The more you eat, the less flavor; the less you eat, the more flavor. ~Chinese Proverb

I'm on the road to recovery. The experience with the doctor was great. Although, hopefully one I won't have to repeat.
A few things happened that have caused some twinges of homesickness. Easter being one, of which I spoke a little about in a previous post.
Mother’s Day was a little strange. Very anticlimactic and I realized the reason for that is the lack of commercials on most of the TV channels. There are no commercials on the children’s channels (which makes holidays MUCH nicer). Also, Sunday is a workday, so no pressure for an all day celebration. The kids made cards and we went for ice cream.
But, honestly, the thing that set me back in my homesickness was a recent “Throwdown with Bobby Flay.” He was competing with a guy in Raleigh making ribs and baked beans. I almost cried. Okay, not really. But, it struck me at how much food is part of our identities. And here’s where I’m going to get controversial. I like Eastern AND Western barbecue equally. Vinegar based, tomato based, just baste the hell out of it, and it’s good with me! They have pork sections in a couple of the groceries here, but it’s really not the same as what you can get back home. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to make some anyway.
Which led me my next thought (I realized here I think about food way too often). Everything is becoming fusion. It’s extremely difficult to find what would be labeled as Emirati cuisine. It’s all a mishmash of grilling and spices, the Mediterranean influences washing over and combining into something particularly unique to this area, but still tasting like something you’ve had before.
Think about your own cooking style. For me, I know there’s a huge southern, soul food influence. But, I also have my mother’s German influence and my Dad’s “experimental” flair (sometimes for the worst, his pumpkin orange raisin bread is a recipe that will stay buried deeply in the recesses of trial gone wrong). New Orleans is one of my favorite American cities, so I cook a lot of Cajun and the snobbier, Creole, cuisines as well. And now, I’m finding the Middle Eastern influence creeping in. And I realize, for cooks (professional and home), we’re just one big fusion of flavors. But, doesn’t it sound fancier? Fusion cuisine. As Americans, it shouldn’t be surprising. And for Abu Dhabi, with its myriad expatriate societies, I’ve yet to find one place that was strictly one ethnicity. It’s all a hodgepodge of flavors.
Try this the next time you eat. Take a minute to really taste your food (you’ll probably eat less this way, too). See if you can taste where the cultures merge.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. ~Voltaire