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| Photo: luggageonline.com |
Of course, it being a college audience, there were quite a few questions about Rick's stance on pot.
I found Rick to be rather stand-offish. I suppose that, as a celebrity, he gets annoying people pulling on his shirt-sleeves all the time. Or maybe he's just shy. He's a bit of an odd duck, that's for certain.
After the event several people and I helped him carry the boxes of books he was selling back to his car. He had parked in an underground parking garage and couldn't remember which floor his car was on. After walking around three floors, my arms stretched to their limit, I finally turned to him & joked, "I hope you're better finding your way around with a map than you are in a parking garage".
Except I was was only half-joking. Seriously, man, I'm carrying a massive box of BOOKS!
I think of that encounter any time I hear Rick on NPR, as I did yesterday. He was chatting with a caller, a housewife from Oklahoma, about not being able to travel as much in adulthood as had been possible during the woman's youth. The woman mentioned her website and I was intrigued: http://globaltableadventure.com/.
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| Photo: www.globaltableadventure.com |
She - Sasha - is making a dish from every country in the world each week. 195 countries, 195 meals, 195 weeks. It's a brilliant idea, and one I will try myself. I travelled quite a bit in my 20s, even living in France for a year, and miss globetrotting immensely. What a fantastic way to incorporate new cultures and new cuisine into our everyday lives. I love it!
Gene and I have talked a lot about how we want to influence Kaelen's attitudes toward food. I went to lunch with a friend a while back and she bemoaned the fact that the restaurant "didn't have any kid food, like chicken nuggets". Why is processed chicken-type meat considered "kid food"? We want - perhaps naively - for Kaelen to grow up eating the same foods we eat. I won't be a short-order chef, cooking different things for different members of our family, nor will we use drive-throughs as a regular means of getting sustenance.
OK, I will cop to a weakness for Wendy's, to which I succombed more than once during my pregnancy (pre-gestational diabetes diagnosis). Damn those fries!
If you're interested in introducing your kid to new cuisine, read the book "Hungry Monkey". A friend recommended it to me and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's funny, contains interesting recipes, and, for those local to Seattle, mentions many places locals will recognize. We look forward to introducing Kaelen to farming and teaching him how food grows. He'll grow up with a backyard flock of chickens and a yard full of edibles. I can't wait to see him chase a chicken around to catch it, as our neighbors' kid does.
How do you introduce your kids to new cuisines? What advice do you have?
