In search of an appetite

Since I've been terrible about posting recently I figure I'll make up for lost time. Here's one I started writing three weeks ago while I was in Miami for work.

Eating lost its flare a while ago. I rarely feel hungry. At the end of the day I could care less about dinner. In my own mind I eat some form of bread and cheese all day long and nearly exclusively and that's all food is anymore...bread (ciabatta, multigrain, Stirato, hominy...) and cheese (chedder, pepper jack, smoked gouda). Even while eating sauteed veggies and a grain (usually quinoa) I feel like I'm eating bread and cheese. That's my own fault, but somehow it clouds everything that enters my mouth or mind. Even last Sunday as I was eating a "Mustafa Salad" from the Chai House, basically a bowl of vegan hippie birdseed-- mixed greens, falafel, sunflower seeds and a smattering of other veggies bits--if I'd closed my eyes it would have been bread and cheese. Same goes for the various other restaurant meals I've had recently including two grilled calamari salads, minestrone soup, a thai smorgesboard, and potato pancakes. All of it...bread and cheese, bread and cheese, more bread and cheese.

So the last twenty four hours have been a big breakthrough. I'm in Miami and can't say that my appetite has come back in a raging way but I've been eating Cuban food and that's what it tastes like. Last night I poached dinner from Cafe Versailles, the well-known, local Cuban haunt and quasi chain with an outpost in the airport. First of all, I love feeling pressured to speak Spanish, and I really didn't even need to at Versailles but the atmosphere just begs for it. Male waiters dressed like penguins weave in and out of the lady waitresses dressed in unflattering green pants suits. Y toda la gente esta charlando rapido. I headed to the back to the take out counter which was also the grill station where a man was churning out order upon order of empanadas made with Bacalao (cod), spinach and cheese, and chicken. And mammoth batches of crispy plantain chips. I ordered Dolphin fish a la plancha that came with a side of yellow rice and platanos maduros, sweet fried plantains that I would course the world twice around for. I also ordered a side of black beans. And the whole mess came with an oily bag of grilled white bread toasts drizzled in butter. Each bite was a gift in that none of it tasted like cheese and the oily toasts were waylaid in favor of every other tasty nibble in front of me. Dinner ran me about $12, it could have easily fed two. I had to force myself to eat half of it and then left it out overnight on the dresser of my hotel room. I ate some of the plaintains cold for breakfast. They really weren't as good day two but I was still reveling in the no-cheese flavor.