Food – Kiwi Travel Writer talks food, travel, and tips

Post Covid-19 travel: when and where will you travel – or not!

When will you start travelling once we have COVID-19 under control or at least contained? Check out the map below-the world is a huge place.

If you’re a kiwi you’ll soon be able to travel all over New Zealander again. What will be your destination, and will it be to visit friends and family or as a tourist or traveller? What about a trans-Tasman bubble? Will you go to Australia? (or NZ)

Peacock Fountain, Christchurch Botanic Gardens

quintessential Australia – a sleepy koala

If you’re not resident in New Zealand, when and where, will you start travelling to?

Off to the Moulin Rouge in Paris perchance?

My belief is that tourists will stay home for quite some time however, as always, solo travellers, nomads, and backpackers, in general, will be the first onboard planes heading to exotic destinations. Backpackers, of course, are a state of mind – it’s nothing to do with their luggage or the amount of money in their bank account. They are the explorers who want to learn new things, to meet new people, see new things and of course, taste new food!

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So what places are on your travel list my bucket list is so long that at my age I know I will not be able to tick many off

Unless of course, I meet a tall dark handsome stranger who is happy to fund my travels – I’m open to that!

Food and travel – heaven for some, hell for others!

Food is an important element to travel – it’s heaven for some – hell for others.

I love the new, the different, the local delicacies, while others want to mostly, or even only, eat at multinational outlets. what do you prefer?

This phenomenon is not confined to only westerners but also many others. I’ve known, Italians, and Asians who only want to eat their usual food while travelling … I know in New Zealand many Chinese tours always insist on meals at Chinese establishments.

Here are just some photos of a tiny amount of meals and food I’ve eaten all over the world.

Oman

Fiji Our food is exposed

Start with rice – on a banana leaf

Seafood risotto at Hotel Bruny

I love raw oysters – the food of love ‘they’ say

Food glorious food Dubai!

cooking

Bowls of all types are fantastic

Kota Bharu, I’m looking forward to more Malaysian food

Pad Thai: Indigo Pearl Resort, Phuket, Thailand

‘Banana leaf’ curry

I have breakfast at Gujaret Chief Minister’s home / Narendra Modi

durian .. most Westeners dont even try this “king of fruit!”

rambutan

No matter where you are, always try local food … fresh lotus seed heads

Asam Pedas for breakfast: Parit Jawa, Malaysia

only 12% of westerners like durian – I am one of them

food-lovers-guide-to-the-world-au-nz-black-large

this crispy fish was delicious

food features large in my travels

Food glorious food

Here’s a little food porn from my recent travels in Malaysia

No posts for a while – I’m on the road again

strange nose – sort of like the proboscis monkey

I know many bloggers and travel writers do blog while on the road – I rarely do! However, I will be posting a photo a day.

Why? Well, I’m always too busy ‘doing’ ‘observing’ ‘photographing’ – as well as eating and generally ‘experiencing’ rather than writing.

As some of you know I will be at music and cultural festivals, I’ll also be exploring and hiking in national parks, snorkeling in warm waters, and, and and – so lots to follow in my daily photos and then the future blogs on this site.

So, if you want to follow my travels in Malaysia, (Sabah, Sarawak Penang, & KL) and Mongolia) follow me on my Traveling Writer Facebook page, and/or my KiwiTravelWriter Instagram page as I plan on posting a photo a day during my adventures over the five weeks I’m on the road. (I’m leaving NZ 30th June and back on 7th August)

Then, if you want to read my blogs after I have digested all I saw and experienced on these travels (And get notified by email as they are published) make sure you sign up for this blog on the top right of this blog page.

Now I will zip up my bags and head off to the airport – see you back here in August.

Of course you can read any of the some 1300 blogs I’ve written since 2008 – just use the search box by topic, country, year or word.

What’s the right way to eat?

Despite having a wee kitchen, the size of a yacht galley, I love food. And, living alone, I whip up few culinary delights – even though I attended one of the first cooking schools in Thailand; managed a café in Athens for couple of months’ mid-season, and even worked as a sous chef in Wales – in an Italian restaurant, under a French Chef. I’m like the Guardian’s Jay Rayner, ‘a greedy’ eater, and like him, I love smelly foods like blue cheese and durian.

When I was a vegetarian it was difficult to be sure no chicken had sat in the soup water despite having learnt to say I don’t eat meat in a dozen different languages. “Vegetarian meal? No problem, here is chicken, fish or pork.” As long as it has no red meat some assumed it was vegetarian. “No – no meat, no chicken no pork. Rice please. No, no soup on it” I’d say as they carefully scooped some liquid and left the chicken pieces floating in the fatty cauldron.

