Adventures with Food
The lovely Mrs. Borengasser and I sign up for a Culinary Adventure in Oaxaca, Mexico. The trip turns out to be full of surprises – some good, some not so good.
1. The Tour Group: Good. My Stephen King fantasies of what it will be like to spend a week with a tour group are not realized. No one seems to be an apparent psychopath, no one wears Bermuda shorts with knee-high black socks, and no one makes oblique references to the Federal Witness Protection Program.
I have one bad moment early on when a male member of the group announces that he’s run with the bulls in Spain ten times. A woman, obviously impressed, asks me if I’ve ever run with the bulls in Spain. I tell her no, but I have run with the hamsters in Peoria. Everyone avoids me for a day.
Surprisingly, all the tour participants turn out to be pleasant and interesting. The lovely Mrs. Borengasser and I take up with a cartoonist and his linguist wife from California. The four of us seem to spend a lot of time giggling.
2. The Cooking Class: Not Good. The class is not a hands-on type of instruction as we were expecting, but, rather, a lecture. Our cooking instructor, an elderly British woman, is a cross between Katherine Hepburn and Benito Mussolini. She is a self-satisfied food snob whose vision of hell is standing armpit-deep in Velveeta. We are told to be prompt, not to talk, and to always exhibit a deferential reverence whenever we’re in her presence. The first night, I’m publicly reprimanded when I’m overheard whispering to the lovely Mrs. Borengasser, “Is that a tomato?” I feel resentful for being treated like a child and hit her with a spitball.
3. The Mexican People: Good. The Mexican people, who, no doubt, recognize me as the blundering, monosyllabic foreigner that I am, are, nevertheless, incredibly gracious and hospitable. For example, during my first experience of paying with pesos, I become confused in a Mexican restaurant and leave a tip big enough to purchase Guatemala. The cashier chases me down and returns my money, without once using (as far as I can tell) the Spanish words for “idiot” or “bonehead.”
4. The Market: Not Good. We go to a sprawling market under an enormous tent that’s as large as metropolitan Albuquerque. We’re told to be careful to not get lost, and then we’re issued a compass, C-rations, a Swiss army knife, and pajamas. Once inside, we soon can no longer see the entrance, and certainly not the exit. The lovely Mrs. Borengasser and I find that a few thousand dead fish and a dozen tripe stands go a long way. After fifteen minutes, we’re ready to leave, but we discover that we’ve become separated from our group. In a panic, we try to locate a place to buy flares. Finally, we spot the trail of beads we’d dropped, and stumble out into the daylight, and head back to the hotel.
5. The Food: Good, or Not Good, depending on whom you speak to. The lovely Mrs. Borengasser, with a less adventuresome palate, does not try the armadillo, the iguana, or the grasshoppers. I, on the other hand, wolf them down, and have to be restrained from eating a couple of dead moths. As a result, I find I have a new perspective on our interstate highways, thinking of them less as a means of transportation, and more as a smorgasbord.
Soon enough, our vacation ends. Back home, we describe our trip to our son, and I tell him about all the interesting foods we sampled.
“Weird, Dad,” says young Pete. “You ate a lizard, and it was cooked in its own skin?”
“That’s right. What do you think?”
“Yuck, Dad. That’s gross.”
“What’s gross about it?” I ask.
“It’s like eating meat out of a wallet.”