Forks: Let Us Praise Metal

I did. I bought a fork. It's a good one and it's mine now.

First it was a knife. Knives are essential. How else would you stir your peanut butter? See?

You need a knife, and it has to be strong, so that's steel. You need a steel knife. That's what Wally Mart is good for. They have table knives, of which one can buy one, individually. For us singletons. So I bought one.

The peanut butter is yet to come, but I can feel it in my future. I never get far without reverting to peanut butter, and it is sure to arrive on-scene soon, expecting my knife to stir it. I am so ready, now, but having only a knife left me feeling incomplete, so I went back to the World of Wally.

And there I found Spoon. Spoon-ness. Became spoonified, with two. Had to get a package deal, but I'm set in case I bite the head off the first spoon, because I have two. Or I can commence lunch armed with one spoon in each hand, which works at times, and is mandatory at others.

So, the score: One knife, two spoons, and a box of plastic ones, plus plastic forks.

Plastic forks are amazing, but not for eating with. Likewise the knives, spoons, and so on. Amazing. But try to eat a can of cold Spam with a plastic fork. Iffy: bend, break or catapult are all conceivable outcomes.

The bendy part should be obvious, because plastic. Get over-bendy and you have breakage, which is disappointing at best, and breakage is always better than a bit of slippage resulting in catapulting food in every direction, to stick all over the inside of the car. And the cold Spam?

You were probably wondering. I understand.

Spam. It's food, even if you don't think so, but it is. Meat, and other things, packaged nicely. Keeps forever in its can until desperately needed.

A life saver if you haven't eaten in 36 or more hours and need fat, and can buy the "lite" sodium version which still has more than enough salt in it if you eat the whole can at one go, but lacking refrigeration and being hungry, you do. Do buy. Do savagely eat.

So I've eaten three cans of Spam as the major part of a meal in the last week-and-a-half, and damn-well worth it. Lifesaver. Did I say that yet? Miracle food. Better sauteed but hey. If you gots it, then eat it and be full. And you will be.

Fat. It has fat and once it's on your inside you're set.

But you need a decent fork for it. Plastic is entirely iffy. Entirely so. Therefore I bought a steel fork. $1.78 and worth it. It's amazing how sturdy a steel for is, which I realized when I used in on dill pickle spears. Wham. Jam it. Just jam it in, no worrying about bending or breaking or anything. You see a pickle you want, stab it and then bite. That's it. No more, no less. I love it.

So now I have flatware good enough to survive World War 3, and am content on that front. Envy me, for I am satisfied.

 

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See if that helps. (The commenting system quit working for some reason.)

Currently wondering where to sleep tomorrow.

Sounds Kind Of Like

 

First, the state of nutritional science in 107 words:

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is what kills you.

That's about the sum total, folks. No one really knows nothin', outside of a few hints.

 

Dhoti? Dhow? Dia? Dido? Die? Die Away? Die Out? Diode? Dit? Ditto? Ditty? Do Away With? Do It? Doh? Doha? Doodad? Doodle? Dot? Dote? Dotty? Dowdy? Dud? Dude? Due Date? Due To? Duet? Duty? Dye?

Nope. Diet. Let's talk diet.

A diet is a way of eating to achieve a purpose. All diets exclude. Every general-purpose diet, intended to cover people in general, is a fraud. Let's label that fraud as "fad". There are three broad classes of diets. Two of them are not fads, and they are critical, but those two classes are so narrow and so tiny that they are almost non-existent. We'll start with them.

 

Class One Diet

What works for you. Like the woman who eats only beef, with water, and a bit of salt. Perfect.

I'm happy for her. Whatever she says is fine. I cannot judge what she does, and I also have no interest in even trying to eat this way because I don't want to. I also don't think that it would help me in any way. Probably the opposite.

This diet is exclusionary.

I know that I could not eat cow brains, cow livers, cow kidneys, or cow hearts to get at their essential fatty richness, which is required because lean meat will not sustain life. I wasn't raised on organ meats and could not even force myself to eat them now. I also know that I could not afford to buy enough beef to keep myself alive, and I have no interest in spending hours each week cracking open long bones to get at marrow.

This diet is an interesting data point for me but nothing else, a curiosity. Some people are more oriented toward vegetables and grains, or fish, or meat. Some can't handle milk. Some can. Evolution has worked in different directions in different parts of the world. We have all been tuned differently. We come from separate sub-species. We need to eat differently, accordingly.

My people are flatlanders. They are tough and stupid, hard to kill. They can stand out on the prairie in their underwear, at night, in a blizzard, just to see what it feels like and say things like "Hey! This is the real deal then, not?" And then go back inside to watch more TV. They eat potatoes and meat and butter and milk and cheese and eggs and dumplings and a little cabbage and some borscht now and then, and grow very old and feel utterly fine, while remaining skeptical of those vegetable things lurking in the garden. And they love gluten, passionately.

Maybe not you, but who's asking?

 

Class Two Diet

This one is prescribed by a qualified, knowledgeable, experienced medical professional for exactly one person, based on a diagnosis backed up by verifiable, quantified data, to treat a real medical condition. It is exclusionary.

End of story.

 

Class Three Diet

The fad.

I break this out into "fad", "fantasy", "fetish", and "cult" subclasses, but they are really all the same. They claim to be applicable to one and all — just "Do this, and everything will be perfect." That's the hook. Always with the hook.

These are also exclusionary.

Some exclude sugar, some exclude all fat, or only "bad" fat. Some exclude protein. Some exclude starches. Some leave out fruit, leave out everything but fruit. On and on. All of them promise. Promise big time. Lovely promises, all.

• Cult
• The Jim Jones Kool-Aid diet. Ends all your problems in mere seconds. Drink up.
• Breatharian. Ditto — Death, but slightly slower to arrive.
• Vegan. Guaranteed to kill you as well, but it could take a decade or two, due to deficiencies in vitamins K2 and B12 (B12 is not produced by plants).
  
  
• Fetish
• "Detox" diets, as if the body didn't do this, day and night, forever, on its own, relentlessly.
• "Clean food" diets. (Which apparently prevent everything you eat from turning to shit.)
• "Macrobiotic". Do anything you want, because the food will protect you, because it makes you holy.
  
  
• Fantasy
• Want a butt like Kim Kardashian? Then eat what she does.
• Want a husband like Kim Kardashian? Then eat what she does.
• Prefer Suzanne Somers? Then try Somersizing. Works for me! Ya-sure-you-betcha-right.
  
  
• Fad
• Almost anything, really — too numerous to list them all.
• Mediterranean. (Enjoy sunny, lazy days the yacht, guzzling olive oil).
• Baby Food Diet. (Yeck. You know how hard it is to hire a diaper-changer?)
• Cabbage soup diet. (Like starving in the old country, when we felt blessed to find bugs in our soup.)
• Gluten-free. (As if.)
• Fruitarian. (Recommended by Sir Shitsalot.)
• Grapefruit. (Or his wife.)
• Master Cleanse. (Cf. Sir Shitsalot.)
• Morning banana. (What — apples are out?)
• Paleolithic. (Drag them knuckles, Knut. Grunt and fart like you mean it.)
• And an infinite number of others.

