Maybe you’ve noticed —  lately things have been quiet here at Foodie International. That’s because all the action is happening at a different URL: http://offthebeatenplate.tv.

For the past five weeks I’ve been on the road (and in the air) filming my brand new web TV series, Off the Beaten Plate. I’ve eaten my way to some amazing destinations: New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Cambodia and now Japan. The series focuses on exciting and unusual ways that food can transform your travel experience with fun adventures anyone can have.

I always say the best way to connect to different cultures is through local food. Food and travel go hand in hand, and I want to show people that you don’t have to spend loads of money to have an experience that’s “authentic” – you just need to harness that sense of adventure, smile and pick up a fork.

Check out my in-production website for updates as my crew and I eat our way around the world, meeting incredible people along every step of our journey.

From the very first day filming in New Zealand — as I was chased down the road by angry bees (wearing an oh-so-sexy bee-keeping suit) — I knew Off the Beaten Plate was going to be the culinary adventure of a lifetime.

Here’s an on-camera taste of what I was in for… from my appearance on New Zealand’s prime time TV show, Campbell Live. I get a crash course in some of the country’s indigenous foods by television chef and cookbook author, ”Maori Queen of Cuisine” Anne Thorp. Warning: not for the faint of heart!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH A TV CLIP OF ME EATING….???

Foodieinternational.com will be regularly updated again at the end of May, when the series filming is complete and internet access is a guarantee. In the meantime, here are some of my favorite moments (so far) while shooting Off the Beaten Plate:

It’s your first visit to New York City. You’re trying out the whole couch-surfing thing, hoping to get a local’s perspective on the city. Would you rather stay with: a bird-watcher, a dumpster-diver or a crazy foodie? That’s right! Guess who the foodie is?

This past week, I appeared on Belgian national television on a travel show called “Is ‘t Nog Ver?” (translation: Is it far? – CORRECTION! It actually means “Are we there yet?”)

“Is ‘t Nog Ver?” is a tongue-in-cheek travel comedy where three celebrities couch-surf around the world. In this episode, I take Jelle de Beule, a Belgian comedian and TV host, on an extreme eating tour of New York City. Though I may have pushed the host past his limit, the show is a fun foodie romp through some of the city’s lesser known locales, like Economy Candy and Tehuitzingo Deli Grocery. We also hit some famous food spots like Momofuku Milk Bar and Shake Shack.

Enjoy the show (my segment begins at 1:10) and below the video you’ll find a complete list of where and what we ate that day. Jelle de Beule was fantastic to work with, always hilarious (on and off camera) and he was an AMAZING sport – eating every single thing I handed to him on our 15-hour food binge.

Is ‘T Nog Ver – New York City

The “Is ‘T Nog Ver?” New York City Foodie List

Ess-a-Bagel – 359 First Avenue – Everything bagels with lox, cream cheese, onions, tomatoes and capers
Economy Candy - 108 Rivington St. – Bacon-flavored mints, wax lips and mustaches, tabasco-flavored chocolate, candy necklaces and more
Tehuitzingo Deli Grocery – 695 Tenth Avenue – Tongue tacos
Kimchee Taco Truck – check website for truck location – Grilled Korean BBQ Short Rib Taco
Xi’an Famous Foods – 41-28 Main Street Bsmt #36, Flushing (Queens) – Liang pi cold noodles (spicy), lamb burger
PDT (Please Don’t Tell) – 113 St. Marks Place – “Mission Chinese” hot dog
Shake Shack – Madison Square Park – Shack burger, fries.
Otafuku - 236 E. 9th St. – Takoyaki
Momofuku Milk Bar - we visited the shop’s Williamsburg, Brooklyn location  - Cereal milk soft serve, pork buns, crack pie, cinnamon bun pie, birthday truffles

What I’m Eating – At Home in New York City

After flying and eating around the world for three straight years, I’m excited to spend a month (a whole month!) on the ground in New York City, working on my book and planning the next big foodie adventure. I’m not a New Yorker by birth, but I’ve lived in Manhattan for the past 15 years and it never gets old. Never. Maybe I’m just a romantic sap, but I find myself falling in love with this city on a daily basis. It doesn’t hurt when you wake up to the view pictured above.

I realize I don’t write about New York on the Foodie International website as much as I should. Every meal in this city is its own culinary adventure, from cutting-edge underground supper clubs to early mornings at my favorite bagel shop.

I’m dedicating this post to the culinary adventures that can happen in our own backyards. I feel so fortunate to be living in New York where it’s possible to eat authentic food from around the world without leaving the five boroughs. There’s always something new and different popping up around every corner, from hole-in-the-walls to the latest hot spots.

Here are some of the delicious foods I’ve been eating (and enjoying) recently in New York City:

Bagels Bagels Everywhere

My NYC Sunday morning ritual involves multiple Nespresso lattes, the New York Times Crossword and a (sometimes pajama-clad) stroll to Ess-A-Bagel on 1st Avenue and 20th Street. No matter what time you arrive on a Sunday morning, there’s always a spiral-shaped line, folding in on itself like a hungry snail — for good reason. Ess-a makes one of the best bagels I’ve ever eaten. I prefer an “everything” bagel, though sometimes they run out by the time I get to the front of the line. In that case, I usually ask for “what just came out?” My favorite flavor combination is fresh lox, plain cream cheese, onions and capers.

