, he had been a butcher and knew his meat. When we went shopping for our beef, he would always go up to the butcher at the local supermarket and explain which piece of meat he wanted and how he wanted it cut. He was likewise a master with the preparation. The thought of his teriyaki steaks still cause my salivary glands to crank into high gear, and he has been gone 10 years now.
For most people this respect for the value of beef and a basic education in all things beef would be enough to prepare one for a lifetime of eating beef, however, I had one more meat sage who would cement the deal. When Anne and I were first married we lived in Connecticut while I finished up school. Anne’s mom and stepdad lived in upstate New York where he ran his own butcher shop. As we were on a tight student budget, we didn’t buy much meat. However, every month Anne’s mom and stepdad would come visit us or we would visit them, and in either case, a large portable cooler filled with meat would be waiting for us. Bill always set us up right. He included the best cuts–filets, ribeyes, some ground beef, chicken breasts, and a few roasts of both pork and beef. Anne and I joke that during our “macaroni years,” as Bill likes to call them, we ate bacon-wrapped filet mignon. I have carried that respect and love for beef into the business world and when given the chance have visited the best steakhouses in America. Some of my favorites are Palm and Smith & Wallensky in New York, The Chop House in Chicago, Harris’ in San Francisco, and Pacific Dining Car in LA. I even understand the healing power of beef(combined with prayer). A few months before this trip I had my hip replaced. The replacement went fine but my body did not respond appropriately during post op. For the first 3 days my hematocrit (the amount of red blood cells in my body) kept going down. Even with two transfusions it slipped lower and lower each day, to the point where we and the doctors were scared. If my body did not start producing its own blood, I would be in danger of organ failure and require a long string of transfusions while they figured out what was wrong. Fed up with the paltry hospital food, I asked Anne to bring me a real steak from McCormick’s in Atlanta. She drove to the steakhouse and brought me back a giant slab of sirloin, crispy on the outside and raw on the inside. I ate the steak and we prayed for help before she returned to the kids. As she left I told her “tomorrow would be better.” The following morning they were ready to give me blood from the bloodbank but I told them to run their tests again. “I am on the mend,” I told them. Sure enough when they re-ran the test I had more red blood cells at 10 am than I had had at 6 am. Not much more, but my blood level was now moving in the right direction. I am sure the prayers were more important, but that big slab of beef sure helped.

I never asked my meat to help me heal in Argentina, but if I were looking for a beef with healing power, this is definitely the place I would find it. In Argentina the beef and its domesticated cousins, the goat and the lamb, are the center of people’s social lives. Families throw big weekend asados (barbeques). Every town has parrillas (grills) where people gather, and the Andrus family has done its best to frequent as many as we can. Dax and I are the two biggest meat eaters and on days when the rest of the family has had their fill of meat, we usually slip away and get ourselves a steak. Last night, for example, Dax and I went to our favorite restaurant in Salta at 11:15 to get a late dinner. You have to love Argentina, and what could contribute more to getting fat than a nice 18-ounce sirloin (bife de chorizo) right before bed time. However, the Argentines are not fat. They consume the most beef per capita of any nation in the world, yet there are few obese people here and most are downright skinny. One of the reasons is their beef is not as bad for you as American beef. How you might ask are cows different? Cows in Argentina are mostly raised on the pampas; they eat grass. Having lost most of their land to make room for grain farms, cattle in the US are raised on giant feedlots and fed corn. Living on a feedlot also means lots of antibiotics and hormone injections. (I bet the Argentines use the hormones as well, but they don’t need the antibiotics.) The different diets create different meat. The taste is different and I would argue a little stronger, which means if you like the taste of beef, Argentine beef is better. If you like it a little blander, then you’ll prefer the US beef version. It also changes the ratios of omega-3 fatty acids. In the US, when we want to increase the amount of omega 3 fatty acids, we eat more fish. Another idea would be to switch to grass-fed beef.

