On memory and balls of rice...

One of my earliest food memories is this: 

Six or seven years old, summer time at Rittenhouse Day Camp. The campers are sent off to find a spot on the rocks to eat our bagged lunches. I find a spot on a boulder next to my friend... her name I lost, long ago. We open our respective lunch bags. Mine-- a brown paper one, edges curved over and wrinkled, damp from the sweat of my hand. Hers-- a cute little lunch case, with some sections inside.  The comparison of the contents is even more stark than the packaging. Mine features a smooshed flat peanut-butter and jelly sandwich (which I adored, mind you), hers, a set of perfectly shaped balls in cellophane. 

I was in awe. 

What on earth were those balls-- something white covered in what looked like sheet of green plastic? Were they Tastycakes? Cupcakes? She saw me looking and handed one to me. On closer inspection I saw that they were not sweets but instead balls of white rice wrapped in something green. At age seven, I had never seen anything like this. I couldn't imagine this even counted as "lunch." Where's the bread? Where's the peanut butter? Where is the bag of Frito-Lay chips from the snack bag variety pack? What IS this? 

She let me try a taste. I unwrapped the plastic covering and took a bite. And fell in love. This was the coolest thing I'd ever seen-- a ball of rice wrapped in something salty (I learned it was seaweed- which blew my mind) perfectly flavored and also somehow STUCK TOGETHER and holding in a ball shape. What magical sorcery is this? What amazing mom makes balls of RICE to give as camp lunch? What piece of heaven on Earth is this taste FROM? 

I don't remember her name or anything else about her, but I do remember she explained to me that this was a very normal food in a Japanese home. Her mom made it for her every day, varying only the contents of the rice ball. Sometimes it was just plain with seaweed, sometimes with pickles, sometimes with meat. 

And so we began that day our small tradition that would continue for the rest of that camp session. We would find ourselves a good spot on a boulder by the river, high up for a view of the current flowing by, and far enough away from the noise of our fellow campers. We would sit and then promptly trade our lunches; she was as enthralled by my peanut-butter and jelly as I was with her Magical Rice Ball. I felt like an intrepid food explorer, tasting something so unfamiliar and unexpected. In retrospect, she must have found me pretty ridiculous for being that excited by something that was so very ordinary to her. 

It's possible I may have exaggerated the important of this food memory in the years since- but, regardless, I'll always credit her and Rittenhouse Day Camp with beginning my life-long obsession with Japanese food and flavors. I love the umami of Japanese flavor on such a deep level it feels intrinsic to my very PERSON. Perhaps I was Japanese in a past life? Perhaps my brain is just particularly chemically inclined to feel joy with the taste of miso or soy or mirin? If I for some reason had to pick a cuisine to eat for the rest of my life, happily, it would be Japanese. No contest.  My last meal before execution? Please let it be a kaiseki multi-course tasting menu from that place in Kyoto by the large Buddhist temple, where they craft vegetarian magic including the Worlds Most Perfect Single Bite-- a tempura fried plum. And with that single cherry tomato stewed in a broth and served in a teeny tiny egg cup. 

What, you DON'T ask yourself what your last meal before execution would be? Is that just me? 

On our previous journeys to Japan we learned that Japanese food is much more than just perfect rice balls and sushi. Japanese food is about the endless pursuit of joy, in the form of moments of sensory experience. The perfect taste may last only half a second, but you experienced it and you tasted it and so it was worth it. Every moment is crafted to allow you to experience and taste food in its purest, richest form-- but to also know that the moment passes and life continues on.  We are temporary and life is fleeting, might as well eat something amazing to celebrate the joy of being alive! Japanese food is art and philosophy wrapped into many delicious and adorable packages. 