International Food Adventures

Lately I’ve made an effort to get out of Manhattan and explore the outer boroughs, especially Queens – New York’s most culturally diverse borough with some of the city’s best international cuisine. The way I look at it, if I’m on the ground for a while, I can at least travel to places like Nepal, China and India through my tastebuds.

If you want to sample authentic Chinese food, the best starting point is the basement food court at Golden Shopping Mall in Flushing. (41-28 Main St., Queens) You’ve got weird foods (duck head, spicy tripe, pig’s feet) and good-for-beginners regional dishes (Liang Pi Noodles, hot pots, dumplings). This post (though several years old) from Serious Eats is a fantastic resource. Also in Flushing, my new favorite obsession – Chinese-Muslim lamb ribs from Fu Run (40-09 Prince St, Queens).

Queen’s food critic Joe DiStefano brought me here and it was life-altering. I even Vine-d while eating. Speaking of Joe and amazing food, we also visited Tawa Foods in Jackson Heights (3738 72nd St., Queens) where I fell in love with sukuti — Nepali air-dried beef cooked in a spicy barbecue sauce — soon to be featured on an upcoming Bizarre Foods episode, so go now – before the hype!

Hot Spot

Two words: The Marrow (99 Bank St.) Oh my FOOD I have a serious crush on this restaurant. Helmed by Top Chef season one winner, Harold Dieterle (Perilla, Kin Shop) this German-Italian eatery hits all the right flavor spots with dishes like uni-topped bone marrow and handmade pastas. I can’t stop gushing about it to anyone and everyone, from an Australian travel magazine to the New York Daily News. MMMMarrow.

Delivery Zone

I’m a Seamless.com girl. Working long hours on the book means less eat-out time. I might be one of the online delivery service’s best customers. Here’s a look at what I’ve been ordering lately. Nobi Sushi (437 Third Ave.): Crystal roll, shrimp shumai, kakko roll. Schnippers (23 E. 23rd St.): Fresh market salad, turkey burger, vanilla malted milkshake. El Camion Cantina (194 Avenue A.): Carnitas burrito, guacamole.

Must-Eat Dishes

Let’s just talk about the fact that the best crispy fried chicken I’ve ever had in New York City is from a Mexican restaurant. El Parador‘s (325 E. 34th St.) “Pollo Parador” is described on the menu as “1/2 chicken marinated for 24 hours with our oldest secret recipe. Fried and baked.” When food is this good, there’s always a secret recipe involved. If you’re making the trip to El Parador, make sure you try the warm (non-vegetarian) house salsa and order the off-the-menu queso, because it’s awesome.

I love all foods of the late-night take out variety, especially the takoyaki from Otafuku (236 E. 9th St.) in the East Village. These molten-hot balls of octopus-stuffed batter are Japanese street food staples. I’m also a huge fan of the doner kebab at Bereket (187 E Houston St.) a 24 hour Turkish joint on Orchard and Houston. It’s thinly sliced and stuffed with salad, like a Berlin-style doner – the flavor is fantastic.

…And that’s what I’ve been eating lately. This isn’t meant to be a best-of New York post (because you know you want to tell me your favorite bagel place is better than mine!) It’s just what’s on my plate these days. What are your current favorite NYC food spots and don’t-miss dishes? I’d love to hear where you’ve been eating too, and I’ll add it to my list!

raclette photo courtesy of: Grcampbell – Wikipedia Commons

The first time I ate raclette was in Mrs. Bishop’s second grade classroom, in Devon, Pennsylvania – as far away from the Swiss Alps as a seven-year old could get. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was a life-changing food moment, a taste memory that remains as sharp as 20-year aged cheddar. Someone’s mother brought a raclette machine into school that day; I think we were studying Switzerland. All I know is the story begins and ends with a wheel of cheese.

Raclette, if you’ve never tried it, is the name of a cheese — a great big yellow pungent wheel of cheese — from the Valais region of the Swiss Alps, near the French border. It’s also the name of a dish, where that same wheel of cheese is placed near a heat source and melted, then scraped onto a plate (racler is French for “to scrape”) where it’s typically eaten with small potatoes, sour gherkins and pickled onions. Essentially, it’s a plate of melted cheese, but there’s no other cheese in the world quite like raclette.

In that second grade classroom, I watched the machine heat up. A half-wheel of cheese slid onto the contraption and sweated for a moment – then the magic happened. It began to soften, bubble and melt. With a flick of a wrist, a flat knife scraped the meltiest, gooiest bit of cheese onto my outstretched paper plate. Thwack. The raclette spread along the plate, crispy and golden brown on top. I took a bite. My eyes widened and all I could think was, “more. more. more.” I had seconds, maybe thirds. Raclette was officially my new favorite food.

Eurodib raclette machine

Unfortunately, raclette wasn’t the easiest dish to find in Pennsylvania in the mid-1980s. My mother even tried to recreate it for me, melting cheese in our oven, but it just wasn’t the same.