 

Class Act Diet

This isn't a diet. It is inclusive.

The trick is you just eat. Food doesn't really matter that much unless you fuck with it. Like by not eating it, which is what each and every "diet" mandates. Or by obsessing over it. There is a line spouted by some that goes "Don't eliminate, replace." But replacing one food with another is eliminating. Fish isn't beef, isn't chicken, isn't tofu, isn't pork. Each is similar to the others in some ways, but no food is a drop-in substitute for any other. Better to add or maybe alternate than to either eliminate or replace.

Instead of all this crap, go back to step one, but not to eating only beef. Rather, pick a cuisine that appeals to you — Vietnamese, Peruvian, Icelandic — anything. Just pick one. Or what your grandmother ate, if she was born before the 20th century, before food became big business.

What you'll get is good food that has been vetted for centuries, possibly millennia. Guaranteed to make you happy and keep you well, because it tastes good and because it also supplies everything you need to keep going. Because it's what people have voted for, with their mouths, and because they stayed alive and happy and healthy on it.

Cuisines are continuously evolving, but they do so slowly, by adding new items, and seeing a few items gradually fade out. This is good. Because, if nothing happens suddenly, then there is plenty of time to make corrections. And because there are millions of mouths involved, the cuisine gets voted on by all sorts of people with varied lifestyles, body types, and nutritional needs, constantly.

That means that you yourself are guaranteed to be well treated by a cuisine, any cuisine, and if you just eat it you will be OK. That's it, all there is.

But I bet that much more depends on getting lots of sleep, shunning dangerous chemicals like tobacco and other drugs, avoiding contact with communicable diseases, and getting a lot of exercise. This last one is probably the most important. A good goal might be a tithe — exercise for 2½ hours a day, every day. Pant and break a sweat. Repeat tomorrow, forever.

Even a hundred years ago most people were physically active most of the time. Imagine being on your feet for 10 or 12 hours a day, at a job, moving, using your muscles, and then walking home and doing chores. We don't do that now. Maybe we should. Fewer of us might be crazy.

And food would be just something to eat and enjoy.

 

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Bite Me With Abandon

I'm learning. It's fun.

It started a little over two years ago one morning while I was out walking and listening to The Current on CBC radio.

I was living in Port Angeles, WA at the time, only a few miles south of Victoria, BC, and well within range of the CBC Radio One transmitter. I had a clear signal. That was good, because I've made real changes since then, inspired by what I heard that morning.

The guest that morning was Nina Teicholz, flogging her new book The Big Fat Surprise. To summarize what I heard: Fat is OK. Fat never was a problem. Eat it.

To get a bit more specific while still over-simplifying, three points.

• Eating fat doesn't make you fat.
• Eating cholesterol-rich foods does not increase the blood level of cholesterol.
• Saturated fat does not cause heart disease.

Teicholz spent 10 years digging through more than half a century of nutritional research, reading the original papers, reviewing the original data sets, and interviewing any still-living researchers.

A big deal has been made since the 1960s of the connection between eating fat and coronary heart disease. Meanwhile, the rate of that disease has fallen dramatically and both obesity and diabetes have increased radically.

So you could say that eating less fat and more carbohydrates have been successful in a left-handed sort of way. Except that there is and never has been a connection between eating cholesterol or saturated fat, or any animal fat, and developing heart disease. It's a fraud, and has been all along.

Along with that, carbohydrates (sugar especially), are looking to be really bad. That seems to be where a lot of obesity and diabetes come from.

Ancel Keys was the primary player in promoting the "Diet-Heart Hypothesis" that inspired the no-fat craze of the last few decades. He was at best a poor researcher, and even committed scientific fraud to promote his ideas, but he was a great political in-fighter and bulldozed right over those opposed to his hunches. Because that's what they were, but he knew he was right, so a little tweaking of data here, conclusions there, sample sizes, populations studied, geographical areas, and so on were, in his eyes, justified.

But no longer.

It's known now that a fundamental element of Keyes's "research" was the island of Crete. He apparently loved it. He went there at least three times. The last visit was a key element of the invention of the Mediterranean Diet, which didn't exist until two Italian women invented it in the 1960s.

During Keyes's third visit to Crete, he studied a few men (men only), and discovered that they were eating what they ripped out of their gardens, fish, and wine. And they seemed healthy. And a lot of them were both old and healthy. That was during the Christian season of Lent, a time of penance.

That's why the were eating fish. It was punishment for their sins. They preferred red meat, which they habitually ate during normal times. Keyes chose not to notice.

He also ignored Germany and France, the two most populous European countries, where people happily ate lots of saturated fat and also did not have much heart disease. He ignored Germany and France because what was going on in Germany and France didn't fit his preconception of the origins of heart disease.

So dietary science isn't. All the answers aren't in yet, but there is to this day no proof that either red meat or the fat that goes with it is anything but supremely healthy.

As meat has been saying all along: "Bite me with abandon."

Other things I've learned:

• Calories don't exist. A calorie is a unit of energy. It is a useful concept in physics and chemistry, but doesn't apply to metabolism.
  
  Food calories (kilo calories, or "Calories", each one the equivalent of 1000 "small" calories), are determined by burning a piece of food in an oxygen environment. This has no relationship whatsoever with what happens to that food inside any animal body. It may be passed through undigested, might be consumed by gut bacteria, could be digested and then stored in the body and not "burned", or is possibly metabolized completely.
  
  But no matter what happens, body metabolism is not "burning" in any sense other than that electrons are transferred from one molecule to another. It is not at all the simple physical process that actual burning is.
  
  Weighing food is just as good as counting calories. Eyeballing the volume of food is also as good. For anyone counting calories, they have to learn how many calories of which do what. In other words, you have to convert from a quantity of food to what happens to you after you've eaten a lot of that food over time. By trial and error.
  
  There is no formula because metabolism, as noted, isn't a simple physical process, so why bother with calories when they have no relevance? Simply measuring by the teaspoon, tablespoon, or cupful is easier and just as precise.

• Salt intake is probably not an issue, except in a very few special situations. James J. DiNicolantonio has just written a book titled The Salt Fix, which contains possibly unsubstantiated or poorly-supported claims about human ancestors eating much more salt than modern humans, but the interesting point to me is that normal kidneys, according to the author, can remove from the bloodstream about one teaspoonful of salt every five minutes. Which sounds pretty effective.
  
  I can't tell if this is true or not, but it's worth keeping track of.

• Sugar is bad, probably. No one knows for sure because dietary research so far hasn't been either scientific or reliable, but there is growing biochemical evidence.
• Carbohydrates are bad, probably. No one knows this for sure either, but Gary Taubes and others are bringing the tools of investigative journalism and basic rationality to this subject and to that of sugar.
• Eating plant fats is iffy at best. Olive oil is trendy but for most of human history it was burned in oil lamps to provide light.
  
  Most human populations, let alone pre-humans, had no access to olive oil, ever, so it's a strange food, but since it was available in some areas, it is less strange than soybean oil, peanut oil, rapeseed oil, corn oil, sesame seed oil, or the others. These substances are the result of intense industrial processing. It is literally impossible to go up to any plant on earth, bite it, and end up with oil running down your jaw.
  