The taste of the meat is different in Argentina and so is the preparation. All of the grills either use a pit with a fire surrounded by animals or parts of animals on sticks, or a simple grill over real wood charcoal. I can’t find a a US equivalent of the wood they burn to create the charcoal, but everyone appears to us the same pampas-grown wood. (If anyone knows please feel free to leave a comment.) The meat is prepared simply. They do not marinate it or cover it with spices. They rub it with salt, a whole lot of salt, and put it on the grill or a stick. The salt helps the meat to crust up on the outside making each bite a little crunchy and very juicy.

The Argentines also try hard not to distract the eater with other fancy foods. There are vegetables at the meal, but they take their proper place on the under-card. There are usually two starches, again a perfect match for my American palate, bread and potatoes. Each meal comes with a nice tasting french bread. It is usually hard and chewy on the outside and soft on the inside, perfect for dipping in steak juices. The potatoes are usually fried or pureed and have not been anything overly special. What is special are the condiments. Usually there is one salsa and one sauce to add to the meat. The sauce is chimichiri, a succulent combination of parsley, garlic, olive oil, and the occasional chopped tomato. Each restaurant has its own spin on the national sauce, but thus far they have all been to my liking.

There is little about eating in Argentina that is not to my liking. I enjoy the food, the atmosphere of the restaurants, and the national attitude towards food. It isn’t just the food though. It is a remembrance of something we once had in America that is gone or disappearing. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it stems from a vague recollection of going to old-fashioned steakhouses with their red and white checkered tablecloths. A senior-citizen aged waiter or waitress would greet us and take our order. The food wouldn’t be fancy, but when it arrived it was tasty and abundant. When the bill finally arrived, it was reasonable and everyone goes home full. That vague memory is still part of everyday life in Argentina. Even the cost of the meals hearkens back to 30 years ago. Our big steak meals have been between 4 and 8 dollars per person. Our most extravagant meals with all you can eat asado, drinks, and dessert have been between 5 and 10 dollars per person. It is hard to buy good steaks for that price in the US.

I have to tip my hat to Argentina. It the best place in the world for walking away from a well-cooked, satisfying meal with both your belly and your wallet full. The memories of the rich meat flavors we’ve experienced here will resurface and cause my mouth to water for years to come.

Technorati Tags: Argentina, Asado, Beef, Family travel, food, Parrillas, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW

After gorging myself on the lard-dripping food of Eastern Europe, I was looking forward to the lighter olive oil infused food of Mediterranean Tunisia. On our first day in the country we followed the advice of our Rough Guide and went to a nice cafeteria/pizza joint near the entrance to the medina. We looked at the food they had on display and everyone agreed it looked tasty. Anne took the kids to find a seat and I ordered two different pizzas with the fewest ingredients on them, chocolate pancakes, a Tunisian chicken dish for Anne, and sandwiches for me and Dax. They rang me up and the cost of the meal including drinks was under $15. Tunisia was shaping up to be another good, cheap place to eat.

After paying, I ran the sandwiches and pancakes to the family and went back to wait for the pizzas. In our family, pizza is a common meal. At home the feuds over whether to order Domino’s or Pizza Hut have almost turned bloody. But one thing they all agree on is they like their pizzas plain. I can occasionally slip a pepperoni or a ham topping in the mix to keep it interesting and Anne might spring for a barbeque chicken version, but the kids will always go with cheese, extra cheese, or extra extra cheese if they need to choose three toppings. I picked up the first pizza, and it appeared to be plain with the exception of a few olives. The second however was completely covered with tuna. I looked back at the menu and saw some variation of the word neptune in the description. That half a semester of french in college really wasn’t helping me on our first day in a French speaking country, but I should have recognized the Roman god of the sea and steered clear of this pizza. I told the woman behind the counter, “Merci,” and slinked away to the family. I dropped the pizza in the center of the table and waited for everyone’s response. I knew what would happen, but I did it anyway. “Yuck.” “What is that?” “Something stinks!” “What’s that fish smell?” I picked the pizza up and set it on a bench behind us and let everyone eat their other food. It was not a very good start to eating in Tunisia, and unfortunately it didn’t get much better.