The second time I tried raclette I was nine, on a wintery layover in Geneva. I was traveling to Kenya with my parents, for my first African safari. I was beside myself with excitement to spend the night in Switzerland. All I wanted for Christmas that year was a Swiss Army knife. It’s all I talked about; it’s all I thought about. I wanted the big one, with the little magnifying glass and the tweezers. I had plans to whittle, Laura Ingalls-style. That night, my parents and I ended up at a traditional Swiss restaurant for dinner. I read the menu and saw a familiar word – raclette. My thoughts went straight back to that day in second grade and I ordered a plate. It came with the works — tiny potatoes and baby gherkins. Man, I loved pickles as a kid. I devoured that first plate and to my parents’ surprise, I ordered another.

The third time I tasted raclette was almost 15 years later. Post-college, I worked at a giant publishing house. My job was to fly around the country and sell books at trade shows. It gave me the chance to explore new cities and eat great food in my spare time. I was a repeat visitor to the Orlando convention center, in Florida – a.k.a. a paid vacation to Disney World. Back in 1999, I headed to Epcot one free afternoon and found myself at the park’s famous International Food and Wine Festival. This was before it was a big deal – there weren’t any crowds or lines at the 40-some food booths that circled the lake. I remember thinking I’d stumbled onto the greatest theme park that ever existed, one that was made just for me. I ate my way to Switzerland’s booth, where my heart leapt when I saw that giant wheel of cheese. It was the ultimate renunion — me and my raclette, together again. That day, I ate my way through every single booth like a champion, then crawled back to my hotel at the end of the evening, blissfully sated.

Almost 15 more years went by before I saw raclette again.

Present Day. Last week, I traveled to Crans-Montana, Switzerland, a ski resort comprised of two small villages, high up in the Swiss Alps – in the Valdais region. I had cheese on the brain for weeks. Crans-Montana is host to the Caprices Festival, one of the world’s biggest international winter music festivals. Big name acts like Björk, Portishead and the Killers played each night. During the day, there’s skiing, sledding and plenty of cheese-eating.

From the moment I stepped off the airplane in Geneva, I was on a mission. At a highway rest stop, I took a mini cheese break, purchasing buttons of French goat cheese and slices of pungent Swiss cheese, except in Switzerland they don’t call it “Swiss cheese,” they just call it “cheese.” I was careful not to eat too much, I wanted my date with raclette to be everything I’d imagined. After all, this was my first trip to the Swiss Alps, to the heart of raclette country.

This would be my first truly authentic encounter with a dish that I’ve loved since the day we met. I wanted it to be perfect.

By the time I checked into the hotel, napped, showered and shuttled my way up the mountain, it was mid-afternoon. I Google-mapped the nearest raclette restaurant and followed the little blue dot to the front door….where they informed me they wouldn’t be open until 5:30PM, and I would need reservations. Damn. (A side note to anyone traveling to the Swiss Alps during ski season. You will need reservations at every single restaurant in town, including the cafes perched on mountaintops next to ski lifts.)

Dejected, I wandered back onto the main street towards my parked car, and that’s when I smelled it. I smelled IT — pungent, melting cheese.

My knees buckled a little. I whipped my head back and forth like a shell-shocked rodent, sniffing out the holy grail of fromage. I spied the raclette machine — on a picnic table tucked into an entryway. Two men scraped thick, melted cheese onto plates. “How much?” I asked, pulling my francs out. The two men looked at me and asked, “are you a guest of the hotel?” Oh no. Bad question. I pulled out my best smile. “I’m not a guest, but could I please buy some raclette?” The men shook their heads. “Only for guests.” Seriously? This wasn’t happening. After 14 years of waiting, so close — within inches. It was right there in front of me!  I should’ve lied. Why didn’t I lie?

I decided to start playing by Swiss rules – to find a restaurant and make a reservation. I scanned the internet for the “best raclette in Crans-Montana” and pulled up La Dent Blanche, famous for melting their cheese in a wood-burning fireplace. It sounded phenomenal. I called them up to be promptly informed they were “complet.” What about the following day? “Complet.” Monday? “Fermé.” Are you f?&@$#g kidding me?

Maybe I should have planned this better.

I went down my Crans-Montana raclette master list, page after page, finally locating one place in town with availability: Restaurant Le Chalet. A kitchy, cartoonish theme park-like monstrosity in the center of Montana. The reviews weren’t exactly favorable, but come on, it’s melted cheese, how badly can you screw it up? Most of the online complaints had to do with waitstaff anyway, not the food. Apparently the staff didn’t make much of an effort to speak French, or even German…because they were Italian. Ding ding ding! I speak Italian. This was the place for me – everything was going to work out just fine.

I walked in the door, breathless and hungry. Before I knew it, I spilled my entire raclette saga to the restaurant staff. “E questo,” I concluded, “è la cena più importante della mia vita.” Uh huh, the most important meal of my life. What can I say — hunger tends to bring out the drama in me.

