Prior to all the drama of the last few days I had the opportunity of attending a conference in San Jose. Somehow in 2 days tacked onto the front of the trip and one day up our sleeve at the end, a road trip from LA to San Francisco was in order with a return trip and a day in LA at the end.
Travel is a funny thing. Some of us yearn for it, some of us are content to stay where we are. Me, I yearn for it. Its a feeling that I try and squash back down, I try and ignore it, for travel, or much of it anyway has been off the radar from some time due to the commitments and responsibilities of life. I feel like I come alive when stimulated my new sights and sounds and I travel primarily with my eyes and my tastebuds. Sometimes to the annoyance of travel companions who think there must be more to life than seeking out the next eatery to devour. For me, my best travel experiences are those I remember by shutting my eyes and feeling the textures, the tastes flood back into my mouth.
The tastes take me back to the moment and the emotion, sights and sounds follow. I close my eyes and scan my travel memories and I am taken back to simple but delicious banana pancakes from a food cart in Thailand, ginger fish in Bali, the best Pad Thai ever in Cambodia, Japanese Okonomiyaki with delicious bulldog sauce cooked on a hotplate in the centre of a table of friends or the burst of a sour plum from a stall out the front of a temple in Japan and on this trip, for me the highlight was the oysters, I think I ate over 10 varieties of oysters, all different but all wonderful. (I promise I will share with you the recipe for best oyster dressing I have ever tasted in a later post, not quite spare change cooking but we all need a little indulgence from time to time). I was struck by the amazing produce in California. My perception of the US has changed forever. Its funny, I ended up in the US by chance, a chance stumble on the internet somehow lead up to me travelling up the west coast in a convertible.
Its funny but here in Australia, we rave about our produce, and granted we have wonderful produce, but the variety of mushrooms, species of plums and cherries, delicious seafood available in San Francisco, surely is second to none. I ate fresh plums in varieties I had never heard of and sour dried cherries at the markets, the best beans I’ve ever had at a local bistro in an out of the way suburb, salted caramel chocolate tart, an affagato to die for and macarons that were perfectly and deliciously chewy.
San Francisco has the highest number of restaurants per capita in the nation — 3,588, according to health department records; one for every 227 residents. (New York City has one restaurant per every 347 people.) Add to that a growing fleet of about 200 (and counting) licensed food trucks, some serving upscale fare like ahi tuna sliders and crème brûlée. (source The New York Times)
This has created a competitive thriving food culture. Sometimes in Australia I find that it can be exceedingly hard to find a restaurant that ticks all the boxes, exceptional food, exceptional service and exceptional atmosphere, particularly if you are not paying top dollar and even then, I have had some pretty bad service and some achingly unpleasant atmospheres. In the US, it seems that the tipping culture has created a service culture and the pros and cons of that are best left to another post. On this trip, I was happy to just enjoy the the wonderful experience of walking into an unknown restaurant and being delighted by the food and the service.
For me the hardest part about travelling is coming back to reality. The mundane reality of everyday life, the washing, the ironing, the constant demands of parenting. Sometimes I have a inkling in the back of my mind that it is better just not to go. If I somehow forget how much I love it, then perhaps I can be content at home. Every time I travel, I come home a little more unsettled, a little more restless, with a longing in the back of my heart to pack it all up, just go and never come back. There is a freedom in travelling, a freedom from accountability, responsibility and I truly delight in the knowledge that no one really knows exactly where I am at any one time.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being a mother, but sometimes when your mind wanders, you wonder, what if? What else could have been?
the spare change kitchen 