The Japanese live to eat- they are obsessed with food, even more than I am; the products to make the food, the process, the ritual of eating it, the experience and expression of the diner. Nowhere have I seen a country where flipping through the channels fully half of them or more are dedicated to food in some way-- people cooking food, shows about the origins of ingredients, shows in which people watch OTHER PEOPLE EAT FOOD and then watch their reaction (I'm not kidding about this. There seem to be countless Watching People Eat Food And React shows).  I can't wait to learn more Japanese to enjoy what is actually being said as people eat and watch others eat. 

Sitting here in our tiny quarantine apartment where we've been for seven days now, it doesn't really feel quite real that we are residents of this amazing country yet, even though we have the cards to prove it. It is surreal and overwhelming that I am now living in a place I have dreamt of since I was just seven years old. 

And I can buy rice balls (onigiri) anytime I want from a 7-11 on the corner, less than a dollar a piece. And they are beautiful. And they are perfect. 

So thank you, nameless Japanese friend from Rittenhouse Day Camp. You set me on some sort of path that led me here, to a new life in Tokyo.  

Inside

Inside (A poem? A song? A lament?)

You start to notice things in new ways, when you have nothing else to notice. 

The way the sun breaks through shadowing glass, the way the hum of the fan echoes. 

The feel of a sheet against your skin, the rough touch of a quilt. 

Follow the edges of the seams with your fingertips. 

There is nothing else to do but notice. 

On the counter, a jar you never saw before

What’s inside? Mystery seed or spice or leftover tea. 

Live dangerously and consume it, why not. 

The world hardly seems worth fighting for these days. 

Might as well take the risk. 

In the morning, a lizard does his dance 

Push-ups on the tree limb, catching light.

Tan of his skin turning mustard in the sun. 

He’s wondering about the silence, the vanishing sounds-

There is nothing else to do but notice. 

Perfect mango starts to mold and

In the press of handprint, turn green and dark-

While across the way, a stranger sings,

You can’t begin to know the words but

A child joins in on a flute, just softly, just so. 

Evenings the floor feels sticky or dusty or warm

And every time, it surprises. 

A gold hoop of an earring is found 

The lost favorite t-shirt, discovered. 

There is nothing else to do but notice. 

Mid-day light is different then morning light which is different then 2:34 light.

Heat rises and falls and floats on breezes, somehow. 

The oven makes a popping sound 

Contracting when I turn it off

The steel sighs a breath of relief 

Life will begin again, someday

The rush, the sounds, the hum of need,

And the blindness may come again.

When we have everything, and forget to see. 

Dear Anthony

You don't know me- you never would have known me- but yet I feel the impact of you, or rather, the loss of you, as if a dear friend has passed.

This is the absurdity of celebrity. You become so famous, so instantly recognizable to many of us, that we forget sometimes that we did not, in fact, know you at all. 

Clearly none of us knew you at all. 

From the outside, your life was the envy of all foodies and travelers. To wake up each morning to a feast of the senses! To count your days by delicious meals, unique adventures, all the gourmet and salty and sweet and umami that you could ever want! A dream to live like this. On TV, episodes were cut so that it seemed that your life was riot of pleasure and experience. On any given day, you might eat meaty pho for breakfast on the streets of Hanoi for breakfast, followed by bun cha pork for lunch, followed by snails or crabs or fish for dinner. Every unique restaurant-- every one-of-a-kind impossible-to-get-a seat treasure land was yours for the taking. You had the pleasure of the highest gourmet palaces on earth: the Nobu, the French Laundry, the Nomas, of the world. You ate sushi made by Jiro, French food made by Alain Ducasse-- and then enjoyed the company of the famously wonderful Eric Ripert.  

It wasn't only pillars of great gastronomy that drew your attention-- no-- you also dined on traditional food, made by local home cooks, sitting on tatami mats, mud floors, tiny plastic stools on street corners. Your fixers found the best of obscure local cuisine and gave you the chance to taste things that were truly of their locale-- not sanitized and Westernized for tourist palates. 

Most of us would dream to experience any one of those things in a life time. You had them all. 