Scanning the menu, I noted the price of raclette – a little steep at 35 francs, but this wasn’t the time to be frugal. I’d been waiting more than a decade for this very moment, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to have my cheese and eat it too. I wanted to try raclette and fondue. The waiter explained he could make me an appetizer portion of raclette for 7 francs, if I’d like. Well then, how big was the main portion? The waiter explained that as a main dish, he’d bring me a plate of raclette, and when I finished it he’d bring me another. “So, it’s all you can eat?” I asked. He nodded. All you can eat?! “What if,” I said (still speaking in Italian), “I finished it all. What if I ate all of the cheese in the entire restaurant.” Without pause, the waiter said, “Not a problem.” Oh. My. Cheese.

Suddenly, the mission turned into a marathon.

Baskets of boiled potatoes, pickled onions and mini gherkins hit the table. And then, the raclette appeared. Melty, thick, gooey, bubbling, just slightly browning on the edges… I dragged a potato through the sea of cheese on my plate, took a bite, and – heaven. The world faded away. It was just me and my raclette. Plate after plate, after plate, after plate, after plate. I ate five plates of raclette. I swallowed forkfuls of melted cheese until I was up to my eyeballs with cheese, and all I could see was cheese. It was everything I’d imagined.

Raclette, you still have my heart.

I spend several months each year in Italy – in the middle of nowhere, Tuscany. My next door neighbors are olive farmers, and in the past eight years that I’ve lived here, we’ve become pretty close. Every day the farmer and his family sit down together for a traditional Tuscan country lunch. Over the years (of inviting myself over with a big smile on my face and platters of homemade cookies) I’ve earned a standing invitation to join them.

Sunday lunches at the farm are a big deal, extending to friends, neighbors and relatives. You can read about one of my favorite Sunday lunches here. Today was just a normal day. It’s winter right now in Tuscany, the season for pruning the olive trees. Inside the farmhouse, the hearth is alway lit and the food is hearty.

Here’s a short video that gives a glimpse into local life in rural Tuscany: what it’s like to eat with farmers and drive on dirt roads.

Yeah, okay, we get it. It’s horse meat.

So what’s the big deal? 

The first time I ever ate horse was in a hamburger…in the UK. I wasn’t an unknowing victim of product manipulation or hookwinked by Tesco, I ordered a horse burger off the menu in a pub. This was during the height of mad cow disease and no one I knew wanted to risk eating a beef burger. It never occurred to me that horse meat would be so stigmatized in popular culture. Guess what: it tasted just like a beef burger.

I spend four months every year in Italy, where everyone in the entire country is laughing their asses off at the horse meat hysterics. We eat horse in Italy. It’s normal. In my local Coop grocery store, there’s an entire horse meat section in the back by the butcher. It’s in the refrigerated case between the hare meat and the rooster meat. We eat horse carpaccio, drizzled with fresh home-harvested olive oil. We eat cavallo in umido – a slow-cooked, wine and paprika infused dish from the north of Italy. We eat horse meat braciole (you may know the dish as “brajole”).

In my culinary travels around the world I’m always eager to try local dishes. My Belgian friends have asked me to come visit and eat at some of the country’s popular horse meat restaurants like this one. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to enjoy a juicy horse steak with my Flemish-speaking, equine-eating pals. Yes, they eat horse in Belgium.

Other places around the world where eating horse meat isn’t cause for an emotional meltdown: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Chile, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, Tonga, Ukraine.

Everyone else is doing it, so what’s the big deal about horse meat? 

Some people invoke an argument that they see horses as pets. Okay, I guess. A little bit about me: I grew up on a horse farm. I used to ride on my university’s equestrian team. I taught kids to ride at a summer camp. I like the movie Farlap. You know what, I also used to keep a goldfish as a pet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t bring myself to enjoy a sushi dinner.

If you love horses and truly can’t come to grips with eating them, fine. I can respect that. But I don’t think this is the issue for most individuals.

Some say that it’s the lying, the misleading, the blatent mislabeling of their food that leaves them feeling stabbed in the back by the food industry. The New York Times dives deeper into the emotions of anger and betrayal resulting from the product’s mislabeling. For the record, I’m not condoning the fraudulence of the meat industry. I find it abhorrent.

But really, are you kidding yourself by being shocked over the ingredients found in heavily processed meats? These burgers and meatballs have so many other ingredients besides actual meat, shouldn’t this be our focus? A BBC News article discusses the myriad of ingredients found in a Tesco beefburger, saying “This whole episode raises an obvious question – do people care what goes into their food?”

They have a point here. People’s panties are in a bunch (sorry, but they are!) because Mister Ed hoofed his way into their über-processed meat products. You know what shocks me? The amount of hypocrisy displayed by people and their relationship with food.

I’ve received emails from people accusing me of animal cruelty after I wrote about the experience of slaughtering a pig and making prosciutto with rural Tuscan farmers. This particular pig was raised in a clean environment. It was given the best food and constant care by the farmer’s family. Before the pig was killed, the farmer walked him, calming him. After the slaughter, every single piece of meat was utilized – no part of the pig went to waste. I sat down with the farmer and his family, feasting on fresh pork heart, lungs and liver. When I share this story, people say “I could never eat something like that, it’s disgusting.” But these are the same people who happily scarf down hot dogs at ball games.