Everywhere we went in Tunisia we struggled to find a food we liked. I had very high hopes for their chicken and couscous dishes but each time we ordered them we found the chicken to be overcooked and the couscous dishes to be covered in a plain tomato sauce. We tried both local and tourist places in Tunis, Hammamet, Kairouan, Tozeur, and Matmata. In each case we failed to make any converts to Tunisian food or even find something we wanted to order a second time. I looked around at what the locals were eating and our tuna pizza was not an aberration. Almost all their dishes can be covered in canned tuna. As I looked at what they were ordering and tried to copy them the next time there was only one thing I found I liked and would go out of my way to eat again, giant legumes. These light green giant beans were the size of my thumbs. I’m not sure if these were fava beans. The locals just called them “legumes,” and they where a tasty addition to an otherwise bland meal. And they were my one highlight

I can assure you I tried to find others. The one food I had heard about before we arrived in Tunisia was a local concoction called a “brik.” The brik sounded like my kind of thing, a fried pastry the size of your hand filled with egg, cheese, and tuna. Unfortunately I had a hard time with the briks. I don’t know if it was the pastry or the way they cooked them, but usually they tasted like a grease sandwich without a strong flavor to overcome the grease. I am sure there are restaurants that do them in a way I would have liked, but we didn’t ever find one.

Tunisia was only the second place where everyone in the family struggled with food; the first was Cambodia. Perhaps we were missing something. Perhaps we are just too spoiled or perhaps we were not adventurous enough. We passed on camel steaks and as I am the only real seafood eater we didn’t enjoy any of the fruites de mare. (Now the French is kicking in.) After the first week of struggling to find a local dish or fast food we liked, I finally gave in and started ordering the same food each day from a local cafe. Each day I would walk into the same little cafe and order six paninis and six chocolate crepes. Some days I would do it twice. If I had a scale, I it would be nice to see how much weight I lost in Tunisia. I promise to gain it all back in Argentina.

Technorati Tags: Family travel, food, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Tuna Pizza, Tunisia

Two people close to me spent considerable time in Eastern Europe in their early 20’s. Both of them embraced the local cuisine with gusto and returned home quite a bit larger for their efforts. I understood from them that getting fat in Eastern Europe was going to be a simple task. Unfortunately I only had about three weeks to do so. To further complicate things, the rest of my family is not as adventurous as I am, and the kids were eager to take advantage of the prevalence of American fast food, which has invaded the former Eastern Bloc. Even with these constraints I made the most of my time in the region and found that not only did I pack on a few extra pounds but I also came away loving the cuisine.
It is hard not to love food that is so rich and so right. They may not have refined the fat delivery process as well as McDonald’s and KFC, but the Eastern Europeans have done a great job of packing as many fat molecules into a meal as humanly possible. My love affair with Eastern European food began on our first night in Bulgaria and continued until our final days in the Czech Republic. It was all rich, hearty and tasty, but my highest praise goes to the food we ate in Ukraine and Poland. It is no surprise that the coldest places we went had the richest foods. I guess one sheds a lot of calories shivering through the frigid, long winters. I didn’t have a winter to spend shivering with the Ukranians and Poles but after a couple weeks, I did have a little more to grab around the midsection as a result of their perogies and kielbasas.
I have always liked perogies. We don’t get many chances to eat them at home and when we do, I think health conscious cooks have tried to use olive oil or other less “bad” fats when serving them to Americans. Already a fan, I was shocked at how much better they tasted in their homelands. In Lviv we bumped into a Ukranian who grew up in New Jersey and he turned us on to a fantastic down home cafeteria where I ate perogies stuffed with chicken, pork, cabbage and my favorite– sour cherries. These were all served straight out of a pool of butter. At least I think it was butter. It could have been lard. I wouldn’t know, since lard is not a taste I’ve developed. I know I have seen it, but I don’t remember tasting it. It is usually in a little corner of the dairy section in your local supermarket. I have always thought It is nice for our supermarket managers to stock lard for our different first generation immigrants. Anyone in America long enough gets re-educated with the virtue of mono-saturates and vegetable oils. This time the education was mine.