Your advice guided many of us in our own, albeit far more humble, culinary experiences. It's because of you that my husband and I visited Vietnam-- the place you said has the best food in the world. Because of you, we wandered streets of Hanoi to find that perfect snail place-- the one where all they serve is perfectly boiled snails, in a bowl, to be drawn from their shells with a small piece of metal. Because of you, we ate in tiny alley ways, on plastic tables, in restaurants that only ever had menus in Vietnamese. You taught us that food is best enjoyed when it is new and strange and unexpected. That one must travel off the beaten path-- even in a place filled with tourists like Hanoi-- to find the best of local food.  Because of you, our trips to Southeast Asia-- to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos-- were filled with days of searching for the most local, the most traditional.  

And when we found that food? We learned to not just taste but to experience. To take a bite and then describe our tastes, as if we too were hosting a food-and-travel show. We compared and reflected, we endlessly reminisced. What was the best bite of Laos? The best roast bird in Cambodia? Best frog in Southeast Asia? We didn't only eat-- but we truly savored. 

Every bite an affirmation that life is beautiful and textured and new.

How, then, could someone who seemed to enjoy the sensations of all of this take away his very ability to experience them? How can you go from someone who waxed poetic about the perfection of a piece of sushi to someone who wanted to never taste again? 

It boggles the mind. Since your death, I've tried my best to understand and create my own theories. Perhaps this is not a useful exercise, but I can't help myself.  To all of us, dear Anthony, Mr. Bourdain, you had the dream. You lived what most of us can only experience in small pieces-- if we are lucky, on one vacation in a lifetime. 

Why? 

In Japan, we found the streets of yakatori stalls you talked about. Smoky, crowded, tucked away-- now no longer the hidden magic it once was, but instead filled with tourists.  Most likely before you created shows that featured "Memory Lane" in Shinjuku, it was a special place for locals. Now as I walk down the alley (where the yakatori still IS delicious, by the way) I see signs saying, in English-- "No photos!" indicating that the chefs here are tired of fame. They just want to cook. 

Is this why you left us? Did you feel guilt at exposing the special local places of the world to an onslaught of your fans? I've heard that there was a Saigon soup vendor who had to close down her shop because she was overrun by tourists.  I can imagine that was painful for you to know about-- and yet, you can forgive yourself for this.  Nothing much is truly hidden and unexplored anymore-- it is rare to find something truly "unknown" by outsiders. The world is wired and connected and filmed. This is not your fault. 

Instead of seeing your fame as a negative impact on the special places-- see, instead, that you gave a gift to those who could not afford to fly to Asia and eat duck egg on the street. You gave many Americans a sense of the world that they themselves could not have. You helped reveal "foreign" as "special" and "delicious."  Americans suffer terribly from egotism that their lives are "normal" while others are "bizarre." We are xenophobic to the extreme, as recent political drama in the US can attest. You helped many see that the best life has to offer is that which is new and unknown. If we stay within what is known, we take away our opportunity to look back askance at ourselves, at our own perceptions and judgements.  

But perhaps your sense of "ruining secret places" wasn't the reason. 

There are meals that I've had -- singular tastes I've experienced-- that have almost brought me to tears because they are just that good. On our recent trip to Kyoto, we ate our first kaiseki meal at a Buddhist temple- all vegetarian and served to us one dish at a time. I ate one tiny tomato- served with a sweet tofu something next to it-- and felt overwhelmed with sensation. THIS is what food is, I thought. This tomato. Nothing else matters.  And nothing-- nowhere-- will ever taste this good again. 

Is this why? Did you have too many great meals that, when the plates were cleaned away, bellies full, you couldn't bear the thought of eating something less great? 

