International Food Festival

Last weekend NCKU organized an international food festival. I was thinking about making and selling something, but what does America have? Hamburgers and hotdogs come from Germany. Pizza and pasta come from Italy. What's left? In the end, I decided not to cook - but I felt bad for not being involved so I said I could spin fire in the talent show portion.

In retrospect, my act was a little bizarre. There were all these cute cultural dances, with groups of friends from some country in their traditional outfits, and then me: I chose a hard-rock punk criticism of American politics song (Greenday, American Idiot), and spun around on stage in jeans, twirling a flaming stick. Although the show went off ok, and thank God I didn't drop the thing and light anyone on fire, I still felt a little out of place. Later on, they held a fashion show and everybody who performed came out for 2nd and 3rd rounds of bowing - all of which I skipped, feeling conspicuously ordinary in appearance.

The food, however, was great. Hands down the best was an Indian curry with rice, chicken and garbanzo beans. There was also an amazing carne asado (good cooked meat) from Colombia, and they even had Yerba Mate - although they drink it cold there instead of hot, sweet, with milk.

Almost everything was fried, but pretty good stuff. Hmm... its making me hungry again. I also found out something interesting: people all over the world consider potato salad their own cultural heritage. Not just something they like to eat, but a sample of their own ethnic ingenuity. We had potato salad from Equador and potato salad from Mongolia. When I was cooking in Boston I worked with a girl from Romania - I asked her to make a special Romanian dish and she made potato salad - and she spent all day on it too, chopping up all the potatoes and vegetables until the looked just like the little squares that come in the frozen veggie mixes.

I know a lot of Americans who would consider potato salad the epitome of Yankee; like fried chicken and apple pie. Can you imagine going to Mongolia or Romania or Equador, somewhere that seems completely foreign, and getting a plate of chopped potatoes and mayonnaise?