At the end of a rich and delicious meal full of pork, cabbage, chicken, and various dark breads, I dipped into desert, my sour cherry perogies. These butter or lard-rich little morsels were covered with big crystals of sugar and a spoonful of sour cream. Each bite contained the richness of the various fats, the sweetness of the sugar, and the tartness of the cherries and became a transcendental experience. Of course each bite was followed by another and another, and too soon the first serving was gone. I quickly excused myself and ordered a second. It too disappeared before I noticed. If Anne would have allowed me a third, I would have ordered it right there. As it was, I had to get the family back to the hotel. We did stop by McDonald’s to get the kids their 20 cent ice cream cones.

As soon as we hit the room, I convinced the big boys to go to a Powersoft shooting range, which was close to the restaurant with the glorious perogies. They jumped at the chance to shoot things, and I had a great cover for getting back into that neighborhood. After wowing them both with my marksmanship, I asked if they wanted to go down the street for dessert. Both said, “No.” Well, too bad for them. Our family is not a democracy. Back to the restaurant they went and after bribing them with the promise of another ice cream on the way home, they sat and were good company while I ate servings number thee and four. My biggest regret was that this was our last day in Ukraine. We were on a 6am train the next morning and it was not going to be possible for me to pick up some little cherry fat balls for the train.

I decided not to try to replicate the cherry perogies in Poland. It just didn’t feel right. I settled on lamb and mint perogies with a dessert of rhubarb perogies. They were good, but my culinary sensors had already turned towards sausages and I could no longer be satisfied with perogies, no matter how good. I knew this was the home of kielbasa. It was the only Polish food I could name prior to arriving in the country, which raises an important point: we need more Polish restrauants in the US. I have only been to one Polish restaurant in my life, a little sausage shop in Cohoes, New York, and that was the day before Anne and I got married. But I digress. I will get back to kielbasa.

Kielbasa is a wonderful sausage I gained a taste for when we visited Anne’s cousin Tammy in Indiana. It was an earlier time in my life when getting fat was not an option. It was summer and I was struggling to put on weight before the football season started. During a visit to the land of Anne’s Swiss forebears, Berne, Indiana, our car broke down. While we waited at Tammy’s house for the replacement part to make its way from San Diego (finding a Japanese part in a small Midwestern town), I had my first kielbasa, though in Berne they call it Swiss sausage. Tammy cooked it simply in a boiling pot with potatoes. It was a hearty and delicious dish and I think I scared her with how much I ate.

Since that time I have always loved the Polish national sausage. However, much like the perogies, I was not ready for how much better and how varied the selection of sausages would be in Poland. The Poles treat sausage the way the Africans treat jerky. It is available everywhere. As we walked through the mall, a nice young lady came up to me with a collection of dried sausages in paper cups. The family was far ahead of me on their way to the food court. I stopped for a second and tasted each one. I tried to have her tell me the differences but her English and my Polish were about the same– non existent. I didn’t let my complete ignorance of the types of sausage get in my way and at every chance, I ordered a kielbasa or other local sausage. Fortunately for my blood pressure, we only had three days in Poland and I was soon in the Czech Republic missing both the sausages and the perogies. I am still missing them and will make finding Atlanta’s Polish and Ukranian restaurants (if they exist) one of my first tasks when I get home.

Technorati Tags: Family travel, food, Kielbasa, Perogies, Poland, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Ukraine

We left India almost six weeks ago and I still haven’t written my food post for the country. I’m having a hard time because Indian is my favorite cuisine in the world, but unlike all the other countries we’ve visited, I didn’t get fat in India. I actually got skinny. For those who might be worried about my health, please don’t fret. I have more than made up for my lack of calories on the subcontinent first in Africa and now in Turkey. A post about feta cheese and lamb kabobs will have to wait, however, as I take a moment to reflect on the food of Southern Africa.

During our time in India I started to think about becoming a vegetarian. I know that will shock anyone with whom I have shared a meal, as I am a voracious meat eater. At Brazilian churriscos I have always warned people about not filling up at the salad bar and outpaced everyone by keeping my “bring me more meat” button open the longest. In India I started wondering if I had eaten my fair share. Dax was ready to pick up the carnivore baton. He complained about the lack of steaks in India repeatedly and was very much looking forward to a big sirloin in Africa. With our differing attitudes we landed in Joburg. The first day we went to a pizza place which met everyone’s craving. The second we opted for hamburgers. Everyone was pleased with their first hamburgers in over 2 months and we started to get back in our groove. However, it wasn’t the hamburgers or the pizza that broke my contemplations of vegetarianism. Instead it was a lovely little thing the Southern Africans call biltong.