I can understand some of that feeling. In Japan on our recent trip, I was filled with joy but also sadness because every meal was better than the last. Everything just kept getting better and better. That one piece of sushi hand crafted by the master and handed to us-- an unknown, unnamed fish, perfectly sliced and flavored with green onion? It's a bite I will never, ever forget. And even as I describe it I'm terribly sad that I'm not eating it RIGHT NOW.

But also grateful. Forever grateful and thankful that I had that chance- I ate that thing. I tasted the experience of the perfect tomato, the perfect crab claw, the succulent shrimp head, the roasted chicken skin. I feel so lucky to have had the chance to allow my tongue and belly and brain to experience THAT.

Did you lose your sense of gratitude, Mr. Bourdain? Did you begin to feel overwhelmed by fame and stress and everything and forget to just appreciate the joy that it is sensation-- that is food-- that is life? 

Perhaps. 

The truth is we will never know, of course. You made your choice. 

So yes, you have left us. And I know it might be cliched to say this-- and I'm hardly the only one to have this thought since your death-- but your life was not lived in vain. You gave the world something unique and special. You allowed us to focus our time and energy on something as seemingly small as EATING. Food does not just sustain-- it teaches. It gives us a sense of ourselves, our cultures, our place in the world. Eating something new in some place new reminds us of how much we have yet to learn about the world. Traveling and eating are humbling experiences. We are small in the great world and there is so much left to see and taste. 

I'm sorry that you won't be around to continue to know and feel what there is out there. We, in our small ways, will try to continue to live what we've learned. We have tomorrow and the next day and all the days after that.  Thank you, dear Anthony, for reminding us that we all need to keep on keeping on. You would have wanted us to.

Eggs. It's complicated.

For as long as I can remember, I've had a complicated relationship with eggs.

I know that there are many who endlessly swoon over the various joys of the humble chicken egg-- scrambled, fried, hard-boiled, pouched---but I just couldn't see it.  Since childhood, a cooked egg triggered in me a mix of horror and revulsion, mixed with a sad twinge of shame. I knew I was missing out on something. Everyone raved about the delicious savory depth of a bright yellow yolk, the perfection of Eggs Benedict for a Sunday brunch.  A souffle puffed up! A freshly made mayonnaise! A glorious deviled egg, sprinkled with that dusting of paprika! Yet when I thought of eggs, I experienced a sensory reaction: first, a feeling a chalky paste on my tongue, then-- a shiver of a memory of something that was at once tasteless and also so overwhelmingly flavored as to be nauseating.

My memory of eggs from childhood is this: crying as I try, desperately, to avoid having to eat the yolk of a hard-boiled egg. My mother has made us hard-boiled eggs and I want to just eat the flavorless, jello-like outer white part. She tells me I have to eat the yolk too, as the nutrients are there. I am crying and crying, trying to avoid that little greenish yellow ball of misery haunting me from the inside of palatable white.  I didn't love the white of the egg, but I could handle it over the horrid yellow inside, dry and sticking to the roof of my mouth like paste.  In my food memory, hard-boiled eggs= tears. Pasty, miserable, terrible to swallow.

So, I was not a fan.

Sure- I could eat an omelette. If stuffed with enough strong cheese, vegetables, mushrooms-- okay. Topped with hot sauce or ketchup-- fine.  Egg As Flavor Delivery Device I could handle.  Anything to mask the flavor of this strange animal-created food that tasted not of animal but of.... something else. Something undefinable.

Why did everyone love them so much when I couldn't stand the sight of them? Worst of all, for me, was the "runny yolk" so popular on restaurant tables and cooking shows. Nothing made me more horrified then to see that yellow slightly viscous goop sliding around on someone's toast. Or bowl of noodles. Why would you do that to a perfectly good bowl of other ingredients? Poison it with a runny, snotty blob? And why did everyone else lick their lips and praise the joys of the bright yellow yolk swimming around on their plates?  My inability to stomach the thought of eating this odd liquidy thing that is both slippery and, somehow, able to hold it's shape made me feel immature. Inexperienced.  A philistine in the world of food pleasures.