I’ll ask them, “do you know what you’re eating?” and they’ll take another bite of their (processed) chili (processed) cheese (processed) dog, say “yeah, yeah…” and change the subject.

The truth is, they don’t know what they’re eating. And this international horse meat freakout proves it.

Earlier this year, WBEZ Chicago’s mega-popular public radio program, This American Life, broadcast an episode called “Dopplegangers” in which they investigated the possibility and/or probability that some processed fried calamari may actually be made with pig intestines as opposed to squid. We already know there’s pig ass in hot dogs (yes, we do) so why couldn’t it be softened, shaped, bleached and fried into America’s favorite marinara-sauced treat?

Good question.

Here’s some food for thought. A list of the ingredients found in a McDonald’s McRib, readily available to the public on the official company website:

Pork, water, salt, dextrose, preservatives (BHA, propyl gallate, citric acid) high fructose corn syrup, tomato paste, distilled vinegar, molasses, natural smoke flavor (plant source), food starch-modified, sugar, spices, soybean oil, xanthan gum, onion powder, garlic powder, chili pepper, sodium benzoate (preservative), caramel color, beet powder. Cucumbers, Distilled Vinegar, Calcium Chloride, Alum, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), Natural Flavors (Plant Source), Polysorbate 80, Extractives of Turmeric (Color). Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, yeast, high fructose corn syrup, contains 2% or less of the following: salt, corn meal, wheat gluten, soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oils, dextrose, sugar, malted barley flour, cultured wheat flour, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate, soy flour, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, datem, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, mono- and diglycerides, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, monocalcium phosphate, enzymes, guar gum, calcium peroxide), calcium propionate (preservative), soy lecithin.

I’d love to hear from people who are honestly shocked, dismayed and disgusted by the presence of horse meat in their (fast, processed) food products. How did this meat suddenly become the world’s most buzzed-about culinary monstrosity?

NEWSFLASH!!!! You’ve probably already eaten horse. I’m serious. Get ready to panic, scream and tear out your hair. Have you ever heard of a little thing called Jell-o?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been madly in love with food. My life can be measured in meals instead of months. Most people look back at the early days of childhood and remember birthday candles, first days of school and best friends. I remember beer-battered coconut shrimp dipped in plum sauce.

The other night at dinner, one of my culinary heroes asked me how I ended up as Foodie International, and to be honest, I’m still searching for answers. As I write my first food and travel memoir, “Off the Beaten Plate,” I’m discovering that my devotion to the delicious runs deep — much deeper than I realized.

“It’s always been there,” I told him, “It’s always been about the food…and travel.”

It’s true. My insatiable wanderlust goes hand in hand with every taste memory. At a young age, I was an explorer by default, a skinny, tow-headed girl crossing oceans and stepping into new cultures with wide eyes and endless wonder.

And so, for Valentine’s Day, I’m reaching into the vaults of my past for the first time in Foodie International history, to share a few personal “taste memories” of my first and truest love – food.

 There’s No Love Like Your First Love

I was never a PB&J kind of kid. My favorite meal growing up was barbecued baby back ribs and homemade sour cherry pie. To this day, the infallible combination of meaty, salty, sweet and sour strikes a chord within me – it’s the stuff birthday meals are made of, and the source of my “hollow leg” myth.
I was a stick-skinny kid, but I ate like a horse, especially when it came to ribs. Before competitive eating was hip, before Man vs. Food inspired the best in young bingers, I used to count the number of ribs I ate. The bones would pile up on the plate as my parents watched (probably in horror, but they never discouraged me when it came to food.)
I remember one particular rib feast when my grandparents came for dinner one summer evening. I couldn’t have been more than eight years old. I put down 27 baby back ribs followed by two slices of cherry pie. It was my record then, and it probably still stands.
My grandfather told me it was because I had a hollow leg, and I think part of me believed him. Whenever I put down seconds, thirds and sometimes fourths at dinner, it was attributed to my hollow leg. I can’t quantify my adoration for barbecued ribs in words, but I can share this photo of my first date with my first love. According to the Foodie family records, this is the moment I fell head over heels…

 The Bite that Changed My Life

There’s something about travel that makes us feel more alive; every moment/breath/color is enhanced and our memories tend to linger. Perhaps it was being six years old and 4000 miles from home that makes this taste memory stand out from the others. Though I had many favorite childhood foods (see above), this was my moment of culinary awareness, the singular memory of taking a bite and feeling the earth shift beneath my feet.
I was with my parents on my first overseas trip to England. It was our very first day in London. We ventured to Harrods department store, where I felt small and swallowed by the ornate retail behemoth with it’s sweeping escalators and labyrinth-like shops.
I saw it at the buffet – a fried lamb chop, French-cut, with a little paper hat covering the end of the bone.
I’d never eaten lamb before, though I’d slept with a stuffed one for years; plush, cream-colored “lamb-y” was my best friend. There was something about this lamb, probably the paper cap, that I had to have. My (incredulous, non lamb-eating) parents said nothing. And when I took that bite – I can remember everything about that bite – it was an awakening.
I’d never tasted anything so good, juicy dark meat with deep flavor, just-fried – on the fringes of greasy – salty edges and my fist around that little white paper hat. That bite started a chain reaction. For the remainder of our vacation, I ordered lamb every day, sometimes twice a day.