  Vegetable fats do not occur naturally.
  
  They have to be forced out of plants, so they are not in any way actual foods, although various amounts of vegetable fats occur in various plants, mixed in as a minor component with indigestible fiber, protein, starch, and sugar.
  
  Humans evolved eating mammal meat, and the fat thereof, which is universally available on every continent, Antarctica excluded, but humans have never lived on Antarctica so that's a moot point. Since humans evolved eating the fat of mammal meat, we're adapted to it, and it's probably very good for us. Research has not decided this issue ether way, although it has been proven that humans can live indefinitely and healthily on meat alone.

• Anti-oxidants are most likely bogus. There has been research showing beneficial effects, but there has also been research showing that chocolate candy has beneficial effects. Sponsored by Mars, the candy company. Go figure, eh?
  
  Chocolate: out. Red wine: Not a health food, and maybe not healthy in any way. Coffee? Meh.

I'm still learning. It's fun.

Monkey Mind

I can't say I'm special. Everyone is special. Just like everyone else.

But I try to notice things. Goofy things. Even my own goofy things, my own goofiness. But especially yours. It's like a hobby.

If there is one thing I'm really good at, it's keeping track of inconsistencies. Even my own, I must say, though I'm a bit slow on the uptake of the latter if you will. All that lack of perspective, viewing from the inside, emotional involvement, vesting. And so on — you know it too.

It could be due to my upbringing, plus a few natural predispositions. I won't go into my family life except to say that I think there is a connection. One of my parents was erratic, tempestuous, threatening, blustering, contrite, bullying, repentant, immature. Like a typical alcoholic, but without the alcohol. So I had to keep a sharp lookout on the moods, and the clues about when the next eruption might be rolling into the station. For self-preservation.

Pattern-matching is important, and inconsistencies matter in a world like this. It's like weather forecasting, or you could say whether forecasting. Whether this, or whether that, today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not. Maybe it will blow over, subside, or build up to something terribly ugly day after tomorrow. Without paying attention and developing the right forecasting skills, a person is totally clueless, and survival is a less likely outcome. And I was alone.

My sibling didn't come along until eight and a half years after I did, so I really, really needed to be on top of this game. So I notice things.

I'm not highly social. I am socially inept. Partly I don't care, partly I can't. I don't do it well, but I have some skills. It's akin to mind reading. I can read people if I care to, even people I've never met before. It's a matter of opening up and letting the broadcast be received. Everyone broadcasts but usually the broadcasts aren't worth receiving, except sometimes.

Starting a job, meeting your boss, your co-workers. Checking out a potential landlord. Meeting someone at a party — Maybe she...? Maybe he...? Maybe they...? Maybe now, maybe later, maybe not. File the mental notes for reference. First impressions count. They are fresh and clear and the signals are all there, waiting to be swept up by the armful and stuffed into the sack of memory, in case.

So, as I said. yesterday. Nothing much around here surprises me any more. And that's true.

Just seconds before I was to step into the shower, I found that the water was off. Thirty seconds before that, the water was not off. If I'd been only a little faster yesterday, I would have been in the shower, wet and soaped, and then the water would have gone off. They normally don't warn you, they just do it. It wasn't the city this time.

This time it was the owners of this place. They are doing some remodeling. They are running late. They should have had the apartments ready I guess two days ago, but they blew it. I imagine that they have tenants waiting at the door to move in. They said I'd have new neighbors last week. But no. Things aren't done yet. So they have been working both days and evenings, up to nearly nine at night, so the niceties of planning and courtesy have to run thin. They had work to do, had the work bubble up to the top of the stack, had the workers on hand, and the fittings, and went for it. Which included shutting off the water because they needed to, which left me without the possibility of bathing. And by luck and by luck only, I wasn't wet and soapy.

And that dismayed me in a minor way, as it does, but did not surprise me. It happens.

Sometimes it's the local government shutting off power or water to whole sections of the city. They just do it and then later it's over and you continue with what you were up to at the time it happened. Which is why I wash in parts.

First wait for the shower water to warm. Then step into it and rinse. Then wet my hair and soap it and rinse. Then repeat. Then wash and rinse my torso, rapidly. Then lower. Then, if the water continues to run and still happens to be hot, or at least passably warm as it is someplaces no matter how long you let it run, keep rinsing and enjoying the feeling because now it's possible. Following a wash and a rinse, all over, the rest is gravy. By then if the heat runs out or the water does, it's all over anyway but the towelling.

But before then it's a crap shoot. So it pays not to fully commit — wash this, rinse this. Wash that, rinse that. A bit at a time, so you're not all-in, completely soaped, blind, slippery, and screwed. It works so far. I'm ready for surprises, and so they don't surprise me. Much. You never know.

Roll with it is a good approach.

Like crossing the street yesterday after lunch at Place Number One, on the way to Place Number Two for dessert. The bus came, and slowed, but seemed to have an aversion to the near curb. It stayed out in the middle of the street. It blocked traffic. Hmmm.

Maybe I could cross now? No wait. Wait a bit. Yes. Definitely. Traffic backs up behind the bus. The other traffic can't squeeze around it. Check the bus. Still there, still stationary, good. Make my move, across the street quickly threading a path between stopped vehicles. Safe. I made it. I'm on the far side and then the bus pulls forward, accelerates, frees up the street, and all the traffic moves again but now I'm across and it doesn't matter. Fine.

Inside Place Number Two there is a bit of hubbub. A bit. But it is real. Real hubbub. Something about the street, what is going on in the street. The one I just crossed. There is an issue.

Of course it is a slow day at Place Number Two or they wouldn't notice anything at all because it is a small thing, but still a thing because business is light. Monkey mind at work. If you don't have anything to do, you do something anyway. Little things become big. Like that motorcycle parked in the street. I didn't notice it, but the owner of Place Number Two goes out to see why the traffic is slow and sees a parked motorcyle. Ah, so. A parked motorcyle then. No wonder.

Owner returns inside, alerts staff. Staff of Place Number Two go outside with owner to observe parked motorcyle. Owner of other place next door comes over to talk about it. It's a police motorcycle! Policeman is inside third business. How interesting. Something. Definitely. Unusual. No parking in street, here, but there is a motorcycle parked. In the street. And it's a police motorcycle. Most unusual. Most surprising. An event. On a slow day.

Meanwhile, I eat a piece of pie. The pie is my big event of the day, and the rest? It takes more than suddenly missing water or a parked motorcycle to surprise me any more, but the pie is always there, always surprisingly good. The rest I don't really care about any more.

Just roll. Just roll with it. Whatever it is, it will be over soon and the monkeys will move on to the next thing. At least I had two liters of bottled water in my apartment. I heated the water and was able to wash my hair and face and that was good enough. No need to be surprised or startled or annoyed or make a fuss. Roll. Only roll. I turned an aborted shower into a smaller but adequate cleaning event and got on with it, had lunch, had pie, saw a motorcycle parked in the street and got over it. Without being stranded, wet and fully soaped, in the shower.

For that, let us say, I'm pleased. That was enough excitement. Close enough to a close call to rate a score. I call it five out of a possible five. The rest I didn't need to get excited about. Let the monkeys range elsewhere. I'm at ease over here.