Biltong is dried meat; apparently any meat will do. I have always been a lover of beef jerky. I would make it with my grandpa when I was young, and during my 2 years in Japan he would send me care packages stuffed with pounds of it. I have travelled all across America and tasted the best jerky our gas stations have to offer, but nothing could prepare me for the Southern Africans’ love of dried meat. “Everyday, we eat it everyday,” one hearty man with a big belly and short safari shorts explained to me in Botswana. I first noticed a store in our local Pretoria mall that only sold biltong. Think of your local mall candy shop but exchange the sweets with things like kudu, springbok, beef, and ostrich all available in jerky or slim jim like sausages. Af first I thought this was a phenomenon specific to Pretoria, but I quickly found similar shops full of meat everywhere. There are even whole sections of supermarkets devoted to dried meat. As you would expect, they have the bite sized sticks of jerky we are familiar with but they also had huge slabs of meat hanging from the ceiling on ropes. The slabs of meat were as big as my arm and at one ingenious store they came with a handy pocket knife attached to each limb-sized slab. I quickly got into the tradition and everyday would stop at one of the little shops to choose my type of meat and get some biltong for the road.

Once again on the meat wagon, I joined Dax and started eating meat where we could. We had a couple highlights, Dax had a great oryx steak in Namibia and I had a sumptuous beef steak in Swakopmund. Just about everywhere we went there were steakhouses and in almost any town of note there was a steakhouse chain called Spur. Dax asked if we could go to Spur the first day we were in Africa. I kept telling him we would but never made it happen. They are everywhere I would point out and again promise him to go in the next town. When we hit Capetown, our last stop in Africa, I made sure we went. Everyone but Anne was pleasantly surprised. I had expected a Sizzler level chain while it ended up similar to an Outback Steakhouse. As Outback has an Australian theme for us, Spur is a USA themed restaurant for South Africans, complete with a native American logo and American food throughout–what a nice remembrance of home. In our travels we get a little too much information on how the world hates America. Some of that hate is warranted, but in other cases it just comes across as spite or jealousy. In either case, it was great to find a place that celebrates our cuisine, if not our country. With one week left in Africa and ahead on the budget from all our nights in tents, we went to Spur the first time. The kids loved it because Spur provides a playroom with Xbox 360’s. Dax loved the ribs and I enjoyed the steak. We hadn’t made it to the car before the kids were begging to go back. I told them we would but that we had to get ready for Oprah, which meant we had to get to another hotel. When we pulled in to our new location, the kids screamed and pointed at the restaurant attached to the lobby–another Spur. There was little doubt where we would be eating that night. After the shoot we returned to our little backpacker haven, Salty Crax. (An interesting story for another day was the round of laughter that erupted in a crowded internet cafe when I yelled into the computer on a Skype call to the Oprah people, “The name of our hotel is Salty Crax.”)

The day we got back from the shoot Anne was a little too tired to go out to eat and wanted to spend a little time working in the common room. I offered to take the kids to a different steakhouse but they all objected and we headed back to Spur– 3 times in 4 days. I told them this would probably be our last as we only had 3 more days left in Africa. However, I broke down on our last day and took them to Spur one last time. Everyone pretty much ordered the same thing, with the exception that I had moved from the Monkey Gland steak (not as bad as it sounds, it’s just a chutney) to their unique “Hot Rock” steak. As someone who never feels a steak is rare enough, this was my dream. When they serve you the steak, it is raw, just staring up at you with all its bloody gore. Accompanying the steak is a hot stone, heated to something like 800 degrees to cook it on. With this I could sizzle the steak for a couple minutes on each side and ensure a lovely rare piece of meat. (I guess all vegetarian desires were gone by this point.)