The flu is this week’s big news. It’s today’s major headline on CNN.com and it’s seems like everyone is coming down with something. Even I spent the first full week of 2013 in bed, with an endless supply of my New York neighborhood’s best delivery soup. It wasn’t pretty, but it got me thinking. When I’m down and out, I turn to two things: Japanese chicken soup and rasam, a spicy tamarind and tomato broth from Southern India.

I began to wonder what everyone else around the world eats to feel better, if there’s some secret family recipe or strange cultural concoction that acts as the perfect weapon against a cold or flu. I took to social media and posed the question on Facebook and Twitter. You responded with some great foodie advice.

Your most popular flu fixers involve garlic, ginger, spicy soup and tea with honey. Favorite curative herbs and spices are lemongrass, turmeric, cumin and cayenne pepper. Remedies I want to try (for next time) are lime and chili cucumbers, kichari and black elderberry syrup.

The Foodie doctor is in! Here are your favorite cures to combat a killer flu.

From the Foodie International Facebook page:

Jenny Herdman Lando: mei fun soup with extra ginger

Laura Mrmak: homemade chicken paprikas soup.. lots of tea with honey.. lots of liquids!

Laura Youngberg: Thai tom kha kai soup

Charlie Pasquale: Your moms minestrone soup! (Editor’s note: this is my cousin.)

SansGluten Aroundtheworld: Chicken broth with extra garlic,cumin and ginger

Kristy Wandle: Miso soup. Raw garlic. Kombucha. Green tea with honey. Not all at once.

Geno Sung: Matzah-ball soup, grapefruit juice and roasted garlic.

Rosario Castronovo: nothing- and it works! I cannot wait to get sick again so that I can shed some pounds!

From the @foodientl Twitter feed:

Sandi McKenna‏‪ @SandiMcKenna The usual: Homemade Chicken soup, garlic (lots of it), honey & cinnamon, Hot Tea w/lemon & lot’s of water!

Sarolta and Ross‏‪ @pinkmonkeyphoto Hungarian father means you eat raw garlic rubbed on toast and drink red wine.Try it! Everyone else in the house has to eat it too.

Debbie ‏‪@shesjetlagd Black elderberry syrup. Tea made w fresh ginger, honey, shake of cayenne pepper & juice 1/2 lemon in hot h2o. Strong green tea.

Antiqua Tours‏‪ @AntiquaTours ‪#DrFuhrman recommends fasting. I am sick today and trying it. After all we are animals and most animals do.

Bouchey‏‪ @amuseyobouche flu killer: 2 cloves garlic chopped small- swallowed w/water like a pill.Follow w/1/2 cup hot water w/ 1 tsp honey 1 tsp turmeric. Kichari- split-mung beans basmati rice fresh ginger (zinc). For healing & flavour -whole cumin, cassia bark, cloves & black cardamon.

Cup of Local Sugar ‏‪@cupoflocalsugar our northern Italian locals like warm milk with honey and grappa … Made with AMORE!

Mimi M‏‪ @MimiMM When my Mexican family gets sick, we eat a bowl of sliced cucumbers, lime juice, salt, and lime chili powder.

Jen Pollack Bianco ‏@lax2nrt Tom Yom Kai. It’s all about the sinus clearing abilities of lemon grass.

Cammie Phan ‏‪@Chiqee I add a lot of ginger to my meals.

Curious Tourist‏‪ @curious_tourist Sushi? And pho. Like chicken noodle soup, but better.

Lois Martin‏‪ @LoisMarketing For me cheese toast and chicken soup work wonders! Also hot tea, ginger ale or grapefruit juice.

Amanda Slavinsky @farsickness Vernors (a Detroit ginger ale) and a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs. NEVER STOP EATING!

A big “thank you” to everyone who contributed. If you find yourself sick with the flu this week, try some of these great remedies. Get well soon!

Hello 2013!

The new year will bring some big changes to foodieinternational.com. It’s all very exciting and top secret (for now) but I wanted to start this year with one last look back at some of the best of…everything from 2012. Think of it as the Foodie International Awards. Categories are chosen at random. These are just a few of my favorite things (and places, and people) that I wanted to share with all of you. Happy New Year and congratulations to the highlighted “winners” below!

Best Fancy-Pants Restaurant
Arzak
Bouley
El Club Allard

Best Place to Blow Your Foodie Mind
Mama (Montisi, Italy)
Salobie (Mtskheta, Georgia)
Zeruko (San Sebastian, Spain)

Best Hotel
Banks Mansion, Amsterdam
The London, Los Angeles
Hotel Astoria 7, San Sebastian

Best App
This American Life
TripIt
Scanner Pro

Best Airplane Meal
Chicken Curry, extra hot sauce (Ethiopian Airlines)
Brie & butter sandwich, chocolate pudding, vanilla wafers, chocolates (Lufthansa)
The olives from the “tapas snack box” in my airplane Bloody Mary. (United)

Best Airport Lounge
Turkish Airlines (Istanbul, Turkey)*
*This is the best lounge I saw in 2012, but the first class Emirates Lounge in Dubai is ridiculous.

