A few months ago, Marla Garla tipped me off to Elyse Sewell’s LiveJournal, which has now become my guilty-pleasure blog. I only call it a guilty pleasure when I’m recommending it to someone, because it sounds bad to say you’re reading the blog of someone who was on America’s Next Top Model. But hey, I also kind of enjoy working at Us Weekly–I’m not proud. And she was the smart one on ANTM, so there.

But never mind the modeling. What is fucking fantastic about this blog is that this woman takes pictures of all the bizarro stuff she sees in grocery stores in Asia, and of all the sometimes-alarming stuff she eats on the street. This is great, because it’s exactly what I do when I travel–anthropological insights on Aisle 9. But since I still haven’t been anywhere in Asia, it’s all completely new, and it only stokes my mental image of the other side of the globe as this dazzlingly strange alternate universe.

What’s finally making me link to her blog is this post: Bourgetto. The horrific pastry detailed in this post made me laugh out loud.

And it also made me ponder the universal appeal of that magical substance we call mayonnaise. In so many cultures, mayonnaise appears to be the first baby step toward “Western” food and culture–and once people get a taste of that lovely white goo, there’s just no going back. Next thing you know, you’re hankering for meatloaf, and then pretty soon you’re test-driving SUVs. (I’m not making the meatloaf thing up: documented instance of meatloaf being seen as “exotic” in Mexico–scroll down.)

I have previously documented the Mexican fixation with mayo (here and here, to start), and the Japanese are total converts (mmm, okonomiyaki), but I wonder how mayo plays in, say, Kenya, or on the steppes of Mongolia? (Tell me in the comments! Oh, sorry, no–still broken. F***ing Yahoo.) I know it’s an integral ingredient in salads at “fancy” dinners in Cairo–it’s just a matter of time before it trickles down.

I am extremely pro-mayo, so I find this delightful: “See? It makes your sandwich/taco/bun/peas-and-carrots slide down your throat like nothing at all!” I feel like saying to everyone I meet in other countries. My father, on the other hand, probably has the allover heebie-jeebies at the thought of mayonnaise infiltrating the deepest Amazon rain forest.

All that said, I don’t know if I’d be able to handle Elyse’s nightmarish “blueberry streusel brioche with a filling of mayonnaise, tomatoes, cucumbers, and raw onions.” (She forgets to mention the corn kernels–also hilariously European, like a crappy Dutch salad.) Here I thought I had to worry about fertilized duck eggs in Asia, but now I see I’m going to have to deal with some far more insidious flavors.

I think I’m strong enough…

(Oh, what’s also genius about Elyse Sewell and her blog: she’s from Albuquerque too. Between her and Neil Patrick Harris–with whom I went to theater camp, let me just name-drop–the Duke City has some real celeb cred.)