never made eye contact with me; too consumed with their conversation it seemed for a moment that I was invisible. However I was able to understand bits and pieces of their Spanish, so I reached back into Mrs. Collins 10th grade Spanish class and politely excused my interruption. Using my broken Spanish, I offered the men help and ensured them I knew exactly how they were feeling. It took me three minutes to get the point across and at the end there was nothing but silence, the two men just stared at me. I looked at them, they looked at each other. They looked at me, back at each other. It was awkward. I even gave them that nice light tap on the back and the smile that says, “Hey….what’s up…is someone going to say something because this silence is killing me?” Then the first man broke the ice I had just thickened and said with no accent at all “Dude, what was that?”
I have always been fascinated with the world and how others live and it was the interest in other cultures that led me to Culinary School and eventually around our country. I believed to actually witness diversity one must leave the confines of there home and take their passions to different time zones, or so I thought. It was on the same day that I had the interactions with the two men that an email came through my phone. I opened up a wonderful email sent to me from a woman in Rio de Janeiro. Her husband has recently been diagnosed with Interstitial Cystitis and they are trying desperately to accept a new way of life. Needless to say I was touched, and a bit giddy to be completely honest. Interstitial Cystitis and food had just connected me personally with someone thousands of miles away. Her email reminded me that I don’t speak the best Spanish; in fact I speak Spanish horribly, but every day that I read through emails from Ethiopia, France, Ireland, India, Brazil, Russia, Australia, Japan, China, and here in the US, I discover that with Interstitial Cystitis there are no language barriers. We all eat, and I speak the language of food very well.
So fans I am going global. Global as in my recipes from here on out will be ones that help you expand your horizons while at the same time enabling me to help those outside the US. Tricky stuff curry chicken can be, but fear not there are no smoke and mirrors with food, anything can be done.
There have been 56 different countries that have visited myfoodstyle.com and that number is growing. I thank everyone one who has written to me, and no I do not mind your broken English, as long as you can handle my broken Spanish!