I've suddenly gone all international with my eating.
I start with Chinese food ("Americanized Chinese")
from the local greasy spoon take-out place that I like. There's a better restaurant a few miles away
in Lawrence, but they bogart their duck sauce and only serve it with fried
wontons, and I like to pour it over my fried rice. So, Peking Garden it is.
Next up is authentic
Colombian cuisine. There's a place in
Lowell, Delicias Paisas, that looks like a small bakery/take-out place on
Bridge Street. Once I enter, I see it's
so much more. One side is the bakery,
and the other side is a full-service, sit-down, beautifully decorated dining
room. My friend, who married a native of
Colombia and lived in-country for a while, orders for us both. My plate arrives, piled high with steak, rice,
biscuit, the best beans I've had next to Boston Baked, and something that is
billed as fried pig skin but actually has nodules of pork that can best be
described as a cross between bacon and pork roast. I am so stuffed that I roll out onto the
sidewalk and waddle to my car with enough food to feed myself twice more.
The following night I hit the pita bread and tabouleh, which
I inhale quickly and without mercy. In
no time at all, an entire container of tabouleh has disappeared … and I'm home
alone, so there's no one to blame but me.
Finally, I top this all off with Mexican food at Casa
Blanca. It's almost as good as the
incredibly authentic Tacos Lupita in Haverhill, and it's leaps and bounds
better than Chili's and Southwestern cuisine that bills itself as Mexican.
I top this all off with a Klondike bar, which is a purely
American ice cream snack that masquerades as a Canadian Yukon treat.
I haven't quite circumvented the globe with my international
eating habits, but it's a good start and a far cry from the PB&J that
remains my go-to staple meal.
Salud, people. May
the Fork Be With You.