With our bellies full of Spur we headed off to the airport, which for those who read Anne’s post, Six in an Airport, know was the beginning of a 3-day ordeal. We spent the first night in Capetown, but didn’t get to the hotel until after midnight. After multiple mishaps the next day, we found ourselves in Joburg at a conference hotel the following night. Attached to the hotel was, you guessed it, Spur. This time the food was going to be on KLM and everyone loaded up. The kids were thrilled. I question our sanity to have eaten at the same place 5 times in 7 days, but that last steak sure tasted good. After a quick trip to the local mall to load up on biltong, we finally left Africa with visions of future meatfests in Turkey and Argentina dancing in our heads. Oh, and I hate to mention it, but I also left with a little extra jiggle in my step.

Technorati Tags: Beef Jerky, Biltong, Family travel, fast food, food, Namibia, Meat, South Africa, Spur, Steakhouse

This will not come as a surprise to my coworkers in Pasadena who get dragged to the restaurant Saladang every time I am in town, or the people in Atlanta who end up at one of a handful of Thai restaurants such as Tamarind or Nan, but I love Thai food! There is a lot to love about Thai food–the noodles, the meat dishes, the curries. They all tickle the palate with a robust variety of flavors and the combination of dishes between appetizers and dessert can be a magical experience. With a rich history of consuming Thai food and a memorable visit in 2003, I was excited to get back to Thailand and eat some more. What I was not expecting was the added benefit of coming from places like Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

In the other Southeast Asian countries we had to watch what we ate. I mentioned that we didn’t buy much off the street in an effort to keep our stomachs in top working condition. We knew that things would be better in Thailand when only 5 minutes after crossing the border, we passed a truck filled with pork that had been quartered and sealed in plastic, putting it beyond the reach of air, flies, and other bacteria-forming agents. In previous countries pork had either been alive or carved into pieces and left resting on a vendor’s stand in the sun. When we got to Bangkok, we noticed the street vendors used plastic gloves when handling food, another big improvement, since we had seen plenty of hawkers wipe their noses, take out the trash, and use the bathroom before serving customers. The biggest change we noticed was that the street vendors washed their dishes in buckets of hot water with…..soap! While we didn’t throw all caution to the wind, we did agree that street food and local restaurants were now on the menu.

Eating street food or meals in local markets came with an additional benefit. In China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, we limited ourselves to eating in restaurants. These were inexpensive ranging between $15 and $25 per meal for all 6 of us. Each day we ate one or two of these meals and bought snacks at grocery or convenience stores. When we moved to street food, we started paying local prices. We were now able to gorge with 8-9 entrees, an appetizer or 2, and individual drinks–no sharing–for $6-7. Each street stall makes its own specialty such as fried chicken, bbq pork, papaya salad, or bugs. In the market there are small restaurants who will make your dishes to order. These short order chefs are astute and quickly make multiple dishes. Anne and the little kids are big fans of Pad See Eew. Mac and Dax are connoisseurs of fried rice and I pretty much try anything. Some of my favorites are pork knuckle in cinnamon and anise brown sauce, peppers and chicken, and any kind of spring roll. In Thailand my stomach began to expand as I was once again able to indulge in healthier portions and a greater variety of foods. I was not ready, though, for the amount of food I was going to eat in Chaing Khong.

