The State of My Stomach: Stop 0 (USA)

I sit now on the cusp of a year-long trip, starting on July 23, 2017. That morning, I board a plane to Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan, and kick off a year of chasing regional specialty dishes, local plants, and seasonal seafood all around the globe (well, all around the Eastern Hemisphere). Predicted highlights will include fresh sea urchin in Hokkaido, various durian cultivars in Malaysia, pickled fish roe and fried algae in Laos, bluff oysters and freshwater crayfish in New Zealand, khinkali in Georgia, and sea snails and octopus in Sicily! Unpredicted highlights will include… who knows? I can predict, however, that this uncharted space is where the substance will be.

The ‘State of my Stomach’ posts will be monthly posts that chronicle how this trip is affecting my taste buds. Stop 0 is a bit of an anomaly because I’m still at home, but I’m using it as an opportunity to establish a flavor base.

For as much as it feels like I’ve always preferred what I currently prefer (and vice versa), there exists lots of evidence to prove me wrong. My recent slow march towards pescetarianism resulting in my taste buds turning against meat, for example. So too 20-year-old photos of me with bottles of Cherry Coke to my lips. Or my mom insisting that I used to order only bean and cheese burritos at Mexican restaurants. Or clear memories of running to the bathroom in disgust to spit an accidentally-bitten olive into my napkin before the flavor made me gag. Or consistently ordering cafeteria pizza and limp lettuce salad for lunch as a high school senior.

Taste buds are highly malleable.

So here’s Stop 0’s base:

Love: shellfish and sashimi, vegetable juices, very dark chocolate, tropical fruits, seared things

Hate: artificial flavors, most fast food, unnecessarily sweet things, celery, MSG as an excuse for being lazy about flavor, dishes plated to appeal mainly to Instagrammers, wine

General trend: I love to try things I am unfamiliar with – even more so if I’ve read about them previously. I like almost everything that is made of real (not chemically created/enhanced) ingredients, not overly reliant on a lazy spice like salt, sugar, or MSG, and prepared with skill and care. Strong herbs are a plus. Anything I can taste in burps hours later is also a plus.

Notable life influences:

1. 1984: I am born into a family which holds the attitude that if it is edible, it should be sampled at least once.
2. 1987: I eat deep fried fish eyes on a dare without understanding why this is a big deal.
3. 1988: I am the only kid in preschool with cream cheese and caviar sandwiches in her lunch box.
4. 1990: I decide to stop eating 90% of the food I like as an experiment (to see what not liking food feels like).
5. 1991: I binge-eat Gulf oysters as fast as my uncle can shuck them at our Thanksgiving gathering in Houston.
6. 1993: I randomly throw up in the middle of the night, am told it is because I only ate junk food the previous day, and then proceed to ask my mom every day for at least a year whether I have eaten enough healthy food to protect against night vomiting
7. 1997: I rebelliously sneak Spaghetti-O’s and Chef Boyardee at a friend’s house because I know my mom would be mad if she saw me eating it.
8. 2001: On a trip to New Orleans with my high school band, we’re supposed to be eating at our hotel and at places like Old Country Buffet, so I ‘run away’ into the city to sample some of New Orleans’ actual culinary offerings. I get in trouble with the band director, but not with my dad. He is proud.
9. 2004: Sophomore year of college, I date a man with a nutritionist mother who is way too intense for me at the time with all her vitamins and sprouted grain bread, but who nudges me slowly but irreversibly away from the instant ramen, canned soup and frozen dinners I live on at the time.
10. 2009: I discover Yelp, before Yelp is big enough to have armies of fake reviewers or significant sway over businesses’ success, and use it to redefine my understanding of Colorado’s culinary landscape. I also discover that, even more than discovering new food myself, I love introducing it to others.
11. 2010: I move within striking distance of a Little Saigon second in size and Vietnamese population only to Actual Saigon.
12. 2012: I travel through East/Southeast Asia for three straight months and discover that no matter how much ‘unhealthy’ street food I consume, I still feel better than I do at home in the States (as long as I chase all of it with handfuls of tropical fruit).
13. 2016: I become too bothered by the existence of factory farming to sit idly by, but remain way too food-centered to go fully vegetarian. I do periodic vegan experiments and cut my (non-seafood) meat consumption drastically, which results, wholly unexpectedly, in my not liking meat as much when I do eat it. I have mixed feelings about this and write a maudlin blog post about it.

Finally… here’s the current scoop (this will be the format for all subsequent ‘State of my Stomach’ posts):

Rising interest: olives, creative vegan, durian varieties, coffee (in small doses), craft beer (in even smaller doses), chickpea-alternative hummus, eating in complete darkness, insects

Falling interest: smoothies, granola, meat (mammal and fowl), raw food, imitation meat

Targets in the next country (Japan): shirako (cod testicles), gindara saikyo-yaki (fried black cod), umi-budo (sea grapes), te-uchi soba, taimeshi (rice with sea bream and kombu), kabayaki (grilled unagi), namero (aji mince), dojo (tiny eel), and haskap berries.