When Carly and I have been blessed to be able travel for leisure or work, I love to try the local food. Even in the United States, local food can vary from region to region.
I found out how true this was when I brought Carly home to Indiana to meet my family. It was Thanksgiving, and we were having the full spread. As Carly was going through the line ahead of me, she starts asking what to do with these noodles.
She referred to chicken and noodles–a staple in Indiana that is served over mashed potatoes. I’m trying to tell her that they go with the potatoes with a quizzical look in my face. Come to find out that chicken and noodles is not a Minnesota thing, but in Indiana can be an entire meal, or even a church-wide dinner. She was willing to try chicken and noodles that day and admits they are okay, and she will, on occasion, even let me make them for dinner.
We have found that most regions have food they are known for. Before I got hurt, Carly was not a fan of seafood. After being in Galveston for four months and having really good, fresh seafood, it has become a favorite of hers.
We have tried the lobsters in Boston, the Beef on Weck and the Buffalo wings(before there was a buffalo wings resturant in every town) in Buffalo. We have tried the BBQ in Austin and bagels with cream cheese and slices of pizza in New York. I found that some times the food isn’t what I’ve hoped it would be, but other times I have found some incredible food, whether its biscuits in Denver that I would make sure my flight would arrive in time for, or a slice of John’s pizza that just makes that trip to New York complete.
The experience of being immersed at a local restaurant can be all it takes to turn an average meal into a memory that will last a lifetime. It can be the adventure of ordering something in a foreign language, ordering something you have no idea what it will be when it comes, or trying something that you didn’t even know you could eat.
We went on a mission trip to Berlin, Germany a few years back. We were turned loose in a neighborhood to eat lunch. We had been told that if we went down the street a block we would find Chinese place that was good. Once we arrived at the place, we found out quickly that we had an issue. The menu board was in Chinese, with German descriptions.
None of us could speak or read German, other than broccoli and zucchini which are apparently German words. The lady running the stand did not speak English. We didn’t know what to order or even how to order. The lady gave us a scrap of paper and a pen and showed us that each item had a number by it. So we had the how to order part, but not the what we would be ordering part.
The five of us, looking at the menu, discovered that it was in sections with a picture above each section with a fish, a cow, a pig, a chicken etc. We decided to each pick a number from a different section hoping that we would order edible dishes, then we would share our dishes family style. That lunch ended up being a great meal, unbelievable amounts of laughter of trying to pick what to order, trying to order, and then trying to decide which dish was which. It is a memory that often gets retold when are together, which will still create giggles as we relive that meal.
Not all adventures turned out as well on this trip to Berlin. I found a bakery and discovered a mohn pie. I could tell it was a poppyseed pie. I thought since I liked poppyseed muffins I would give it a try. Here’s a picture:
The bottom layer was solid poppyseed and it was something that nobody in our group liked. I can only imagine that a mohn pie is an acquired taste. It was awful, but it is definitely something that everyone from our group will remember trying.
We were able to recently go on trip with a group of people from our church to Miami. While there, we were able to sneak away for a couple of meals at some local restaurants. Miami has a strong Cuban influence, and we wanted to get out and try some new food. It was a group of 18 of us on Valentine’s Day, so Carly had made a reservation at a place a couple of weeks in advance.
She had to talk to three people before the reservation was complete because of the language barrier. We arrived at La Rosa’s and started trying to decider the menu, fortunately we had google to help us translate. Yet most things that we were ordering we didn’t know what the food would look like when they arrived, but at least we knew it was pork or beef.
We still dealt with a strong language barrier, and often couldn’t understand what the waiter was telling us. It was the end of a long day for them and they were running out of things. One gal in our group had ordered mashed potatoes, by the time we were served they were out, her meal was more than sufficient so she told the waiter she was fine.
By the time the meal was over he had brought Annette 4 more sides. We kept giving her a hard time for ordering so much food. They couldn’t spilt our bill, and we figured that it would be lost in translation anyway. So one of the guys asked our waiter how much his tea was so he could figure out his portion. Instead of an answer he got a to-go cup of tea the size of his head. We joked that he would be up all night if drank that much. We sat and laughed that night, passed plates of food around to try new things and different meals. Some of us were out of our comfort zones, but sometimes its good to experience new things.
Trying these places pushes us out of our comfort zones. When we are stretched a little we find that maybe we like a new food, or something that we dreaded doing isn’t so bad after all. It is that way with life. When get out of our comfort zones, we may make new friends, find new ministries that we want to get involved with or maybe help some one out that day that just needs something that we could provide. It adds to the character of who we are.
What comfort zone do we need to be pushed out of today?
Leave a Reply