But that is also what expat life is like. Just like it is everywhere else. Full of monkeys.

Announcing G-Spot Beer!

I have a confession to make.

I have eaten bread. In the past, of course.

And that bread was made with wheat.

You know about wheat, right? I mean, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time then you know. Oh, yes, you know.

In fact, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time then you know everything. Everything that I've instructed you on so far, anyway. Of course you'll have to keep coming back for more instruction.

No one is perfect (except me of course), so my tutelage will of necessity continue without end. Because I know everything, and you, you should be grateful that you found me.

So now, back to bread. You have heard of it. You know what goes into it. You know that it will kill you because it is pure poison. So why would you eat it? Don't be a fool.

Just because humans have been consuming wheat and wheat by-products for thousands of years is no reason to continue this shameful practice. You may have parents who survived childhood years full of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, platters full of spaghetti, and bowls of chicken noodle soup, but this does not mean that they escaped unscathed.

Nor you.

It may take generations to gradually unwind the trauma that these meals have caused, and to unwind the damage, even in your own life, though you yourself have never been within ten feet of a cinnamon roll. Beware!

But sticky buns are not the only hazard. There is also beer.

Beer is good. You should drink beer whenever you can get it, and you should drink as much as you can hold. These are proven facts from scientific laboratories. However there is one problem. Beer (as it is habitually manufactured by giant multi-national companies) contains gluten.

Beer contains gluten because beer is made from barley. From barley, hops, water, and yeast. That is the full list of ingredients in the most basic and essential beers. Plus that gluten.

So here we are, sitting in paradise, on top of the Andes mountains in South America, without beer. Because beer contains gluten, and gluten is the most deadly poison in the world.

Well, I say let's just start a petition. Someone here should make gluten-free beer for us.

Since I'm retired, and don't feel like working any more, let alone putting my very own ass on the line by plunking down my life's savings to follow through on this idea, let's just get some Ecuadorians to do it for us.

As my good friend Roberts Terry said just yesterday,

I think an Ecuadorian craft brewery could do a nice bit of business in Ecuador with creating a tasty gluten-free beer - as long as it had decent distribution. You'd be the only gluten-free beer here, at least for a while.

In the US, even the monster, Budweiser, has a respectable gluten-free beer called Redbridge. Sure better than no beer at all on beautiful, warm days like we're enjoying.

We could name it after my two cats, Bojangles and Samwise.

This sounds great, all the more so if someone else takes the risk. And does the work.

So why don't some savvy locals go ahead and plunk down half a million or so to start up a no-gluten brewery, and if we feel like it we'll buy a bottle of their beer every now and then?

If we're in the mood.

Until the next food fad comes along.

We've been through fat and sugar already. Gluten came next, but I believe that gluten in fact was only an introduction to a whole new family of toxic and dangerous foods.

Me, I've got my eye on protein — all protein, not just gluten. Isn't it about time to eliminate protein from our diets entirely?

Each person's first responsibility has to be to preserve our precious bodily fluids. Beer does that of course, but only gluten-free beer.

And given enough clean, fresh, pure gluten-free beer, anything is possible. First the beer, then the protein.

Who's with me on this?

What's Pink And Has Whiskers?

Lap it up.

My sister gave me a cat in a can.

I was hoping, when I opened the can, that it would be

• A live cat.
• Not dead.
• Etc.

But of course I knew better. Right on the label, under the Cat-In-A-Can logo, it says Inflatable Feline.

No live cat, even one small enough to fit into a can of that size, even one that small and which would hold its breath while traveling through the U.S. Mail system, would let itself be inflated, either before or after the can part or the getting-mailed part, let alone both. And I wouldn't put my lips to either end of such a cat to try inflating it.

Or any cat, really.

In other words, I was onto that game. I was clued. I was dialed in. I knew it was plastic. And thereby OK. (Clean, non-scratchy, low probability of hissy fits.) And gladly inflated it, and gained a new friend.

But it wasn't the same as Ernie.

At this point in my life I don't remember anything about Ernie except for two fairly important facts.

• The cat's name was Ernie, and
• Ernie was a real cat, and
• Ernie was not made of plastic nor was she inflatable.

Sure, those were three facts, but when you're dealing with facts, more is always better. And the extra typing gave me a few seconds more to recall some of those fond memories of Ernie.

Wasted seconds, I guess, because I still don't remember who in the hell Ernie was, cat-wise, aside from the name. (I threw in the she part because it sounds better, though I don't remember requiring Ernie to stand for a close inspection, nor was I ever inspired to put my lips there and blow, either. You don't do that. I don't.)

So, ultimately, we are left with a residue of things we may say we understand. In this case, they are that real cats are real and not-real cats are inflatable, and as far as I am willing to take this research, I hereby declare that there is a difference, and real cats do their own inflating, after supper, if they do it at all.

The same goes for things that you do put in your mouth. Like horchata. I've had it in tea bags. It's good. It's OK. It's acceptable. It isn't all that bad. Well, if you get "horchata con miel". I like the "miel" part. That's honey. Or something honey-like.

I hear that it can also be a sugar-based syrup, which is fine by me, since horchata tastes good that way, regardless of how it actually got to that particular address.

The straight horchata I had in tea bags was not my favorite, but with honey-like sweetening, it's yummy. But still too much like honey and herbs in a can, waiting to be inflated by the correct amount of applied liveliness, in order to achieve OK-ness, not-all-that-bad-ness, a level of mediocre acceptability with hardly any bitter aftertaste.

And in the other corner, there is live horchata, fresh-brewed — it requires no blowing. It self-inflates and breathes on its own. It's good.

No, I haven't said what horchata is. Here are a few words on that subject from someone who does know:

The herbs and flowers that are part of this drink include some better known herbs such as chamomile, mint, lemon verbena, lemon grass, and lemon balm. Some of the flowers that are included in this tea are rose geranium, small roses, violets, begonias, carnations, fuschias and malva olorosa/malva blanca — which are flowers from the mallow family. The horchata herb mix also includes some lesser known and harder to find herbs which include cola de caballo or horse tail (also known as shave grass), llanten or plantain plant (not to be confused with plantain bananas), borraja or borge, linaza or flax, a red leafed herb called escancel, in English it is known as bloodleaf, this herb gives the drink its red pinkish color. Another plant used in this tea is called ataco or red amaranth, this one also contributes to the color of the drink. There are a few other plants that are used, however these seem only grow in Ecuador and, at least according to my mom, don't have known names in English, in Spanish they are called pimpinela, shullo, and cucharillo.

Mine was tall and cool and pink, like pink lemonade, but not lemonadey. Not like something liberated from a can, or brewed in a tea bag, or retrieved dry by the handful from a box under the sink in the back room before boiling.

And it did not require me to put my lips on it and do anything but suck. So that's what I tried.

Yummy.

I'll have to do it again.

More: Horchata lojana or herbal tea mix

Buzz Lunch

You hits it, you eats it.

I think it's the cabbage. What else would explain all those flies at a vegetarian restaurant?

Of course it could be me. I go and flies follow. Everywhere I am, they are too. It may be ordained by heaven.

Or it may not — it could be that I stink. But I think that it's the cabbage. And if not, then it's because I stink.

