Adventurous Eating (Pictures Not Included)

I was not originally an adventurous eater. Chicken was my go to meat, cheese and french fries were staples, and anything different was gross and icky. I only ate new foods when I had to, and exotic foods from other cultures were out of the question. So if I was eating dinner at a friends house and they served tilapia, I’d have to grit my teeth and eat it. Free meals were always welcome, as was the tail end of potluck lunches, no matter what they had cooked up.


But my non-American eating expanded as my personal contacts expanded. I’m not counting Chinese buffets or Mexican food; those are, if you have traveled to either of those countries, a strongly Americanized version of their cuisine. I got my first taste when I traveled to Mexico in high school. We had dug a waterline for a village or put in concrete floors in a house (although, being a teenager, I’m sure I did very little actual work.) Around lunchtime a woman from the village had prepared a lavish meal for us. I could not name a thing that she had made, but some of them looked like tamales. After diplomatically avoiding the ice in our drinks, we dug in.

And life has never been the same. Again, I have no idea what I ate, but it was unlike any Mexican food here in the States that I had ever had. She spoke no English, I spoke ten words of Spanish. But thankfulness through service needs no language to express itself.

I returned home and thought little of my expanded palate until college. In 2010 I traveled to Uganda for 6 weeks and was forced to eat anything and everything they had. Posho, plantains, jackfruit, sugar cane, peanut sauce, and much more that I’ve since forgotten made me into an eater of anything put in front of me.

I worked with international students through the later half of my college career and they would bring snacks for their teacher or invite me to come eat with them. One of my friends from Iran introduced me to Sultan’s in Stillwater (get the chicken tikka masala). It was glorious. I learned that there were not only good places to eat foreign food outside of America, but even within our country as well. By the time Courtney and I went to live in China, I knew my taste buds could handle the challenge if not my stomach.

But it’s not always exciting. That same friend introduced me to a yogurt drink, which like drinking warm, liquid yogurt that’s a little expired. When we lived in China, we ate some open-faced grilled eggplant that made us both get food poisoning. I cannot handle tons of spice either, so dishes would often be too hot for me to eat more than a few mouthfuls of. I never ate the stinky tofu though; some names are deserved.

That’s why tonight I’m writing this as I eat golden curry chicken in my own home, cooked in my own wok, by my own hands (just kidding; by my wife’s hands. I did cut the chicken). As you can tell, other people are usually the reason for my adventurous eats. I could extrapolate on how expanding what you eat is a microcosm for how opening up your mind and heart to those that are different than you makes you a more empathetic and understanding person, but you’re smart enough to draw that conclusion yourself. You don’t need to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes; just eat their food.