Some countries are easier to travel in when you don’t eat meat however even some Buddhists eat meat. During those vegetarian days, the best place I found for vegetarian meals was a small suburb in Georgetown, Penang (Malaysia) If you are going there, write out these directions – I hope they’re still there as I’m going back in a few months.

Go to the reclining Buddha (walk or bus from town) then cross the road to visit the peaceful Buddhist temple and when you have finished looking, go out the front gate – turn left, walk a kilometre down the road to a T-intersection, turn left and stop at any food shop. I guarantee it will be fantastic.

I also know you will ask, as I did, “Are you sure this is vegetarian? No meat?” They were amused. Yes, no meat. They have developed creative and tasty ways of using tofu in its many forms – I forget what ethnicity they were.

After a few years, I gave up being vegetarian and would join locals and try their cultural delicacies such as crocodile, haggis, and in Cairo, pigeon stuffed with green rice. My stomach still continues its cast-iron behaviour of allowing me to eat everything put in front of me.

However, for many, apart from tummy problems there is a down side to travel: you’ll be destined to be rich in many ways but will be cash poor. You could be infected with a disease to which there is no known antidote; the travel bug.

Travel also gives you, a new way of thinking. Long held “truths” no longer seem true when viewed from a different culture, a different perspective.

A simple example is eating. Most New Zealanders are taught to eat with a knife and a fork. Knife, in the right hand, for cutting and the fork, in the left, for hold the food then placing it in our mouth – in other words the “right” way.

Of course, in other countries this is not the ‘right’ way. In the USA, the fork is in the left hand; in Thailand food is cut to bite-sized pieces during the preparation process and a spoon is used to eat, other Asian cultures use chop sticks, another country, their right hand. To each culture their way of eating is the ‘truth’. But what about other ‘truths’.

Travel is intensified living, nothing can be taken for granted. It’s like having a new pair of glasses, we see often things, and ourselves, more clearly. Nothing is familiar, we are constantly aware of, or curious about, what is happening around us. We watch the interaction between people and try to decipher it. Body language is different from place to place and our previous knowledge of the rules of interaction no longer apply. And that’s one of the reasons why we travellers love travel.

‘Have a coffee with me’ an old man indicates – I do. Muscat fish market, Oman,

Why travel? Why not! Traveller or tourist, armchair or plane, life is richer not poorer, enriched not impoverished, colourful and, certainly never dull.

But, knowing all that, and knowing to always use a spoon in Thailand – and not to put a fork in my mouth while there – or lick a knife in New Zealand, why oh why do I get so uptight when I don’t get a soup spoon to eat soup?

Guess those old ‘rules’ that I was raised on are right there, just waiting to be used. Nevertheless, however I’m eating, I assume that somewhere in the world it is the correct way to eat, the ‘proper’ etiquette – I may just be misplaced at times.

Pedal-powered, Amish, buggies on Florida’s streets

‘What happens in Pinecraft stays in Pinecraft’.

You don’t expect to hear this about members of a religion which eschews electricity and bans driving. But in Florida, a state loved by the rich, the retirees, and the snowbirds, an unusual flock is living and holidaying there, and it’s there I hear the phrase.

Staying on the edge of Sarasota, alongside a nature reserve and golf course, I find I’m also beside an Amish and Mennonite neighbourhood: Pinecraft. ‘Plain people’ as they call themselves, have been on Florida’s Gulf Coast since the 1920s and, over recent years, their friends and relatives have become snowbirds. It’s those snowbirds, escaping the northern winters, who use the phrase about Pinecraft – words usually attached to sports teams or friends off on a wild weekend, not conservative Christian folk.

The streets have traditional Amish and Mennonite names such as Yoder, Graber and Schrock and the local population have their roots in different Midwestern settlements, each with slightly different styles of clothing, religious beliefs, and customs.

One thing that stays the same are quilts which are something of a cultural icon. They are beautiful as well as functional and seem to create togetherness for the Amish women who stitch and talk as they make them. I visit Alma Sue’s Quilts and talked with a woman working at a huge quilting frame. Her needle kept going in and out of the material as she talked: telling me she’s eighty-four, quilts daily from ten until four, was originally from Indiana, and has been making quilts since she was a child. When I comment about her long day she said the woman she shares a house with, picks her up at four, takes her home and ‘she tells me to put my feet up’. She continued, ‘she is older than me and cooks all our meals, so I’m very lucky.’

