Mutterings and Musings

Holiday Food

Challenge: Where are some unusual places you’ve been? What was the most interesting or surprising thing you learned or discovered about those places?

I have been very, very lucky in recent years. I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively, particularly in the past seven years. I met Best Beloved climbing Kilimanjaro, and since we both love travel it only makes sense that we would have built on this. Because of the season nature of BB's work (his family run a holiday park), he doesn't traveling more than about forty minutes from home during the summer. So whilst we've been on some pretty exotics holidays, we've also gone camping ten miles up the road and felt like we were a million miles away. We got a shiny new tent for Christmas last year, and then covid hit meaning that the very first time we got to use it was my birthday in July. We camped in the in-laws garden, two miles across town. And had a thoroughly brilliant time.

Day Two's challenge asked about food; what do I like cooking and what are my comfort foods. Well, one of the things I love most about travelling is trying new foods. In Hawai'i, we had poke which is raw fish. In Dubai, Arabic coffee and dates - I have never liked dates, except, well, now I do. So much so that I'm trying to grow some date palms from stone. In Peru and Bolivia I had llama, guinea pig, and mountain trout creviche (more raw fish, but this time 'cooked' by soaking in lemon or lime juice).
Cornwall, were I live, specialises in pasties, but there's also a local dish called stargazy pie - which is basically fish pie with sardine or pilchard heads sticking out. Funnily enough, I'll try the guinea pig, but I draw the line at fish-head pie....

Every country I have visited, I've tried to learn a new dish or style of cooking - I'm not saying I'm any good at cooking it but I do love experimenting. My step-mother is Polish and recently we've taken to swopping comfort food recipes; I made kotlets and, when I'm feeling brave, gonna try pierogi, whilst she's now making shepherd's pie and roast dinners.