Best Late Night Bite
Hot dog along the canals of Copenhagen
Takoyaki from Otafuku, New York
White chocolate smothered waffle in Brussels

Best 2012 “Why Have I Never Been Here Before?” Destination
Lake Bled, Slovenia
The Olympics (specifically inside the Olympic Park, e.g. the happiest place on Earth)
Rimini, Italy

Best Twitter Personality
@WheresAndrew
@Heather_Poole
@AndrewZimmern

Best Book I Read on the Road
Cruising Attitude
Just Kids
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin

Best Home-Cooked Meal at Someone Else’s Home
Baby Wild Boar Stew (the Tuscan farmer neighbors)
Ethiopian Easter Feast (a home in Addis Ababa)
Home-raised Pigeon (the Tuscan farmer neighbors)

Best Travel Workout
Biking to Wimbledon to watch tennis at the Olympics
Perching on a ladder for two days, picking olives to make oil in Tuscany
Renting a cheap apartment at the highest point of Hvar town …steps, cliff, steps, cliff… Croatia.

Best Over-the-Top Indulgence
In-and-Out Burger in a Limo, Las Vegas.
Sailing on Vittorio Missoni’s private boat with some of the world’s top chefs, Venice.
Eating two consecutive seafood dinners at the same table in one night, Split.

Best Accomplishment
Driving like a local in Rome
My first flying lesson
Starting to write my first book

Best Food I Made
Uni and caviar pasta
Wild cherry crumble
Yogurt and Coriander Soup

Best Use of Food as Something Else
Cheese Belt from Tbilisi, Georgia.
Edible place card in Madrid, Spain

Best Reason to Break Down in Tears
Finding my two favorite cheeses behind one market counter in Madrid.
Tapas-crawling through the (post-surgical) pain in San Sebastian.
Eggs Benedict and the Bellagio fountain show from Mon Ami Gabi at Paris, Las Vegas.

Best TV Show I Watched on my iPad
American Horror Story
Doctor Who
The Hour

Best Street Food
Porchetta from a truck at a Tuscan festival
Currywurst at a flea market in Berlin
Kokoreç in Istanbul, Turkey

Best Show after Dinner
Ennio Morricone with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra in Rimini
Tori Amos with the Polish Radio Orchestra in Warsaw
David Copperfield at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas

Bonus! Some of the wildest moments from 2012:

Craziest Travel Day
22 hours round trip by plane to Hawaii for 26 hours of eating on the ground.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Florence, Italy (1 plane, 2 trains, 2 taxis) just in time for Signora Popi’s 80th birthday dinner.
Brussels, Belgium to London, UK during the national train strike with an unplanned rental car and pitstop in Lille.

Weirdest Place I Ended Up At 1:00AM
A hospital room wine party in Tbilisi.
Sleeping on a floor with a giant moth and hay full of moonshine in Kakheti.
An underground, neon-lit disco with a large indoor fountain in Warsaw.

Most Ambitious Attempt at Digestion
Water from a well in an Eastern European cow field.
Sweet and Sour pancetta – Italian/Chinese fusion (?) at a Chinese (?) restaurant near Siena, Italy
Raw ground beef with butter at a cultural dance center in Addis Ababa.

Best Near-Death Experience
Taxi from Rome to Fiumicino Airport
Taxi from Tbilisi to Khaketi, Georgia
Taxi from Manhattan to Newark Airport

Looking back on this phenomenal food-filled year, it’s nearly impossible to select my ten favorite foods. My Foodie International adventures took me to some of the world’s most exciting destinations, like the culinary bucket list wonderland that is San Sebastian, Spain, where I can easily name 100 amazing things I tasted that sent me spinning into foodie ecstasy. I had the opportunity to explore the rural Republic of Georgia, breaking fire-baked bread with local winemakers. I helped negotiate the sale of a goat in Addis Ababa and found a home at a farmer’s table in Tuscany.

No matter how far I flung myself off the beaten path, I was always welcomed with open arms and overflowing plates. Such is the law of serendipity. With every step and every bite, 2012 became a year of exploration, personal growth and new endeavors. Indelible friendships were formed and the first words of my book materialized. Most of all, the food – oh the food! – was phenomenal.

Here are the ten best things I ate in 2012:

10. Baby Wild Boar Stew

A Farmhouse in Castelmuzio, Italy. There’s nothing like inviting yourself over for a meal with the next-door neighbors when the next-door neighbors happen to be olive farmers in Tuscany. Our relationship is simple: I adore them; they feed me. Over the years, I’ve given up on social graces when it comes to finagling a spot at their kitchen table. These days, I show up around 1:00PM and they add another plate to the table. You never know what the meal will be; it’s part of the excitement. Sometimes it’s a little…hairy, like a boiled pig’s head with teeth and…some hair. This baby wild boar stew from the Autumn harvest season rocked my little foodie world. Tender, juicy meat with a savory tomato base and a hint of cinnamon, some of the best boar I’ve ever eaten.