In one of my early years of teaching in Philadelphia, our school offered us free flu shots in the winter. I went to get my shot, and experienced the one and only allergic reaction of my life. My arm was red and swallow, the area around the shot burning hot. The hives traveled to my chest, my face, and my stomach.  Puzzled, I went back to the doctor who had given us the shots. She asked, "Ah? Are you allergic to eggs?" Apparently they use some material from raw egg yolks to hold the material needed for the flu shot. Ah-ha! Allergic to eggs! Perhaps that explains my lifelong revulsion? My terror of the yellow blob?

Having no hard evidence to either prove or disprove this theory, I continued my own personal experimentation-- desperate to join the ranks of the Glory is the Runny Yolk crowd.  I'm not sure why I wanted do badly to be able to enjoy the goopy mess-- but perhaps it seemed to me that there was some sort of sophistication associated with the sunny side egg, and I felt too much of a child to be able to enjoy such pleasures. I wanted to be a grown up too!

Luckily for me, I met and started to date Michael. He loved eggs of all kinds and taught me an important secret: salt. If you salt your scrambled eggs, if you liberally salt and pepper a hard-boiled egg, the taste is elevated far beyond ordinary egg-ness. Also, a hard-boiled egg must be perfectly timed to be just yellow enough-- but not green and pasty-- to be enjoyed. Still- though- my love of Michael's eggs was limited only to his homemade hard boiled and omelettes. My terror of the unleashed yolk continued, unabated.

And then. There was the Burbank airport.

I know. I know. For any of you who live in Los Angeles (Wendy Lopata!), you can't begin to imagine why on earth a blog about food would include a sentence implying something culinary happened at the Burbank airport (and mind you- it's official name is the Bob Hope Airport so you can kind of imagine the place even if you've never been there).  But the Burbank airport will always hold a special place in my heart-- and not just because it is the airport we fly to to visit my sister and her family.  It's the place where I first ate a runny yolk, and lived to tell the tale.

I meant to order a hard-boiled egg. What arrived, instead, was a soft-boiled egg. I looked at my plate-- horrified, almost close to tears. Michael said, "Just try it! Put some salt and pepper on it and dip your toast in there."  I'm embarrassed to admit- I was so upset,  I was shaking. There might have been tears. There I was -- 37 years old, a self-proclaimed Food Obsessive, a devourer of food writing, food adventurer around the world; someone who eagerly ate seafood of all types with the heads on, tore into cheeks of giant fish, ate hearts of ducks and chickens, ate crickets and snails and eel, loved all kind of fish eggs with abandon, ate any kind of vegetable, no matter how bitter, ate durian (hated it) and jackfruit (loved it) and felt the taste of a fabulous, strong,  smelly  French cheese was as close to orgasmic as one can get without, actually, having an orgasm--- and I was crying about a soft-boiled egg. In the Burbank airport.

So I tried it.

It's a moment I will never forget. For there-- in the silly little diner, in the Burbank airport-- I tasted actual EGG for the first time in my life. I believe, once I finished my bite, I said to Michael, "Oh... my.... GOD."  It was incredible. I had no idea that that the tasteless, air filled stuff I had been filling with cheese or covering in hot sauce all these years tasted like THAT.  Rich, dense, beautifully-- deep. A flavor that was undefinable and yet so unique. The best word I have to describe it is FULL. Mouth-filling. Body-filling. Soul-filling. Bright and thick and so... if you'll excuse the odd description... alive.  I had never tasted anything like it.

Michael said-- "If you like that, wait until you try a fried egg!" And so at our next destination that summer, in Philadelphia, I ordered fried eggs at the Marathon Grill. They arrived-- bright yellow yolks, sunny side to the sky-- and I couldn't believe the joy I was having with every bite.  I'd never tasted anything that felt so complete to me, so perfectly packed with nutrients and flavor and-- what? Thickness? Iron? Vitamins? I don't know-- but it was as if each bite filled my whole being with some kind of buttery goodness. A fuel my body had been missing for 37 years.

