Not All Food Is Created Equal

I love food. Real food. The kind that fills your soul, makes your taste buds sing, and is best enjoyed with good company. What I really can't stand is the factory-made, soulless, plastic-cheese-laden crimes against taste that some dare to call food. 

Fast food chains? No, thank you. If I wanted my meal to taste like regret, I’d eat my own cooking mistakes. 

Or, for that matter, I’d relive the Liberian Soup Incident. Ah, the Liberian Soup Incident. Just after the civil war, with the team I was with, we worked in the field and found a small local restaurant... actually a group of ladies cooking around a fire, cooking for passers-by. Huge basins of rice were waiting, and an even bigger pot of soup was being served up. It smelled hearty, rich, like a meal made to bring comfort. And so we ate, happily, thinking we were simply tasting local flavours.

And then—I saw what was going into that soup.

Small smoked fish. Goat carcass leftovers. Corned beef from humanitarian aid. Chicken feet - not legs, but feet. Some smoked bushmeat. An unrecognizable collection of vegetables. Everything thoroughly boiled down in concentrated tomato paste, probably to harmonize (or disguise) the various flavours. 

And there, in my bowl, staring back at me—an eyelid. Hopefully, a goat’s.

Here, you won’t find any sad, microwaved burger patties or mass-produced chicken nuggets. Instead, this is a celebration of culinary adventures and crimes against taste - a journey through BBQ pits in Chad, camel stew in the Somali region of Ethiopia, and street food so good it should be illegal. 

Some meals were legendary, others were questionable life choices, but all of them had one thing in common: they were worth remembering.

So welcome to the Anti-Junk-Food Club, where The Good, The Bad, and The Greasy all have their place, and where food is never just about eating—it’s about the stories we bring to the table. Grab a plate. And maybe a strong stomach.