But if it is my stink, then that stink precedes me, and arrives before I do in locations that I hadn't planned on visiting.

Mystery.

But definitely, there is one place that I notice flies, and that is at the Salutary Relationship Chop House of Good Eats. It is marginally a chifa house.

Chifa is Chinese cooking using local ingredients. The U.S. version is chop suey, but in Peru it's huge. In Peru and Ecuador it's called chifa.

The Salutary Relationship Chop House of Good Eats isn't quite that. Not that close to chop suey. Not all that close to anything.

For the typical cafeteria-style almuerzo (lunch) there, you'll find four mostly-raw options of mixed salad-like vegetables, plus two deep fried items, and then two stews, all meatless, but often containing varieties of soy concoctions wearing meat-like disguises. You get to pick four of the eight selections offered, and the whole deal comes with rice, a bowl of soup, and a glass of juice.

And flies.

I think it's the cabbage. Cabbage has two prominent qualities.

• It has a pungent odor not readily apparent to all humans, but there, and pungent.
• It contains a lot of sulfur. This makes flies think it's poo.

One way to deal with flies is to spray bug killer indiscriminately. Or hang flypaper. (By a wide margin though, diners prefer eating poison to sitting beneath flypaper.)

A third way to defeat flies is by installing window-and-door screening, and then keeping those windows and doors shut.

The Salutary Relationship Chop House of Good Eats has another way — rubber bands.

These are used by Feng (pronounced Fung). Let's call him that, whatever his name is. He runs the cash register. And hunts flies when it's a slow day.

And the way Fung does it is the way you or I would do it — loop the rubber band around the tip of your off hand's thumb, point at your target, and use your other hand to cock the weapon and fire.

Except that not so many of us would do this in view of customers in the dining area of any eatery, be it Ed's House of Slop or Delmonico's.

Fung's prey of choice flits anywhere and everywhere — ceiling, tables, chairs, walls, and he shoots with deadly care. Whether he takes out any of those nasty buzzing disease balls is a matter of speculation, since I cannot personally confirm any hits, and do not actually know the effect of a rubber band strike on the diminutive but sturdy exoskeleton of Musca domestica. This may require more deliberate study.

Nor did I see Fung recover anything other than spent rubber bands, though it is possible that his den is chock full of fly heads delicately mounted, moose-like, on tiny plaques, out back.

Talk To The Food

A laying on of hands, food-wise, the Bio-Schmetz Way.

All bacteria on deck, pronto!

So then, foodies come in basically two flavors, which are easy to determine early on if you don't mind licking strangers.

Flavor One: Those who like biting stuff to find out what's good, and who enjoy eating.

Flavor Two: Those who know what is right, and will force-feed you to prove it. If you only stop resisting.

Food is an issue for many people. Eating rules give them identity. The rules give their lives structure, then something to live for, and finally those rules take over and nothing else counts — it's obsession time.

Flavor Two people honk themselves hoarse about their beliefs, insisting that you do as they say, and are certain that they will reach God and live righteously forever. Because they have found the True Truth. Which works best if you buy a distributorship from them.

Personally speaking, I'm still trying to get that little plastic pyramid I bought thirty years ago to sharpen my razor blades. I'm not up to food yet, but.

You know?

To keep my mind in shape for the coming New Age Rapture, Dance & Winners-Circle Awards Ceremony, I went to Smilla Sensimilla's apartment for a class on raw food.

Partly I wanted to see what the inside of a classy, high-end apartment building is like, partly to meet some people if possible, and partly to learn something about different foods.

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So, Bio-Schmetz it was, all the way.

Bio-Schmetz Night-Time Nite Lite Therapy induces positive reversal, anti-left-handed nocturnal radiative emissions scientifically proven within the Schmetzian Community to stimulate every cell in the body to emit more than 100,000 light impulses (schmetzons) per second. These schmetzons are too subtle to inspect, or even to detect, but are used by all living things to communicate with, and act as the steering mechanism for every biochemical reaction.

And so on.

Actually, there wasn't much on the Bio-Schmetz Night-Time Nite Lite Therapy as such — mostly it was raw food, but I didn't learn much there either.

Well, another not quite true statement. I did learn that

• I don't want to learn anything that they're teaching.
• They aren't teaching anything.
• I will never, ever eat anything that they've touched ( any of the people who were there, ever).
• I was stupid to go.
• Smilla lives in a rabidly killer expensive amazing apartment.

Some other things of note.

• Probiotics, or how to eat bacteria and remain smiling is a big deal.
  • You want to eat lots of bacteria.
  • You want to eat 80% good bacteria.
  • The 80% of good bacteria "eat" the other 20% (the bad bacteria) and that is how you stay healthy.
• Hygiene/sanitation are not that important if you have a strong immune system.
  • This was demonstrated by the way the food was handled.
  • No, I didn't follow up — I never want to go near any of them again.
• Eat raw food to
  • Pick up fun enzymes.
  • Feel better.
  • Feel lighter.
  • Boost your bacterial load.
• Raw meat is easier to digest, so Smilla cooks hers, but only on the outside. (Still red inside, so she gets to call it raw.)
• Yes, eating raw meat is safe.
  • Smilla got her parasites from lettuce, not meat. (I don't know if she's going to keep them as pets.)
  • By the way, it's important to do a semi-annual parasite cleanse. (She didn't say if it's for them or for her.)
• Dairy products are bad. (They make glue out of, you know, like milk, right?)
• Gluten is bad.
  • Humans didn't evolve to eat gluten. (As substantiated by several consenting head nods.)
  • It's bad for everyone in every way and responsible for arthritis, cancer, diabetes, and almost all other diseases.
  • By the way, ALL grains are bad, gluten or no. (In case you were a loser not already hip to this.)
• Ceramic knives are better because steel knives cause food to oxidize.
  • You can see it!
  • Food cut with steel turns brown!
  • True!
  • Yuk! Proof! Brown, etc.!

OK — cue the cymbals and gongs!

Time to see Bio-Schmetz In Action! Let's make raw food! (If you can actually make it, right? You really only handle it a lot I think. Or strangers do.)

First up — a mango puree (Raw Mango Chia Smoothie, Smilla called it). She had all kinds of ingredients (so very many kinds) laid out on a table in her living room, where we sat watching, and she hacked at them and stuffed them into a blender. Without washing her hands or the table or the ingredients. (Because that's the Bio-Schmetz Way™)

Then she added honey, which was too thick to drip off the spoon so she pushed it off with a finger, still unwashed, into the blender. Then she repeated this honey trick several times, and cranked up the blender, and poured out small glasses of the resulting goo. I was presented with a glass of it but still had half a glass of kombucha, so I was able to donate my goo to the woman next to me, who drank it down.

Footnote: "Kombucha is a lightly effervescent fermented drink of sweetened black tea that is used as a functional food. It is produced by fermenting the tea using a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, or SCOBY. Drinking kombucha has been linked to serious side effects and deaths, and improper preparation can lead to contamination."

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Then we went hardcore — Raw Pad Thai.