And now, of course, I can't stop eating the damn things. And I can report that the best fried eggs I've had so far have been in Amsterdam. That is a city that is downright obsessed with fried eggs. Every bar, every cafe, has them on the menu- just fried simply, with local brown bread.  I can tell you from experience that there may be nothing more perfect on earth than sitting by a canal on a sunny day in June, dunking your brown Dutch sourdough bread into a beautiful bright yellow European egg.

Although I might also add that hard-boiled quail eggs, served with lime salt and chili powder, as a snack before a seafood meal in Denang, Vietnam is also pretty amazing.

Quail eggs are also tasty in fried form-- but sweeter, and less rich in the middle, I think.  They are also delicious skewered and roasted on an open grill as part of "yakatori" in Japan:

Another lovely treat is a fried egg on top of a crab-rice dish, made in Galle, Sri Lanka-- pictured here.

It was a long journey that took only 37 years to reach a satisfactory conclusion.  Dear eggs of the world-- I plan to consume as much of you as I can. I'm sorry I maligned you for so long.  And, clearly, I'm not allergic to you.

Up next to try? Poached eggs. They look very impressive in their funny Round but Wavy On the Surface shape, but haven't had the chance yet to try one. It's on my food-obsessive life list, I promise.

For the love of prawns (part 1)

Let me be clear.

When I say "prawns" I am not talking about "shrimp." A prawn is a thing of beauty. A succulent, briny, complex creature, prepared in its whole form.

Not raised in a farm full of toxic refuse and antibiotics, and then packaged and sold, frozen. Not some tiny curled up thing, headless, pale, with a vaguely spoiled, off-texture between chewy and crunchy.
Not some sad pale half circle, dipped in batter, fried with only the tiny pink tail peeking out.

I am talking about prawns.

A prawn is prepared, whole, complete with shell and head. Eyes, even. There are tiger prawns almost as big as lobster, king prawns larger than your hand. When you eat them, it's messy and fabulous. When they are coated in sauce, you end the experience happily sucking spice and tamarind from underneath your fingernails. The scent of them is everywhere.  A true lover of prawns peels the shell by hand and eats the tiny crunchy parts. Takes the head and drinks in everything inside.

When you are lucky, you might find a tiny pink sack of eggs, somewhere near the head. It's a treasure that tastes of salt and sea.

To prepare them best, be sure not to overcook them. There is nothing worse than to take a beautiful large prawn and roast the hell of it-- leaving the texture remeniscent of leather or plastic. If they are undercooked, you risk some slight funky taste from the head. You drink it and then wonder to yourself, "Hmmm. I just ate slightly undercooked prawn brain. I'm not sure how I feel about that." And then cross your fingers and hope you won't be spending the rest of your evening in the toilet.

But eating should be adventure, I think. Life is short, as they say.

Our Prawn Love Affair began when Michael and I were living in Barcelona, in 2010.  I'll never forget the first time, when we first stepped our toes into what we become a life long pursuit. We were in El Born, a neighborhood in the older part of the city. We were wondering through the beautiful tiny dark streets, eager for a local place to try something new, something unique.  It often takes us a small lifetime to choose a restaurant when wandering, as we both suffer from the But What If There is the Perfect Place Right Around the Corner disease. But, occasionally, we have to bite the bullet and commit even if it means perhaps being disappointed.

On that particular fall night, we were tired, grumpy, and eager to just pick a damn place already. We found a tiny shop decorated with various suggestions of the fishing industry-- outside, a large wooden barell, inside, netting hanging from the ceiling. On the wall inside, a mural painted on tiles of a seashore scene-- boats and waves and little houses by the beach. A small TV played a soccer game. We found a table and were given a plastic coated menu with large pictures of all the items on offer.

