Foreign Food, Itchy Arms

As one can imagine based on one or two previous posts, I really enjoy trying foreign foods. Not only do I take pleasure in sampling the local cuisine, but also the local interpretations of cuisine considered foreign. So I try to hit a range of eating establishments - nice restaurants, street vendors, and occasionally the local McDonald's (the McAloo Tikki Burgers at McDo's in Delhi are quite tasty).

Tonight, I had 'Italian' food here in Zadar. I ordered a tomato soup, vegetables cooked in butter, and spaghetti with mushrooms. Sounds simple enough, right? So the tomato soup was tasty - it was much thinner than the stuff you find in the States and had a few pieces of risotto in it. The spaghetti with mushrooms actually had a brown sauce - similar to mushroom gravy (I was expecting your standard spaghetti marinara with mushrooms). And the vegetable was something called 'mangold', a local veggie that my waiter described as similar to spinach. It was green and leafy, but closer to bok choy leaves in my opinion. A bit more roughage than spinach provides; this makes sense after doing a web search and finding out that mangold is used primarily as animal feed [insert Homer Simpson drooling sound here]. The taste was... well, buttery. It was DRENCHED in butter, and mixed with potatoes. Ah, buttery potatoes. A reminder that even the 'Italian' food here reflects the Eastern European love of the potato.

While many encounters with foreign cuisine are hit or miss, some are occasionally harmful. Both R. and I managed to get an allergic reaction to seafood that we consumed in Dubrovnik a few days ago. I have never before had such a reaction to seafood, so I'm not really sure what happened. R. had a seafood ravioli, and I had grilled seafood. In accordance with quantity consumed, R. now has a small rash on her foot and near her knee. I have a huge and very itchy rash up and down the length of my arms.

So far this trip, I have managed to get pollen allergies, catch a cold and fever with a cough, get ravaged by mosquito bites, and have an allergic reaction to seafood. The plague isn't around anymore, right?