Smilla needed help with this, so she farmed out the chopping and hacking to others. Others whom she had never seen before, who had come into her house from the wilds of Cuenca, known far and wide for its streets speckled with pigeon shit, smeared with dog shit, stippled with human shit, and sprinkled by various wild and domestic species of urine. All of which rides along on your shoe soles, is tracked in everywhere, and is of course accompanied by the standard repertoire of ordinary dusts and varieties of diesel soot.

No one washed their hands or cleaned their work surfaces. Really — who would have expected less?

One sacrificial zucchini went on a hand-cranked gizmo that turned it into a long spiral as it came out the other end, but it didn't work right, so ultimately all eight bare hands of four separate strangers participated in handling it, all unwashed.

By this time we were a hair past the halfway mark in our two-hour class. I, being allergic to raw bacteria native to dog shit, decided not to eat anything, at all, under any circumstances, there. Then, or ever.

But what to do?

There was a slight pause. I pounced.

Rising quickly, I pivoted, hit the back of the room and talked to Creepy Nat, Ms Sensimilla's pet poofy-haired ex hippie gray guy friend/lizard-being who was hanging out there, and I apologized.

I apologized to him for forgetting somehow, to tell Ms Sensimilla that I might have to leave early, gave him the $12 for the class, and skedaddled. Oh, God, did I, like no one has ever. Skedaddled. (Zoom!)

Before anyone could blink more than once, I was on the street, making a sharp turn around the corner, and then, safe and free, I had lunch at Good Affinity. Cooked.

Close call, eh?

So that was my day.

The Meaning Of Coffee

Some of this, some of that, and a bit of whatever.

My Spanish teacher says that instant coffee is quicker – sometimes you don't have time to brew the other kind of coffee, so you make instant.

Yes and no.

Most Americans, these days, would say "Ah...no, that's not even coffee."

While viewing an apartment owned by a very nice family, I was offered coffee as an honored guest. The coffee was instant. And decaf.

I appreciated the gesture, and for instant coffee, it was good enough, but if you are a gringo, imagine offering your guests a choice of two instant coffees – one in a jar and the other, pre-mixed, sugared, and seasoned, in a paper packet that came from a factory.

It's a difference of cultures – not good here, bad there, or vice versa. Only a difference. And not all brewed coffee is good, as you know. My mother insisted on drinking swill made from the scorched brown sawdust that came in a can. It was what she knew. I made good coffee for her once or twice, but she couldn't handle it – it didn't taste like Folgers.

Mom was right about that.

Surprisingly to many, not all Latin Americans are heavy coffee drinkers. A lot of them do not drink any kind of coffee. I am not an expert on this, but I gather that Central Americans drink coffee, Colombians drink coffee, and maybe Venezuelans. After that, as you travel south, not so much. Maybe Brazilians, since Brazil is a large coffee producer.

But Chile, for example. Definitely not there. It's not a coffee place.

A good online forum I found discusses all things Chilean. The gringos on the forum constantly lament the instant coffee culture in Chile. If you ask for café (coffee), you get instant. If you want real coffee (i.e., brewed), you ask for café café. And you may or may not get more than a blank stare if you do.

Try Ecuador then. Ecuador's not a coffee place. There is coffee here if you want it, and where I live (Cuenca), good coffee makings are available at a gringo-owned bookstore for $4.50 a pound, as grounds or beans. And that at least is is equal to the coffee I paid $15.95 a pound for at one of the U.S.'s best roasters in Olympia, WA.

And coffee is available brewed, in a cup, though the quality varies, as it does everywhere.

My Spanish teacher, who was born here, says that here brewed coffee is often called café pasado, when you want to be absolutely specific. The idea being that since the coffee has passed through a filter, it was definitely brewed. Instant coffee – no. It has no reason to touch a filter unless your water comes with bugs, but that is not part of city life, so pasado equals brewed.

Some terms I've come across:

• Café con leche: coffee with milk
• Café americano: black coffee, maybe not all that strong
• Café solo: stronger black coffee
• Café tinto: black coffee that is definitely strong
• Capuccino italiano: cappuccino
• Capuccino con crema: cappuccino made with cream
• Mokaccino: latte made with steamed chocolate milk
• Café con leche: strong coffee (espresso, maybe) and scalded milk in a 1:1 ratio

So if you want it you can have it. And you get a little fun too, from the treasure hunt you engage in, searching for it.

All-American Flushing, Still At Local Prices

Get an inner tube checkup now.

Here at Don's Colon we provide only the finest cuisine and All-American Colon Showers. If you haven't given us a try yet, hey.

Maybe it's time.

You've heard of Vegetarian. We do that.

You've heard of Vegan. Ditto, and it's OK.

You've heard of Raw Food Vegan. Well, guess what? Yep.

And so on.

But where's the limit? Can you spend your whole life searching for the perfect diet?

Yes, and we cater too.

But what's the end game? Well, it's a wild tofu chase, folks. Once you start that hunt you may end up feeling like the Pope in the woods some days.

Food has its limits, and of everything you eat, only so much gets processed. And then, you know what happens next.

That's were we come in.

Here in lovely Cuenca in lovely Ecuador we have a paradise.

A paradise of weather, of low food prices, of gringos stampeding to get the last $800 rental before it goes up to $1200. And if you're looking for a $300 rental, it's now the $800 rental.

Food is one of the last bargains, so people go overboard, especially Social Security recipients hoping to make it here on that monthly check. Once they find out what rentals cost now, they eat to compensate.

No, even if you're on our Raw Food Vegan Plan, you can still use an occasional tune-up to remove impacted residue.

And that's were we make our entrance into your scene.

Stop by any time.

No reservations needed. We have the conveyor running 24/7, and it'll take you straight through our Flush 'N Wax and deposit you out the other end in no time.

And after your Flush, what then?

Go for it.

Try the choice petit filet mignon or fish special, with garlic bread, onion soup, Caesar salad, potato, and veggie. Regularly $10 + tax and tip, but fully covered by the $99.99 Flush Price.

In other words, the best of all possible treats after a vigorous treatment, and a great antidote to all that crunchy raw food you've been gnawing at in frustration.

To your health then, from Don's Colon.

Eat Week Two

The day of eternal chewing.

The other place I went during Eat Week is called "El Nuevo Paraiso".

I have a review from a couple years ago, one that was published on a now-defunct web site, or I'd link to it. Anyway, it clued me a bit to the location, style, and conventions of the place.

Sort of.

It is another vegetarian joint.

I went there twice during Eat Week (Tuesday and Thursday).

El Nuevo Paraiso is all Ecuadorian. The TV is on, always turned up to 13, and me with the one ear and all, it's kind of a soundscape adventure.

Tuesday, on my first visit, I went in and stood staring like an idiot (something I'm actually good at) toward the menu, again a menu on a wall, with pictures.

From the pictures you can't tell anything, really. I can't. So, on to step two.

The woman at the "caja" ("box", or "cash register") came out of her cage right smartly when she realized I needed professional help.

She headed for me with a ruler in her hand, but she didn't whup me. Instead she started slapping the ruler at the various pictures, jabbering at me in Spanish. I think it was Spanish because that's what they talk around here when their mouths are open. It's like a tradition.

But with only the one partly-good ear and all, and the TV glowing red from the mass quantities of electrons flowing through the speaker, and the traffic noises, I couldn't really tell.

