"Taste Familiarity Paradigm" is a term researchers use when experimenting with getting kids to eat their vegetables. One approach gave children vegetables to eat; another showed them pictures of vegetables.
I never found a comfortable source of nutrition in Peru this trip; everything tasted strange - maybe it was the terroir, the differences in the soil, the fertilizers, the techniques, the strains of plant and animal - or maybe just that as their tastes differ, so does their cuisine. But they don't know how to do a burger, a pizza, or a sandwich, and their own dishes take some getting used to.
The scrambled eggs were okay. I liked their fruit juices, though they differed from here. Everything else I would try, then look further along for something else.
Of course, I'm old now, and used to what I know. Even Canadian food seems strange to me - and, of course, it is a little different; a box of Wheat Thins Original bought in Port Angeles, Washington is a slightly different product than Wheat Thins Original bought just across the border in Victoria, British Columbia. The texture and flavor differ. I never did find a good box of crackers in BC. One thing the US does is good crackers. Our rednecks aren't bad either.
So I was happy to get back to my little tornado bait residence and see that I still had a box of Cheezits in the cupboard.
It's going take a while for this trip to settle in, to internalize, to process. It's good to be home, the familiar is a deep comfort. But it was beautiful there, if strangely so, and interesting. The bit about contempt has its truth too; traveling the US got boring a long time back, and it was more pleasurable then, before the population doubled and created the universal strip mall. Peru has changed too, in the ten years since I was last there; it has become much more proud of its Inca heritage - maybe for mainly economic reasons, the tourists put their money down on Machu Picchu, and maybe from their own internal emergence.
By the time I left I had been through moments of boredom and loneliness that I wouldn't feel here because I jack into this computer screen and the actual terroir fades back into a gray haze; there I would be forced to take some kind of action. It would feel very different to have my own place there.
And, for a foodie, the markets are stunning.
So goes this account, except for the pix I hope I may now include.
I never found a comfortable source of nutrition in Peru this trip; everything tasted strange - maybe it was the terroir, the differences in the soil, the fertilizers, the techniques, the strains of plant and animal - or maybe just that as their tastes differ, so does their cuisine. But they don't know how to do a burger, a pizza, or a sandwich, and their own dishes take some getting used to.
The scrambled eggs were okay. I liked their fruit juices, though they differed from here. Everything else I would try, then look further along for something else.
Of course, I'm old now, and used to what I know. Even Canadian food seems strange to me - and, of course, it is a little different; a box of Wheat Thins Original bought in Port Angeles, Washington is a slightly different product than Wheat Thins Original bought just across the border in Victoria, British Columbia. The texture and flavor differ. I never did find a good box of crackers in BC. One thing the US does is good crackers. Our rednecks aren't bad either.
So I was happy to get back to my little tornado bait residence and see that I still had a box of Cheezits in the cupboard.
It's going take a while for this trip to settle in, to internalize, to process. It's good to be home, the familiar is a deep comfort. But it was beautiful there, if strangely so, and interesting. The bit about contempt has its truth too; traveling the US got boring a long time back, and it was more pleasurable then, before the population doubled and created the universal strip mall. Peru has changed too, in the ten years since I was last there; it has become much more proud of its Inca heritage - maybe for mainly economic reasons, the tourists put their money down on Machu Picchu, and maybe from their own internal emergence.
By the time I left I had been through moments of boredom and loneliness that I wouldn't feel here because I jack into this computer screen and the actual terroir fades back into a gray haze; there I would be forced to take some kind of action. It would feel very different to have my own place there.
And, for a foodie, the markets are stunning.
So goes this account, except for the pix I hope I may now include.
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