I don't remember the name of the place. Perhaps someone who reads this in Barcelona can help me out. In any event-- we ordered prawns and they arrived-- cooked quickly in a pan, flavored simply with garlic and oil and plenty of salt. This was our introduction to "Gambas a La Plancha." 


I can't recall now which of us with the first to take the Plunge into Prawn Head Eating-- but we did. It was terrifying and amazing. You peel off the little legs, then the shell of the body, and then pull back the shell of the head, to reveal the strange multi-colored mess inside. The taste of the head is nothing like the body-- it is bitter, saltly, and umami in a way unlike anything else. I was surprised that Michael was eager to try peeling and eating the whole thing-- he has always been hesitant to eat hard shelled crabs on the Eastern Seaboard in the US. But we had both watched a lot of Anthony Bourdian, and one of his strongest messages is: For goodness sake, eat the head! It's the best part.

And so we did. And we've been hooked ever since. The photo above was taken at our favorite place to get Gambas a La Plancha-- La Paradeta, also in El Born in Barcelona. You have to wait outside on a line to get in-- and when you enter, there is a huge seafood counter in front of you. You point to what you want and then wait for it to be prepared. The prawns are perfect. Garlicy, sweet, tender. Never overcooked. If you go to Barcelona-- go there. Trust me.

When we left Spain I mourned, perhaps more than anything, the loss of Gambas from our life. How could any place ever top the spectacular prawns of Catalunya?

Well. I hate to say it. But I'm sorry, dear Barcelona. You've been topped.

Not once. But many times over, and in many different ways. Perhaps it isn't fair to say-- perhaps I should not hold Prawn Competitions in my own mind-- but I now believe the best are in Vietnam. Or Thailand. Or India. Or... surprisingly... Oman.

Let me share, for a moment, the most spectacular prawn experience I've had to date. It was here, in India. My friends and I were traveling on a houseboat through the backwaters of Kerala. For our evening meal, the captain pulled the boat over to the shore to find some local seafood. At a small hut by the water, three gentleman showed us their wares from styrofoam coolers. It was not a fancy set up, by any stretch of the imagination. Two rows of coolers, a rusty metal scale, and a tin for cash and change. We bargained as best we could. I knew I wanted prawns-- the best prawns available- so we invested and bought the largest creatures I've ever seen. It may not be fair to call them prawns, really, as they were almost lobsters. But, officially, they were tiger prawns, caught right there in the waters near Kerala. Netted by these fishermen or their friends, brought to be sold to the eager tourists in their houseboats. Once we choose our amount, they are placed in plastic bags and given to our chef and houseboat captain.

So we bought a few and they were prepared on the boat in the makeshift kitchen at the back. Their kitchen? Two burners fueled by a mini propane tank. To prepare the dish? Two pans and plenty of spices, oil, ghee. The result? Prawn perfection. Sweet in the body and salty in the head. Tender flesh that melts in the mouth with little to no bite or give. Pink and healthy.  Enormous-- the largest prawns I've ever seen-- so big I can only eat two. And I have been known to eat eight Gambas in Spain in one sitting. These-- they are not so easily conquered.

But unforgettable. 

What lingers...

I am obsessed.

Certifiably, perhaps. Plagued by constant mental revisitation? Certainly.  Perhaps it is unhealthy, perhaps it is bizarre. But I am caught, forever, in a mental hamster wheel. There are memories that I lose, easily--- the location of my keys, the e-mail I was supposed to send, the thing that I was supposed to do yesterday that was so important but I completely forgot to do-- but some things I hold on to, indefinitely.

The first bite of my first brioche.

The nose filling, palette swimming, dark punch of a creamy Catalan cheese.

The burn of that spicy fish I ate in Chiang Mai, Thailand-- so spicy I thought I had suddenly come down with a fever, sweat gathering in the folds of my elbows.

