Pass the Sour Cream: Given a choice between a baked potato and the Great Wall of China

I had been in Asia just over two months--something like ten weeks, or if you're counting days, about seventy days.

Of course, if you're counting meals, like I was, think about two hundred and ten.

Add iodine-purified water, a permanent layer of dust on my tongue, and let's just say I couldn't always hold down what I did eat.

Food was becoming my meaning, my passion, my existence.

I dreamt up meals in my head: leafy salads, steak, anything without rice and noodles.

Sure, rice and noodles are...