No doubt her house is small – most of the Amish bungalows appear to be about fifty or sixty square metres while the neighbourhood seems to be about one square kilometre. The closest I got to visit a home was when my host bought material at the Sewing Nook, a little shop at the back of a home. The woman said her business was mostly only open during the ‘season’ and she was really busy then – we’d followed the directions at her letterbox to ‘knock on the front door’ and she’d open the shop. She tells us the snowbird visitors like her variety of material which ‘is different’ to choices they have in the mid-west.

Horses and buggies, thought of as essentially Amish transport, don’t travel these Floridian streets; here they use three-wheeled bikes, pedal-powered buggies. I saw church members in traditional, plain clothing, the men with long beards and the women with their hair covered with caps, all pedalling their substitute buggies along the road and footpaths. Letterboxes often have biblical messages or homilies on them and many yards have bird boxes, although I didn’t see any doves, or other birds, in residence.

Walking to the Pinecraft Post Office, we pass their popular shuffleboard courts, complete with stands for watching the players from, and arrive at the world’s only Amish-operated post office. Some years ago, when it was under threat of closure, and valuing letters, the Amish purchased the small building and postal contract. With no computers or debit card machine the office woman uses a calculator, and receipts are hand-written and stamped. Outside, a well-used notice board advertises jobs and community events and I overhear a couple of ‘English’ (as the Amish call us others) say how much they valued having the post office close by.

Big Olaf’s provides us a huge ice cream, then after walking past a diorama of traditional Amish country and the only horse and buggy in town, I visit Yoder’s Fresh Market to browse the shelves with its great variety of foods, including many interesting homemade pickles.

I’m taken out for dinner, five minutes’ walk away, at one of the Amish restaurants in the area. These Pennsylvania-Dutch style restaurants are popular among Sarasota’s 50,000 locals, Amish snowbird tourists, as well as the local Plain population. This is a Sarasota ‘must-do’ for your bucket-list – take an empty stomach for favourites such as fried mush, butter noodles, meatloaf, fried okra, and shoofly pie – their mashed potato was the creamiest I’ve ever eaten, and the oven-fried buttermilk chicken, divine.

This area was first settled by an Amish man, who tried, unsuccessfully, to farm celery. He was followed by other Amish who also grew produce and, as homes multiplied, Pinecraft developed into this fully-fledged neighbourhood. The Pinecraft tourist season runs from November to April and sees the Amish population swell with older snowbirds, youth there for seasonal work, and newlyweds on their honeymoon, who all stay in their own holiday home, a rented house, or at one of the trailer-parks.

Although not there during ‘the season’ the Amish folk added an unexpected and interesting dimension to my travels – an Amish area in the midst of a lovely city, in what can be a hedonistic holiday state, and a reminder there’s more than beaches and amusement parks in Florida. See more photos here and a short interview about my experiences in Florida on Radio NZ National

Black flesh chicken and peanut soup

Huasheng Tang, otherwise known as peanut soup, is really popular in Xiamen, as is hailijian, oyster omelette – this is made with sweet potato flour as well as oysters. This was popular among the group I was travelling with but it was not a taste I acquired.

I also tried the sand worm jelly (tusundong), a local delicacy, and although it was not unpleasant I don’t like many jellied dishes, and after reading the article (see link above) about them I’m not sure I would eat them again.

One of the most interesting dishes (see main photo) was one of black chicken. I thought it had been dyed with perhaps squid ink, but in fact these chickens which apparently originate in Indonesia actually have black flesh, and actually tasted like any other chicken. It was not until my last morning in Xiamen, exploring some local streets near the hotel that I actually saw a black chicken for sale.

Food glorious food: Xiamen,Fujian, China

I have discovered how to put on weight in Xiamen, China. It’s simple really, just fly in as part of a citizen’s delegation from it’s sister-city,Wellington, and then leave some 7 or 8 days later. That’s it.

The old saying that a picture paints a thousand words means I’m offering you a long form essay with these photos – or food-porn as it’s called on social media.

That’s just a little selection for you … with much more to come from my fun-filled days here in a fabulous corner of a huge country I’d not visited before.

So, how to put on weight in Xiamen? Eat the above then waddle to the plane some days later. Simple really!

My last breakfast at the Seashine Palace Hotel

I loved Oman . . . and the food

I have a silver fern painted on my cast before travelling

Despite travelling with a fractured arm I loved Oman and would certainly return. Because of that broken arm I haven’t written the blogs I intended to, however, they will happen and while you’re waiting here are a few photos of some of my meals.

The food of Oman is a mixture of several staples of Asian foods and are often based on chicken, fish, and lamb, as well as the staple of rice and a mixture of spices. Smoked eggplant (aubergine) is popular as are curries and soups. The main meal is usually eaten in the middle of the day with a lighter meal in the evening.