Black truffles, sliced thin and placed on a scallop, in a cafe in Paris, in Bellville.

The first time I tasted duck.

Smoked mussels on the deck of a sail boat of the island of St. Johns.

Bright green olives slightly cured served in huge bowls in the Tuscan countryside. My classmates remembered the wine-- I couldn't forget the olives.  To this day I search for them, in vain. I have never again found those incredible, meaty, perfect ovals of green.

Snails cooked with lemongrass and chili, prepared for us at a "fresh beer" shop on the streets of Hanoi.

Roast corn, cooked on coals, on the beaches of Chennai, India.

A bagel with cream cheese, lox, and tomato at Rachel's Nosheri, in Center City, Philadelphia.

It's true that I love to travel, to explore the world and see the sights.  I can do the tourist thing and take the obligatory photos of the obligatory important spots. But what I love most of all is to eat. And everything I eat becomes a tangible memory for me-- the taste and smell is easily conjured up at will, allowing me to relive the most spectacular moments when I need them. When I leave a place-- it is the food that I carry with me, more than anything else.  My family would say this is because we are Jews-- after a trip, the first question we ask ourselves and each other is: "And what did you eat?" I'm not sure why this is a particularly Jewish trait but perhaps it has something to do with the deep connection between food and celebration-- at Passover, we feast; at Yom Kippur we break the fast; we define ourselves by the special things we eat and those we avoid. Try to explain the joy of gefilte fish to a gentile and you'll see what I mean. Or try to tell a Jew to eat their bagel with butter, not cream cheese.

My relationship with food has not always been easy. When you are obsessed with food-- consumed by the constant exploration of everything you let pass your lips-- you can easily become unable to think of anything other than calories, fat, excess. You lie awake at night cursing yourself for your thoughtlessness, your momentary slips in vigilance. How could you be so careless! You must watch everything with perfect precision-- you must control intake because if you don't, who will? No one can protect you from yourself.

But I'd like to believe my food obsession has found a healthier plane. Now a days I am obsessed with the idea of food from the cultural roots of it to the making of it. My bookshelves contain more tomes on food than most anything else. I've watched every food/travel TV show there is-- my favorites being Bizarre Foods and No Reservations. I pride myself on finding the most local, most obscure, most extreme food experiences I can when we travel.

That being said, I hate mayonnaise. And I've avoided pork and beef for more than twenty years. For a long time, I was a vegetarian. Then I tasted duck for the first time in France-- and I was hooked. Now I'm a "when-the-mood-strikes-me-atarian"- that is to say-- I am mostly vegetarian, except when I am confronted with things I cannot live without: huge head-on prawns, duck, roast chicken, snails, crabs, fish eggs...  Some might call that being a BullshitAtarian. Or at least a HypocriteAtarian.  I'm not sure what I am but I long ago decided that I won't feel guilty for making my own choices. I am plagued enough by Food Related Guilt.  I can forgive myself the treat of fish eggs, a few times a year. Who can deny themselves salt-and-spicy roasted crab legs in Vietnam? Not me.

So why write a blog about all of this? I mean- who cares? Perhaps no one does, but this is the curse of the obsessed: we don't know what to do with all of our excess thoughts. We can lie awake and think about them. We can bore our husbands to death as we ramble on and on about "the complexities of flavor in the spice rub" over yet another meal. Or we can put it all down somewhere so perhaps we can get on with the rest of the business of our lives. I know I must have mental space for something else rather than trying to conjure up in my sensory mind the exact tang of the tamarind flavoring in those prawns in Saigon.

So forgive me. In advance. I need a space to obsess and share. I need to find some use for all of these memories, and perhaps at the same time inspire those who are traveling to a given location to try something new. I am full of food-related travel advice. Maybe you want to hear it, maybe you don't. It's a blog- you don't have to read it. I won't force you.

But I'll write it because I need to. The hamster wheel brain stops for nothing.