It could have been Tagalog. But probably not, you know. Probably Spanish, which I am not any good at yet. Which is why I said "jabbering". These days even English, which I've been immersed in for decades, is also jabbering. I'm losing it, ear-wise.

So to get her to stop slapping the pictures I finally said "Sí" at the last one she hit. Like I had caught on when she walloped the picture of my dreams.

She seemed relieved at that point. Relieved that she could stop slapping the wall and put her arm down and get on with things.

So that was phase one. Phase two involved ceviche.

I'd heard about their ceviche from the review I mentioned. I wanted to try that, being a ceviche virgin and all, so I asked for that too.

Result: more jabbering. Aimed in my general direction. I'd confused her.

This little old stupid gringo guy comes in and at first seems convinced to buy the stuff she's been slapping with her ruler, and then he orders ceviche instead.

No. Tambien. He wants both? Sí, he wants both.

Ah, even more crazy, this guy.

Since I was able to put $4.00 of actual money into her hand she decided that the deal had finally escalated into her pay grade, which is to take orders and get money, not to educate fools, so she calmed down about then. Somewhat.

And since I also mumbled "tengo hambre" (literally "I have hunger", or, more naturally, "I'm hungry"), she decided that I was not only crazy but probably creepy enough not to mess with any more, so after tucking the money away safely she wrote my order for two lunches on a piece of paper the size of a bubble gum wrapper and handed it to me.

Almost immediately, before I could figure out what to do next, someone else came along and took the scrap of paper, and then disappeared into the back.

OK, then.

About two minutes passed and then something happened.

The thing that happened is that a basket arrived, containing a knife, a fork, a spoon, and a napkin. And a bowl of cold soup, about six ounces worth (but separate, not in the basket). I decide to wait and see.

What I saw was nothing. For a few minutes. Then something else happened.

Which was that a plate of stuff arrived, just like the one the woman had been slapping with her ruler. It had rice, a slab of breaded and fried fake mystery meat, a bunch of vegetables, some more vegetables, and yet more other vegetable-like things.

So I began poking. Hmmm.

Then a big bowl of ceviche arrived, with another plate of rice.

I decided to start with the first bowl of soup, since it got to me first, and looked good.

Kind of pink, I think.

Damn.

Just about the best thing I've had in Ecuador.

Room temperature, creamy-white-pinkish, with bits of floating herbs, and with thin onion strips too.

Spicy. Very spicy. I could have eaten about half a gallon, but stopped after consuming half the bowl, and shifted my attention to the plate.

Roughly at about this time I noticed that the guy at the next table seemed to be keeping an eye on me, so I began to wonder.

But usually it's best to act like you know what you're doing, so I tried that and went at the plate full of vegetables and artificial mystery meat.

Which was good.

All of it was good, but mostly pretty bland.

The vegetables seemed like steamed vegetables. Cooked, warm, wet, and crunchy. Not much more.

There was a lot of what looked like vegetable pearls in there, pale, smooth, wet, crunchy. In a steamed-vegetable way.

This must have been more mote, the corn kernels they eat here. Roughly pea-sized but not pea-like otherwise, and not corn-like. Mote-like, I guess. New to me.

After a while I tried the ceviche, which was rich and full of mushrooms and things, and mostly (to me) not so flavorful. But maybe it's just me.

So after several hours of chewing I was around a quarter the way through my food. Even the ceviche had to be chewed.

Lots of chewing.

Lots and lots of chewing, of things that had little flavor (to me). Except that soup. The first bowl of soup.

Dawn began to break.

I began to wonder if that first bowl of exquisite soup might have in fact been a bowl of sauce.

The guy at the next table was still discreetly watching me. I thought. Perhaps hoping to discover the secret of craziness among gringos.

Meanwhile, I continued to eat. Like I've eaten all of this before and am willing to teach the world the right way, with crazy veteran confidence.

One part of my act was to take my small bowl of cold spicy soup and ladle it onto the tasteless vegetables. Lots of it. Which helped.

But then, driven by food lust, I made the mistake of eating the rest of said spicy soup with a spoon, leaving at least two thirds of my vegetables in their original, wet, taste-free state.

Too bad.

On the other hand, I do know how to pack it away, after countless years of gut stuffing. So I did that, but got really tired of chewing.

Unfortunately, the only way out of the place was through chewing.

So I did more of that.

Eventually it was all over except for licking my plate and the two bowls. I passed on that. For some reason.

Maybe I'll do it next time.

But well before I finished, one of the staff stopped by the table of Mr Other Guy for some reason. And when she left him she put his bowl of soup on my table.

The small bowl, of pinkish, cold soup, from his table.

I guessed this was either a taunt or a jest.

Maybe a salute.

Who can say?

Anyway, I was not about to finish his meal for him, so after a minute of continued chewing I gently pushed his bowl away from my plate and ignored it. I had serious chewing of my own to finish.

I guess the good news is that no one came after me with a stick. Or a ruler. Or a bowl of sauce. (Except as already related, above.) And Mr Other Guy left before I did, probably so he could go tell everyone his new stupid-crazy gringo story.

Four bucks worth of eats is a lot around here, if you go where Joe Ecuadorian goes.

Consequently I waddled the half mile back to my place, but not without one more encounter.

This one I regret. Oh, my, do I.

A lovely young woman (Maybe a third of my age, OK?), stopped me and seemed to ask for directions, in Spanish, that being what they do here, as I've already stated.

All I could do was apologize and say that I speak very little Spanish and then turn and wobble down the street, bumping into signposts and whatnot, due to a severe ballast imbalance achieved during lunch, while chewing.

Back at my room I dug out a map and figured out that the part I understood ("Simón Bolívar"), was a street in the direction opposite to the one the woman had been going.

If only I'd had my map.

I mean, just to be helpful.

I could have stumbled along in Spanish well enough to have figured out what she wanted, pointed to where we were, and to where she needed to go, and then I could have given her the map. And been a nice guy.

Crazy. Ugly. Stupid and all, but kind of nice in my own road-accident sort of way.

But no.

That didn't happen either.

So.

Two days later I went back to "El Nuevo Paraiso", expecting perhaps an armed mob. Nope.

No flamethrowers. No one throwing rocks. No nothing, much.

It did require three people to take my order though.

Even though I chose the "Menú de Hoy" ("Daily Special", usually written as "Menú del Día") from the whiteboard out front.

With one ear, no Spanish, and the TV up around 13.5 (maybe 14), things get dicey, quick.

I had my $2.00 out (in dollar coins, which they like here), and was ready to pay and all, but hadn't heard anyone say anything that I could recognize.

One of the women was talking at me, and so was another one, and the third, she was talking and writing out "$1.80" on a scrap of paper. For my edification. Since even if I was so stupid as to not speak or even comprehend any known language, then surely I could still respond to "$1.80" if written out. Which here translates to "$1,80", but even I am bright enough to follow that.

No. My problem was not-paying-attention, plus hearing three people and a TV all talking at once. Into my one ear.

But.

I finally caught on.

I handed over my money and things calmed down. No more ruler-slapping, at least that day.

