Eating Well in America

After two years of eating beans and rice every day, and where diversifying the diet meant eating rice and beans, it's great to be back home where there are more food options than I can imagine! My friends have been taking me out, reintroducing me to culture and food, and generally showing me a great time.

I for some reason have been really enthralled with the amazing food we've been eating, so I decided to take pictures of some of the best meals to date.

First up would have to be Shrimp-A-Palooza, hosted by the great and wonderful Tyler Savoy, a native of Louisiana. There must have been at least 25 people at his house for this real southern home cooked shrimp broil, my first, but hopefully not last! There are no words to describe the amazingness of this meal, so pictures are below:

(One of Three giant pots of shrimp.)

(Tyler and Embo - quite the duo.)

(Shrimp, making itself delicious.)

(The shrimp was cooked with lots of veggies and sauce and sausage then laid out on paper all down the table for everyone to just dig in. It was DELICIOUS.)

Another night my friends Shannon, Jenn and Sam got together and decided that we needed to go out for Hot Pot, which is the Chinese version of fondue. Shannon, having lived in China for a while decided we should try out a place called Mala Tang, a hot pot place in Arlington, VA. The restaurant's website has this to say about hot pot: "If you wander around Chef Liu's hometown of Chengdu, you'll find the streets filled with diners sitting at tables gathering around bubbling hot pots, in which dozens of dried chilies bob up and down in an oily red broth.

Meals notoriously last hours as locals chat, sip beer, and dip morsels of food into a simmering liquid of "hot and spicy" broth. One of the most popular dishes in Sichuan, this delicacy is eaten by rich and poor alike, whether in a fancy restaurant, or on construction sites where workers hunker down to eat it, paying a small sum for a skewer of food to plunge into the spicy broth.

The hot pot itself is a saucepan that sits on a portable burner, surrounded by an array of small plates piled high with fresh ingredients. Guests select pieces of food and drop them into the soup to cook, and then dip them into a delicious mixture of seasoned sesame oil and chopped garlic.

While hot pot can be found throughout China, Sichuan is famous for its ma la hot pot, which is characterized by the yin and yang effect that the sichuan pepper and the red hot chilies create when combined together." Again, delicious. Photos of the hot pot experience are below. We had so much fun eating, that we forgot to take pictures of us.

(The silver hot pots, and a wide array of things that were dunked and cooked: cabbage, noodles, tofu, chicken and more.)

(America is great, because you can get beer from anywhere!)

(Fish balls cooking away in some hot and spicy hot pot.)

Ok. Then I left DC and moved up to Boston for the summer for work. It was fun and exciting, but involved me spending two months straight living in a dorm and then hotel room and eating all of my meals in restaurants. That gets old really fast, and there is no reason to get excited about going out to eat. However, I did enjoy the day we went out for sushi and came across this very Boston sushi menu. They sure do love their sports teams there.

My only awesome food day in Boston was July 1st. I remember the day, because I had been eating at restaurants for a month, exactly. My great friend, and amazing human being, Erin Gannon, made me a home cooked meal at her apartment. We went to the market, bought all kinds of great veggies, stopped by the greek place to get some falafel to go, drank some grape soda and hung out with these fish while we waited for our food. Amazing.

(Grape middle eastern soda. Delicious.)

(Fresh fish at the market.)

(When I got home from Boston, Tyler threw me a welcome home from Peace Corps and Boston/You're actually back for real now/Happy Graduation party. We grilled meat, smoked cigars and made s'mores. America is cool.)

(And of course, last week in a fit of missing El Salvador, I went to my neighborhood pupusaria alone and got some pupusas so I didn't feel so far from home. Bachata blaring, single men downing Corona, telenovelas running in the background, I felt at home.)