Food and Wine Adventures

As many of my readers around the world probably know, I grew up in the Netherlands. Happy as I was there, I had a travel bug and luckily ended up…

Cooking disasters, anyone? I was once faced by a culinary fiasco of mystifying proportions while living in an African village. Defeated by a pan of petrified green split peas, I was flummoxed and distraught, until enlightenment struck.

The mystery of sex: How can you be grumpy on a Italian summer evening sitting on a moonlit terrace with a stunning view of the Bay of Naples? At the table next to us sits an American couple in their sixties with bad body language and no love hormones running rampant . . .

I had planned to eat mopane worms tonight, but instead I’m facing a hamburger and fries. I am not amused. Having traveled thousands of miles across the African continent I have arrived in a country with the exotic and lyrical name of Zimbabwe, land of the fabled Shona chiefs. And now see me sit here in a restaurant called the Silver Spur.

My store of expat life patience is exhausted. It’s not only the chicken, the water, the electricity, the tiny fridge, the heat, the dull knife, the lack of kitchen drawers, the dead rat in the garden this morning, but . . .