Eating outside your box

[Calidore]

A friend came to town for a few days' visit last week, and one of the items on her agenda was a vegan/raw food restaurant a friend of hers had highly recommended. I'm ambivalent about that genre myself--I can handle vegetarian food and, if forced to live on it, would quite happily eat Indian for the rest of my life, but the vegan/raw culture gets a bit too precious for me.

We started with an appetizer of crackers with four flavors of nut-based "cheese". I don't remember now what all the flavors were, but I liked the pesto one best. In general, I think they ranged from "okay" to "very good". The crackers themselves were kind of salty and bland, but they did taste better than the tree bark they resembled.

Entrees: We had just worked out, so I was looking for protein. I finally ended up settling on a rice medley, while my friend got a pad thai with noodles made from strips of coconut. My dish arrived as a small cylinder of grains that looked like something you'd stick on a bird feeder, though it tasted fine for what it was. I tried a bite of my friend's pad thai, and that was delicious. Also delicious were the chocolate fondue dessert and the small faux ice cream tasters our waitress brought us.

When I winced at the prices, my friend pointed out, fairly, that making this kind of food takes a great deal of effort. She also likes crafts and can appreciate the effort of creation and is willing to pay for it. I, on the other hand, am no kind of craftsman, just an eater, and so I like to see what I'm spending on my plate. Especially if I'm going to drop $30 on a single meal, I don't think I should feel the urge to go to the Mexican place on the same block for a couple of tacos and some horchata right afterward.

Still, I survived, and while I have no real desire to continue eating that style, I can handle it if the company is worth it..

So let's hear your stories about eating something new!

[108 fountains]

Here's my contibution. It comes with a story.

About eight years ago, I was in charge of a visit by a high-ranking official from the U.S. State Department who was in charge of environmental issues to visit Kratchie in Cambodia to observe one of the few places where freshwater Mekong dolphins still survive (although it seems likely they will be extinct within our lifetimes). During the long drive from Phnom Penh, we stopped at a roadside teashop in an area of Cambodia that is known for its tarantulas. While in the shop, a sidewalk vendor came in carrying a platterful of tarantulas (fried in batter). There were six of us in the party, so we ordered one and cut it into pieces. I took a small bite. If you've ever gone fishing with a container full of crickets as bait, you know how they smell. Well, the tarantula pretty much tasted like crickets smell. I did not order seconds.

Then one of the guys with us, a representative from World Wildlife Fund who sat next to me, said, "Hey look! She's got a live, de-fanged tarantula crawling around on her apron as advertisement." And it was true, a rather large specimen was crawling around on the white apron she wore.

The high-ranking official then said, "Well, I'm going to have to get my picture taken with that."

So the WWF guys, who spoke Khmer, persuaded the woman to place the tarantula on the State Department official's arm for photos.

In the meantime, I asked the guy next to me, "How in the world do you know it's been de-fanged?"

He answered, "Well, I don't really."

Needless to say, it was a relief to me when the woman took back the tarantula.