When you eat what’s in front of you or go hungry, you discover that you enjoy some foods more than you thought you did. I would like a brief moment to introduce you to some of these foods.
– Mayonnaise: it’s not just for sandwiches. It’s also for salad, hot dogs, rice, potatoes, beans, and anything else that needs flavor added to it. Combine with ketchup for combo points.
– Raw Onions: yeah, I always liked my onions sautéed or fried or grilled, anything but raw, but the sweet taste of crunchy onion slivers in the third head of cabbage you’ve eaten that week really kicks things up a notch and makes you feel like you’re eating more than water in leaf form. Speaking of cabbage…
– Raw cabbage: sure, it may actually take more calories to digest than it adds to your body, but it fills you up, at least for a half hour or so. And you can always add that mayonnaise to make it extra filling.
– Goose: the best way to enjoy goose is to buy it from the wife of the mayor of the town of two hundred people in which you’re staying, and then have a Romanian camp caretaker painstakingly prepare it and serve it over rice as he tells confusing jokes about aggressive pigs in trees eating plums (true story).
– Meat in a can: cringe, all ye who have read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” but the meat paste isn’t half bad. I began living by this rule of thumb when I moved out on my own: “It may be cheaper, but never buy meat in a can. Ever.” But in Moldova, this simply isn’t the case. Of course, you won’t have any idea what KIND of meat it is, but mm-mm, that paste-y goodness all over your freshly baked mystery bread makes for a good meal. Especially with ketchup and mayonnaise. Add raw onions for an overwhelmed palate.
As we say on my team, “T I N A – This is not America,” and I’m eating things here that I never would have eaten in America. And heck, we haven’t even left Europe. Just wait for the “things I’ve eaten” update from India and Africa!