At the little border town between Thailand and Laos, we found a cheap hotel, ($12 for 2 rooms) and struck out find a place to have dinner. We had heard rave reviews about a Mexican place on the river. I checked it out, but their $5-7 per entree seemed grossly overpriced compared to the local food. Down the road we found a barbeque place. It was packed with Thais: packed with tourists doesn’t equal good, but packed with locals usually means great. At each table a charcoal pot sat below a dome-shaped grill where you cooked your own dishes. To my delight, it was an all you can eat ($2.50 for adults, $1.25 for kids). We piled a few plates full of meat and sat down to cook and eat. Anne and I quickly realized we had a problem. Kieran and Asher were too little to handle their own food so we would had to cook theirs first before we could secure our own sustenance. We tried a number of meats, including jellyfish and Thai spam. After tasting many we honed in on a couple that were our favorites–sesame beef and chicken in a light sauce were the big winners. We piled more plates with these two meats and began cooking again. This time Anne and I were looking forward to eating more than we gave away, but the little two just kept eating. A third time I went back and piled plates high with meat. This time Kieran and Asher were done. One of the problems with them being “done” is they are really done, not just with eating but with dinner. They started to wander and get themselves in trouble, so Anne grabbed a few more bites and herded them off to the hotel, leaving hers, Kieran’s, and Asher’s plates half full. The big boys and I decided this was our opportunity to eat unhindered. We went back with a fourth set of plates and then a fifth. The big boys hit their limit and I was starting to feel the strain on my belt as well. We were not very far into our fifth plates when the boys, who are still small dogs compared to their father, wanted to go join their siblings and mother. I let them go while I waited around for the bill. The bill came and there was a little bit of a problem. Apparently the sign on the buffet says something to the effect of you will be charged 100 baht (~$3) for every hundred grams of food you leave on your plates. The numbers, “100″ and “100″ were the only things I could understand. I don’t like to be surprised with hidden fees, and looking around at the half full plates, I imagined this would put a serious dent in the day’s budget. I told the waitress to wait a little while before weighing the damage and I got to work. It took me another 20-30 minutes but between a few pieces of meat on the floor, a few more pieces hidden in the soup and sauce bowls, and a vision of Takeru Kobayashi, I ate until I cleared the plates. I called the waitress over, paid the bill, and triumphantly waddled home.

Technorati Tags: Chiang Mai, food, hawker, street food, street vendors

While we’re sure Cambodia has good food somewhere within its boundaries, we didn’t find much during our brief stay. We had some tasty Indian food in Phnom Penh and discovered a yummy Cambodian restaurant in Siem Reap on our last night in the town. Other than that we had bad tourist food at charmless restaurants that cater to tour group busses. Here are the foods we liked best:

1. Tom — Pork Amok at Temple Club, Siem Reap
2. Anne — Cambodian noodle dish at Temple Club, Siem Reap
3. Dax — Indian food in Phnom Penh
4. McKane — Spaghetti Bolognese (there’s a surprise!)
5. Kieran — Nothing
6. Asher — Crackers

Technorati Tags: Cambodia, Family travel, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW

The biggest surprise about the food in Vietnam was how fresh it was. The country is small and everything, produce and meat alike, is rushed daily from the countryside to the ciites. Everything is cooked outside in neighborhood street kitchens so the sights and smells are tantalizing. Tom and the boys loved learning about the cuisine from their cooking teacher, An, in Hanoi and will be available for demonstrations once we get home. Here are our favorite foods from this tasty country:

1. Tom — Bun Cha (grilled pork)
2. Anne — Pho (beef noodle soup)
3. Dax — Afghani Chicken at Omar Khayyam’s Indian Restaurants
4. McKane — Pho 24 chicken noodle soup
5. Kieran — Choco Pies
6. Asher — Spaghetti Bolognese

(At least the little kids are consistent with their preference for sweets and Italian food. That doesn’t seem to change no matter where we go!)

Technorati Tags: Family travel, food, Hanoi, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Vietnam

I remember spending 50% of my bank account to take Anne out for Vietnamese food before her college graduation. It was a nice little Vietnamese restaurant in New Haven and and from that point on, I have counted Vietnamese as one of my favorite cuisines. In fact one of my favorite restaurants in the world is Vietnamese. It is kind of a dive but, If you happen to be in San Francisco, you can check out Thanh Long. Order the garlic noodles and the fresh crabs; you will not be disappointed. My good friend Annie Miu Hayward took me there years ago, and each time I have gone back it has been just as delectable. However, after being in Vietnam for a a week, I realized my love of Vietnamese food was based entirely on my experience with the country’s more upscale cuisine. Our experience here has all been with more common food. We’ve eaten at a number of restaurants, some of them strictly Vietnamese and some of them serving a mix of Western and Vietnamese foods. Most of them have been good but not outstanding. Rather than being amazed by the entire cuisine the way we were in China, we have instead found a few things we like and focused on those dishes.