9. Zurek

U Kucharzy, Warsaw, Poland. The soup that never stops, zurek is one of the reasons I keep coming back to Poland. This sour rye soup with boiled eggs and Polish sausage is one of my favorite foods of all time. If there were a numerical “comfort food” scale, this dish would be somewhere near the top. It’s lighter than it looks and the fermented rye flour gives it a unique bite. On a recent trip through Warsaw, I waxed poetic over the zurek served up at U Kucharzy restaurant.

8. Fusilli with Red Wine Braised Octopus and Bone Marrow

Marea, New York City. This is one of those epic, once-in-a-lifetime dishes that must be every food lover’s culinary bucket list. Yes, I said “Must.” I have no idea what was going through Chef Michael White’s head when he came up with this unbelievable flavor combination, but it was a moment of genius. The red wine braised octopus seeps into the sauce, rendered three-dimensional by buttery bone marrow. One of the greatest pasta dishes I’ve eaten – slightly surprising to find it in Manhattan!

7. Picadillo de Papa

La Fiesta del Maiz, Alajuela, Costa Rica. You don’t have to rock the culinary world or be Michelin-starred to impress me. Sometimes the world’s best foods are the simplest. This traditional Costa Rican potato hash is made with onions, garlic, peppers and cilantro. At a popular rest stop restaurant near San José’s airport, I ordered mine con carne – with shredded beef. I can’t get over the deep, salty flavor. The dish is even better after I slather it with the local tabasco sauce.

6. Bacalao a La Hoguera

Bar Zeruko, San Sebastian, Spain. I admit it, I like to play with my food. This DIY dish has a name translating to “salt cod bonfire,” and it’s definitely hot – and comes with very specific directions. A raw slice of cod accompanies a tiny wire “grill” over smoldering coals. Use the grill to smoke your fish for one minute, then place it on a tiny square of herb cream toast. After chowing down on the smokey cod, take a test tube shot of green, liquified lettuce for a fresh flavor finish.

5. Home-Raised Pigeon

A Farmhouse in Castelmuzio, Italy. Here we are, back on that farm in the middle of nowhere Tuscany for the 5th best dish of 2012. On the lunch platter pictured above are roast turkey legs and home-raised pigeons, served with rosemary potatoes. I’m a big fan of small birds on big plates. Maybe it’s because they’re raised with amore, but these Tuscan country pigeons are tasty.

4. Gnocchi Stuffed with Scampi and Prosciutto

Nostromo, Split, Croatia. On a blazing hot summer night in Split, I decided to treat myself to a seafood dinner. From the moment I sat down at an outside table on the hosed-down fish market pavement, I felt like a foodie princess. The owner of Nostromo also operates the local fish market, so the seafood is served at its freshest. I was smooth-talked into an appetizer involving Croatian-style gnocchi stuffed with fresh scampi (Mediterranean langoustine) and a tiny sliver of local pršut (prosciutto) swimming in a fish-stock broth. Best waiter/foodie arm-twisting of the year; the dish still resonates with me.

3. Georgian Beans

Restaurant Salobie, Mtskheta, Georgia. Lobio, Georgian beans, are made with red kidney beans, slow-cooked and mashed to a consistency similar to refried beans. The dish is packed with herbs, heat and flavor; ingredients include onions, garlic, coriander seed, black pepper and cilantro. At roadside restaurant Salobie near the UNESCO holy city of Mtskheta, the lobio is served traditionally, in small clay jars with handles, accompanied by a dense, savory cornbread called mtchadi.

2. Wasabi Ahi Masago Poke

Yama’s Fish Market, Honolulu, Hawaii. I sat at a table next to the parking lot, scooping sweet-and-spicy bites of ahi poke out of a styrofoam cup. My brain was trying to keep up with my tastebuds. This was one of the single most delicious foods I’d ever put in my mouth. I was short-circuiting; it was a full-on foodie meltdown. I didn’t know what to do next, so I ran back into the shop and just stood there as the automatic doors opened and closed behind me until I snapped out of it and moved out of the sensor’s range. “How do you make this?” I asked the woman at the counter, shaking my cup in the air. Poke is a traditional Hawaiian-style ceviche with a Japanese influence, “cooked” in a citrus and soy-based marinade. It’s the freshness of Yama’s ahi tuna and combination of sharp wasabi and sweet masago – tiny, crunchy smelt roe – that makes this dish stand out.

1. Tomato French Toast with Oiled Sardine

Restaurant El Club Allard, Madrid, Spain. Wowza! This dish comes in at a very strong #1 on my top ten list. Points go for taste, originality, and straight up food porn. Heck, this isn’t even your average gourmand glossy-covered coffee table food porn – it’s kinky mad scientist culinary genius. A slab of slate emerges from the kitchen topped with three objects: a warm, tomato-infused slice of French toast, a miniature mason jar containing a seafood specimen suspended in gold liquid and a pair of tweezers. The jar pops open with a sigh as the seal is broken. Use the tweezers to remove a plump, perfect sardine from the aromatic Spanish olive oil, laying it gently across the toast, careful not to disturb as much as a single silver scale. It melts in the mouth, the coolness of the sardine meeting the warm French toast halfway – a singular moment of culinary perfection.