Food First

 

We’ve been on the road since October 2023. It’s funny that I don’t write much about food, because it is 57% of what we do: buy, transport, cook, eat, and clean food.  In a new place, we must find markets, discover new foods, and learn a new kitchen. We don’t have a car, so we shop almost daily, carrying what we can in our backpacks. We eat out too, in less expensive places, for taste and company. Sometimes we are acutely aware of prices. Other times, everything is cheap for us, though costs are rising to painful levels for local people.

Food is personal. One reason I don’t write about food is that it is personal. I learned that when I was crossing the border from Louisiana into eastern Texas on my bicycle.  We met a man going the other way who could not wait to eat a Po Boy.  I did not want to tell him, or readers of my book, that I was not partial to Louisiana cuisine and could not wait for Tex-Mex.  In Uruguay, everything from bread to dessert tasted like salt to me. I met a woman from the US who found the local cuisine lacked salt. 

What is food? We don’t agree. Our taste buds, and what we believe is necessary for cooking and eating, are personal, cultural, and geographical. The Roman Empire infamously conquered places where they could grow grapes and olives. To them, a place without wine and virgin pressed oil was not worth plundering.  You can still taste the remnants of those Roman invasion borders, concentrated in Italy and moving outward to Spain, Portugal, south-eastern Europe, Morocco, and other parts of the Middle East.

 

We found that butter and sour cream are ubiquitous in France and Eastern Europe, but as you move south in the Balkans, olive oil shares the plate. France can not cook or eat without butter. Lard and corn oil, which survive hot temperatures without refrigeration, predominate in Latin America. Sri Lankans use ghee—butter clarified to remove protein and water, so it will not go rancid in the heat. It is the secret soak that brings out maximum flavor in their spiced curries.

 

Carbohydrates also have their regions.  In Norway and Latvia, rye thrives where wheat does not. Norwegian grocery stores have aisles just for rye hardtacks. In Cormeilles, France, we loved watching the morning ritual in the bakery below our apartment: a steady stream of people, unwrapped loaves in hand. Burek, a spiral of bread stuffed with meat or cheese, is Bosnia’s baguette. Moving south, into Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, flat breads predominate. Moroccan rounds were my favorite, made on a griddle in dark street kitchens. Wheat is ubiquitous in  European-predominant Chile and Uruguay. In Colombia, however, corn, rice, and potatoes were common, and plantains–pressed like a tortilla and often served with meat, beans, or vegetable toppings.  Food is not food without rice in Sri Lanka, Korea, Japan, and China. It is also the essential ingredient in Spain’s signature seafood dish.  Peru was the most carbohydrate-diverse place. In addition to corn, rice, and wheat, there were quinoa, amaranth, and hundreds of varieties of potatoes, ancient and Indigenous in origin, and still harvested in their diversity and eaten locally.

Potatoes are the staff of life in the UK and Ireland. When we ordered Chinese take-out in Northern Ireland, it came with fries, not rice.

What vegetables and fruits are ubiquitous, what spices make a meal? This is where our preferences often show up. I loved the intricate spices of Sri Lankan curry, and the juxtaposition of diverse vegetables and grains in Peruvian food. Korean cooking won me over with its plethora of side dishes, delicate seafood, and spiced tofu soups. I was not enamored of Japanese food, but I loved to look at it– presentation and color are their forte.

 

The Szechuan dishes in Chengdu, China, made me sweat and swoon. But I also loved simple dishes, barely spiced, cooked with fresh ingredients in the Balkans.  I have never tasted a mushroom like that, roasted slice in Belgrade at the restaurant outside the Tito museum.  Farmers’ markets in Bosnia and Portugal had fresh local produce every day. The rye bread in Latvia was so good that I did not want to put anything on it that would cover the flavor. The black sourdough loaf would stay fresh for a week.

Some of the best food we have had has been cooked in immigrant cafes.   In Cairo, Egypt, Brussels, Belgium, Cadíz, Spain, and Milan, Italy, we had delectable Lebanese food and some of the most memorable interactions with staff and other customers. For long-time travelers missing community, this ingredient can make the meal. Immigrants understand that kind of longing.

Food is essential. We, humans, don’t live without it. The supply chains of our 21st-century world and the inequities of global capital mean that not everyone eats, or eats enough, or has access to nutritious, culturally relevant food. I know this is obvious. But it needs to be said and contemplated, because IT IS NOT NECESSARY. We have the capacity to produce the food our 8+ billion bodies need. In fact, today we are producing food for 10 billion. And yet 2.3 billion of us are food insecure. Profit motive means products are produced—at great environmental cost— that are actually destructive to our health.

 Without water, we don’t eat. In Latin America, the water was potable in Medellin, Colombia, and Punta Arenas, Chile, but not in Lima, Peru, or Montevideo, Uruguay. In Asia, we had to buy water in Sri Lanka and China. In Europe, it was not safe in Albania, Turkey, or Greece.  Though we were advised not to, we boiled and drank the water in Morocco without problems. We could not drink from the faucet in Cairo.

Food is wasted. I am writing this in Switzerland, a country where food waste is a big issue. Why? Because they can. Wealth creates waste. Although the country is unusually clean, there is no composting system, which at least puts food waste back into the soil. This was true in Japan as well, a place where garbage is rarely seen on the street but is created in greater quantities than in some neighboring countries.  Japanese fruits and vegetables are wrapped in plastic and styrofoam.  In Sri Lanka, there was plastic waste on the beaches. Where it came from was not clear. The ocean does not care about national borders. There, people consume much less than in Japan or Switzerland. Many people do not consume enough. They reuse and repurpose everything. Food is not wasted.  People eat what is local and ripe, and dry what they cannot eat.

 

We try to be open and flexible as we travel, but we too have our likes and needs. No matter where we are, we start our day with a hearty breakfast, cooked by Dave: scrambled eggs with vegetables for both of us, yogurt with chia seeds and fruit for me, and oatmeal with fruit for him. I drink coffee. Dave, green tea.

We prefer the vegetarian and seafood proteins: beans, eggs, tofu, and fish. Dave finds non-cow cheeses easier on his stomach, so we have learned the words goat and sheep in 20 languages. We sometimes eat chicken, a cheap source of protein everywhere, but not pork—a global staple except in Muslim countries, or beef—the food most often hawked to entice us. We also avoid the high-priced “vegan” food free of protein, and sold just for us. We don’t drink if we have to pay for it, so we disappoint a lot of establishments that make their money off of foreigners’ taste for alcohol.

 

For all our differences, fast food is a global phenomenon: pizzas, burgers, fried chicken, and a latte in a paper cup. These days, you can find an avocado toast most anywhere.

One food, ubiquitous in the US, is surprisingly hard to find. A staple at home, we now purchase it in small quantities, often at high prices, in containers labelled in American English. Even places that grow and consume peanuts do not eat peanut butter.

Supply Chains: On our way to Portugal, we stopped in São Miguel, off the coast of Portugal, where airport stores sold pineapple plushies for visitors to remember their time on this Azorean island, yet all the pineapples in Lisbon were from Costa Rica! Yesterday, on the Swiss/Italian border, I found sweet potatoes and zucchini from Chile. Nations may not go to war over sweet potatoes, but petroleum wars will affect their taste, availability, and price of the tuber.  I don’t think the goal is hyper-localism. Latvian rye and Sri Lankan tea are unparalleled.   Imported citrus keeps the northern and deepest south regions of our planet happy and scurvy-free. Only a few islands in the Caribbean and Indonesia grow nutmeg. When local production is sustainable,  and international trade is based on need, we survive as a species.