Vacation Dining Experiences 1

No kidding. Really. Looking back, there was something special and significant about all our meals during all those nine days. Except maybe the bonus-sized Snickers I bought at a gas station (it was brunch) on the way to Maryland to meet Karin, on Day One. And probably too the McDonald's hamburger I finally stopped for in Pennsylvania later. As much as anything, I needed to stop for fuel, and just as urgently to wipe Snickers off the steering wheel. (Talk about an annoying four hundred miles!) Karin had said "Maybe McDonald's, once...", (which we did do one afternoon down the road, though I think she ordered salad) and her words in fact echoed in my memory as I ordered--but at that point she hadn't even left Arlanda in Stockholm. But what she didn't know couldn't possibly hurt me or anybody else, I figured. It may have been a cheeseburger I ordered, actually, but at any rate I remember thinking that I'd have to rate it "good" to "not really so bad at all", though there was no denying that the one I pedaled up to the window and bought with my own 15¢ in September of 1965 had tasted infinitely better. At any rate, I hadn't been to a McDonald's for probably three years and it was just time to, all right? If Karin were to accept me as her host for this visit she'd simply have to do it on the basis of what I was and still in fact am: a wanton omnivore. I mean except for okra, and liver of course.

Whether Karin had only been kidding about polar bears running up and down the streets over in Sweden I'm not yet totally sure, but I do know that polar bear liver contains lethal amounts of vitamin A. Personally I think someone would have to be an almost unbelievable meany to eat a polar bear in the first place, if they had any choice about it short of starving, so maybe a little vitamin A poisoning might serve them right. (Okay so I'm not wanton wanton.) But there was no liver-eating of any sort, this trip. I've titled it "Vacation Dining Experiences 1" because I'd like to record every one instead of just mentally re-living them over and over like I've been doing all month. But by my count she and I shared 19 together, so recounting all of them could take some real writin' (I figure I may or may not get back to it, truthfully). I hope to describe the first few in this entry.

There is one other pre-Karin meal much worth including:

Our east coast host, my continually amazing friend Maryland Dave, took me to eat the Monday before Karin's flight arrived--at a time during which no bikini contests were going on, I notice now that I've looked at their web site and have learned what kind of place it really is--to a really pretty great, mostly-outside joint called Red Eye's Dock Bar. Shrimp and beer, and red stuff to dip the shrimp in. Can it possibly get better than that? I wouldn't have thought so either, but it really did.

And this might seem surprising and not tasty at all to at least a few Americans. Remember that guy on that old commercial who asked "Did you ever eat a pine tree?" Well do you remember linoleum? Floor covering? It's made from a mixture of "wood flour" and linseed oil. Do you know "linseed oil", that incredibly smelly, super spontaneously-combustive ingredient of oil paint? Did you know linseed oil is pressed directly from the seeds of the flax plant, the fibers of which are used to make everything from linen to paper money? Well somehow Karin had succeeded in getting a whole plastic bag full of flax seeds past security and customs both, mixed in with nuts and a bunch of other little seedy things about which I have only a vague idea, but she called it "muesli", and we ate it all, breakfast after breakfast, with yogurt, until it was gone. (Along with orange juice and coffee.) And it was dang good! Who'da thunk? I have started buying Kroger's "Muesli" as a substitute, and it's "okay", but there are no flax seeds in it and so none of their accompanying wonderfulishness.

(To be continued)