YOB: # 30. Have an International Dinner

By Beth

I'm a big fan of food. Probably why I'm not a size 2, but hey, looks aren't everything, right? Right? I can be bribed with cheesecake, or chocolate. Or chocolate cheesecake. Or cheesecake dribbled with chocolate syrup. Or chocolate cheesecake yogurt (it exists, trust me). Or…well, you get the point. Food is great, there are so many flavors, textures, spices; enough to explore for a lifetime. I really wish I could be that guy, Guy, from Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Not the hair, just the taste-testing.

Funnily enough, though, I get nervous around foreign food, I was almost an adult before I tried Chinese food. See, I had a bad experience with food overseas when I was quite young. I remember it like it was yesterday….(cue the wavy flashback screen with the wobbly music). It was late winter of my 5th grade year of school. I hated 5th grade, was a 10 year old girl trapped in a 14 year old's body. Don't even ask. So I was looking forward to going to Israel with my family and our church group for 10 days. Any time out of school was okay with me. My parents had been several times, leaving my brother and I behind with various relatives, family friends and strangers. This time we were old enough to go. I was excited, it would be my first time out of the US, there would be foreign boys there and I'd get out of school, did I mention that? It is only looking back now that I can appreciate the places I went and their Biblical significance. I'd love to go back.

But getting back to the food. Israel has great food, most of the time. Falafels are amazing, I've never had a good one here in the US. There was a McDavid's at one of the cities we visited, the Israeli version of McDonald's. Seriously, it's called McDavid's. All kosher menu. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah, then there was breakfast. Being a normal American child, I was used to cereal and toast and the occasional pancake or waffle for breakfast. Maybe eggs once in a while, but that was pushing it. Israel had fish. Freshly caught fish. Like, it had just been brought out of the boat, run under some water and slapped on a serving plate. It still had the eyes in it and everything. (I have a thing about my food watching me while I eat, or any food that resembles eyeballs, ask me about the time I screamed "I can't eat with all these black things staring at me" while out to dinner, referring to the black olives in my salad; the African American family sitting next to us was not amused, neither was my mother). I also am not a big seafood fan. So seeing that fish, with the eyeballs still in it and, everything turned my stomach. There were other choices there, but after seeing the fish, my tummy was having none of it. I tried to choke down some "cereal" but the milk was, uh, ewwww. I can't even describe it. I had morning sickness every morning, ended up chewing on breadsticks each morning to calm my stomach. I was suspicious of foreign food ever since.

I did eventually grow out of this suspicion. I went to Japan twice and ate all sorts of things, some I don't even know what they were. Probably better that way. Ate a small squid, that still looked like a squid. Japanese pizza, which is NOTHING like the pizza we have here. I did fall in love with gyoza while I was there, dipped in soy sauce. Mmmmmm….. But I still will choose American over foreign 99% of the time. So when Lara suggested an International Dinner Night for the Year of the Birthday list, I was apprehensive. What would she make me eat?

We toyed with the idea of making our own international dishes. After all, recipes abound online and we both have friends in other countries we could get authentic recipes from. But, well, that's really a lot of work and we didn't just want to make something simple, like chicken parm. We can't do things that simply. But ingredients are hard to come by and then the second half of the year hit. Hard. At one point, when Lara and Kate came to my house, we went to IHOP for dinner. I took pictures because it's the International House of Pancakes. It totally counted! Kate had to go and spoil it and tell us it didn't. We figured we had it in case the real international dinner night never happened. It'll go in the scrapbook.

We did, however, actually have a real international dinner night not too long ago. I'll admit, I was nervous. Lara said we were going to Chopstix, a Chinese/Japanese restaurant. I have to be extremely hungry to eat Chinese food (which is what my kids eat for dinner every time I go to Lara's and they're home with G) and I've been disappointed in the Japanese food I've had when not in Japan. I hate being disappointed. But off we trudged. I ordered sweet and sour chicken and some gyoza, just to see if they could measure up. We had some fun conversations, watched as the restaurant filled up around us, listened to some crazy family seated next to us and ate our food. The chicken was good, safe. And I must say, this place had the best gyoza I've had out of Japan. I would highly recommend you eat there at least once. It was a good experience. I believe we also went to a roller derby event that weekend and watch some married friends of ours try to kill each other. Good times. No fish eyeballs.

Comments

[Lara]

If you do decide to star in Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, I'll buy stock in Tums.

[MAD21]

But Lara... it would be SO much fun!