The entire family has embraced the national beef noodle soup pho (pronounced fur) bo. Anne and I love the spring rolls and everyone chows down on grilled pork, fresh fruit, and baguettes. We eat 80% of the time in restaurants. There is cheaper and sometimes better looking food prepared on the street, but we usually walk right on by. Let me point out that when I say prepared on the street, it literally is prepared on the street. Women carry their restaurants around on their backs, choose a spot, set their stools out, and start cooking on their portable charcoal cookeries. The selection is varied and all the customers appear to be enjoying their curbside meals. We remain a little cautious about what we buy off the street. If there were not six stomachs at risk, I think we would be more daring, but getting sick this early in the trip isn’t worth the risk. On some future trip I will return and sample the street kitchens.

One of our culinary highlights has been a street food cooking class. Dax, McKane and I spent about 4 hours learning to make spring-rolls and bun cha and how to carve pineapples the Vietnamese way. Before and during the lesson we learned a whole lot about the Vietnamese culture and their cooking. A number of things stood out to us as major differences between our cultures. The first was their use of the marketplace. The Vietnamese women go to the market once or twice a day. They buy everything fresh and cook it the same day. In Vietnam freshness is critical and everything at the market is straight off the plant or from the slaughter. We were told if you buy pork around lunchtime, the pig was killed in the morning. If you buy it in the afternoon, the pig was killed around noon.

McKane, Kieran and I took a walk through one of these local markets. Each vendor has a selection of goods they sell. Most of the time they fit one general category such as meat or vegetables. Sometimes they are very specific like dog or shrimp. Occasionally a vendor with an odd selection such as pork and pineapples would be in the mix. The paths you walk to get through the market are one person wide with shops on either side. The zoning laws appear to be somewhat random with a fish shop next to a grain shop next to a fruit shop. Most of the food was recognizable, however there were a few items we needed to ask our cooking teacher, An, for help understanding. We had some guesses but didn’t believe a whole plate would be dog testicles or all the slimy things in a bowl were “centiworms.”

Our teacher and the owner of the cooking school, “Hidden Hanoi,” was the lovely An. She is married to an Australian who runs the local backpacker hostel and her English is great. Perhaps that is because in a previous life she taught linguistics at university. She welcomed us with a great big smile and immediately became our friend. McKane asked me if she was really that friendly or just doing her job. I told him I found her genuine and loved the insights she gave us into everyday life in Vietnam and the differences between our cultures. Most of our conversation centered around food. An explained to us that most ingredients are confined to their season here. When it is time for nice little mandarins, all the markets have them. When the season is over the fruit goes away. At home I pay attention to the growing season for a few fruits, such as apples, but we have become spoiled to have most fruits and vegetables available year round.

Another major cultural difference is the kitchen. Vietnamese kitchens are small 2×3 ft spaces just outside the door to the house. The women (not a sexist comment, men don’t cook here) sit cooking on the floor. They can’t imagine leaning over a counter to cook. They use only fresh ingredients and have no need for refrigeration, as they eat what they buy each day. Though many newly wealthy Vietnamese families now have refrigerators as status symbols, they leave them empty, occasionally even unplugged in their apartments or houses. Many build fully equipped, purely decorative Western kitchens in their new houses, but still use a second, small Vietnamese kitchen outside. We found one Western kitchen which was used as a parking structure for motorbikes.

The boys did a great job cutting, cooking, and even eating the food from our lesson. I explained to them both that if they remember how to put this whole meal together, they will score some great points with the ladies when they get older. That was beyond their level of comprehension, but I predict we will look back five years from now and one or both of them will use some or all of the skills we picked up to woo members of the opposite sex. The only problem with the whole experience was the boys learned that all Vietnamese food uses fish sauce. I had tried to convince them is was a different kind of soy sauce, but now that they understand it is made from small fish and not small beans, the tenor of our meals has changed.

The single biggest thing I was looking forward to in Vietnam was the food. One of my favorite blogs for the last few years has been Stickyrice.com, a blog about food in Vietnam. I love it for a number of reasons. The first is their shared enjoyment of everything edible. The second is the wonderful photos of food they always have in their posts. Their portrayal of Vietnam as a land of simple yet wonderful epicurean delights set high expectations, one I am not sure the country is meeting. However, this leg of the trip is not over, and I will keep eating pho and continue to try new things, centiworms and dog testicles excluded. What I hear from the other travelers is we all need to be packing on the kilos before we start shedding them in India.