Diet (Cameron)

As of the first day of this trip, I had been a vegetarian (and recently a pescitarian) for 1,429 days. I decided that during the trip, I would temporarily revert to meat eating.

On our first day in Beijing, Andrew's friend Mora took us out for Peking Duck: famous, ancient, and complicated to make (you can read about it here). It suffices to say that it's extremely fatty, and that you mostly eat the skin. This was accompanied by two dozen duck hearts, and duck livers in salt water. I decided that coconut milk would be a light, cool antidote to the fatty entry, but it was only after my fourth can that I realized each one had more than 20 grams of saturated fat.

And so began the second great journey that I have been undertaking this summer: an exploration of the remotest corners of the Bristol Stool Scale.

I generally enjoyed the food on our wilderness excursions in Mongolia, even the monotony didn't get to me. Mutton (we think? it was very gristly sometimes), rice, and potatoes dominated. Andrew quickly caught on and scored a perfect prediction one night: "I bet we're having rice and potatoes, with little bits of mystery meat." We are still unsure what the mystery meat was, but we initially suspect egg or lung, and are now leaning heavily towards lung.

When a meal was being prepared by a host family, and someone said to another: "дэлгүүр нь Монгол улсын нийслэл УБ хот болон бусад аймагт төлөөлөгч болох хүсэлтэй иргэн, аж ахуйн нэгжтэй хамтран ажиллана!!!!" We would speculate as to possible meanings: "You call this pastry flaky?! Make it again! Decant the Merlot, we must let it breath. And you, keep beating those egg whites, I want that Pavlova so light that it's on the verge of floating away."

We were overjoyed to find that peanuts were available in Mongolia. However on the train I ate aBad Peanut. This was a profoundly traumatizing experience, and I will speak no further of it.

In Ulan-Bator, we were regulars at the Loving Hut (the vegan restaurant, not the brothel). We always enjoyed watching "Supreme Master TV .com". It broadcasts multi-faith new age prayers, and the screen is perpetually dominated by a technicolour array of subtitles in no less than 18 languages.

In Irkutsk, an significant information asymmetry has been remedied: all restaurant menus provide the weights of each item and sometimes even a breakdown of the sub-items (e.g. the salad is 140 grams and the dressing is 40 grams).

We are just about to take a bus/ferry to a little island on a big lake for three nights. All meals are included, but the proprietor is much better known for his table tennis skills (for real) than his ability to procure fresh ingredients (other than fish). What island? What Lake? Will Cameron and Andrew survive Nikita's concoctions? Find out next week! Exclusively here on the Sudmant Family Blog!