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.”