What I had ordered was:

• Entrada: Col morada con de mayonesa (Cabbage with mayonnaise)
• Sopa: Mote con frejol (Mote with beans)
• Segundo: Tallarin chino con llapingacho (Chinese macaroni with llapingacho)
• Juego: Colada (Literally, "wash", but essentially the "colada" in "piña colada", I think)
• And a bowl of sauce came with it (Joy!)

About col morada con de mayonesa: I've never had cabbage like this before. Amazing. I don't know if the mayonesa was mayonnaise or twice-refined axle grease, but I want more. Sort of almost warm, not room temperature, which slight warmth made it so friendly.

The soup (Mote con frejol) was fine and smooth. Like bean soup containing imaginary corn. Imaginary mote corn. Not corny or crunchy or lumpy or anything bad. Fine and smooth.

The "Chinese macaroni" looked like spaghetti to me. Long and noodly. Noodly. I liked that.

The llapingacho was a potatoey and yammy something. Yellowish inside, with a nice crust around the outside. There were rice and vegetables too.

The juice looked synthetic. Not sure about it.

Something like lemonade mix with artificial cinnamon in it. Something like what you'd get if you ground Dentyne gum into a powder and mixed a lot of it into cloudy pink sugary water.

Then again it may have been dilute fruit juice. It had some kind of pulp at the bottom, and was not chilled. I didn't want it but thought it would be disrespectful to leave it either untouched or half-drunk so I drank it all.

No unexpected side effects to report.

Bowl of sauce.

Ah.

This time, instead of asking for a straw, or drinking it straight from the bowl, I dished out the whole of it onto the rice and vegetables.

Smart move.

It perked up everything.

Made the whole meal amazing (except for the juice problem, of course).

Tangy. Spicy. Almost peppery. I still want a half gallon of that sauce straight some day. All to myself. Even if it kills me.

There are worse ways to go (all the other ways).

So, a really fine, filling meal for $1.80.

I'll be going back every now and then as long as they keep serving sauce and don't come at me with sticks and knives.

Or maybe even if they do. Hey.

Week one...

Eat Week.

OK, last week in review.

I ate at different places. I decided, whatever the pain, I've got to try things.

When I say I ate at different places, what I mean is two different places, bouncing back and forth, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at one, and Tuesday and Thursday at the other.

When I say "pain" I mean mostly total, abject embarrassment with language. Embarrassment for me, and for everyone within earshot.

Luckily few here carry guns, so there was little actual shooting.

One place I tried was "Good Affinity", about a half-hour walk away, near "Gringo Gulch" where a lot of the pale people live in tall brick buildings.

Good Affinity was recommended by the first person I met here, while eating at "el Tunel". Good Affinity is a Taiwanese vegetarian place.

Vegetables are good.

I've been eating mostly bread, or scrambled eggs, toast, and bread, or tiny dabs of vegetables surrounded by rice and thin slices of various meats, supplemented by bread, for six weeks.

A lot of bread.

I thought, "Vegetables, I could use them." Besides, the two places I tried last week were highly recommended.

It's a bit odd to struggle in Spanish up against a couple of Chinese guys, though they were very nice about it all, and probably thought the same about me (oddness, not the Chinese part).

I look more like an aging but still crazed U-boat captain. Sort of. In my fantasy life. Some of the time.

The Good Affinity folks no doubt get many dim-witted gringos stumbling in. I always apologize a lot. I'm getting good at that, even in Spanish. It's my specialty.

So - the short version: I made it through my first lunch.

What I did after the second pass was to copy the menu into my notebook and take it home for analysis. The copying was easy because the menu is short and on the wall, with pictures.

I get pictures. After only a bit of study.

On my third visit I did well, sort of, considering.

There was no line behind me (so I didn't delay anyone), and I kind of knew the routine, and due to having done my homework, I was able to ask for "brécol" (broccoli) as one of my options.

You get rice plus four other options, and you can point if all else fails. I'm still largely in failure mode, "Failure" being my middle name and all, though I can say "broccoli" pretty well, and I wanted it anyway.

Excuse me. I meant to say "brécol". I sincerely apologize.

To you, your associates, your relatives, to the fine people of this country, to the President, and to the flag, Sir or Madam as the case may be.

You can just call me "F".

On my second visit I ordered "Menú de Día Combo" ("Daily Special", or "Special of the Day"), which I've had all three times, sort of, but I refused the juice, wanting to keep the price down a bit.

Silly me. I apologize.

After I'd sat down there was a small episode of hand waving and chattering between the two Chinese guys who were on deck that day.

The one who had put my food together, and the other one, the one who had offered me juice, well they had an exchange of words, and hand signals.

Guy One then caught my attention and kept saying something about "jugo", and motioned me to come and get some. I finally figured out that I had paid for it and they wanted to make sure I got it.

I think.

Anyway, I got a glass of juice and they didn't charge me for it or chase me down the street after I left, so I'm guessing it was included.

This was nice of them.

Undue kindness toward idiots may not pay off in the after life, assuming there is one, but idiots come to appreciate it when it arrives unbidden, with a smile. And of course it is always undeserved.

Especially by me.

And thirst quenching.

On the third day I simply ordered "Un Menú de Día Combo, por favor," pointing like a semi-pro, acting only half-stupid, and then I tried living dangerously by asking "Y tambien, dos rollos primavera, por favor". (I.e., please toss the idiot two spring rolls as well.)

It was my lucky day.

Two spring rolls had already been fried up, for someone else apparently, and were sitting on a plate behind the sneeze guard, ready to go home with me after some pleasant chewing, so I didn't have to wait.

To sum up, the place is not elegant nor the food stupendous. But it is good. Good eats.

And they are kind to idiots.

Which is hard work, the being kind to idiots part, and I appreciate it

The "Menú de Día Combo" is soup (first course), "segundo" (second course, consisting of a plate with the mandatory rice plus other options which you select to keep the rice from feeling lonely), and then there is a large glass of juice to sluice your gullet with.

For juice the second two times I got tomate (the not-tomato juice, which is a bit like orange juice, and not red but yellow).

The total cost for the "Menú de Día Combo" is $2.50.

Spring rolls are 70 cents each, so my lunchtime total was $3.90.

Kind of a splurge compared to el Tunel at $2.25, but the spring rolls are crisp and greasy and the calories feel good as they become one with me.

My kinda eats.

The other Menú de Día options are "segundo y jugo" ($2.25, no soup), or "solo segundo" ($2.00, no soup or juice). Not bad.

It's a nice walk out to Good Affinity and the bank branch I've been going to is across the street, so I can get cash and eat. Which is better than eating and getting gas.

Especially because of the cost of lunch, and for the crisp bills that the ATM give me.

The cash this ATM ejects is fresh off the press. I've never seen such new money before.

It is clean, unwrinkled, flawless, and nearly still warm from the oven.

So far it's passed review everywhere I've spent it. And they pay attention around here.

Some places, including the SuperMaxi grocery chain, seriously inspect your money, holding it up to the light, sticking it under an ultraviolet lamp, feeling its texture, doing a fingernail scratch test. For even a $5 bill.

No one has yet sniffed my money, but I'm expecting to see that. Maybe tomorrow. Who can say?

The other place I went to is called "El Nuevo Paraiso".

We'll visit it another day. OK?