I’m so proud! An essay of mine about my killer year in Cairo is in the new summer issue of Gastronomica (Vol 8, no. 3).

You might remember my previous appearance in Gastronomica, but that was just on the letters page, and I was wrapped in blue Saran wrap.

Now I have two whole pages to tell a story near and dear to my heart: namely, how being violently ill in Cairo brought me to Astoria, with some new Indian-cooking skills along the way.

To read the whole thing, you’ll have to buy the journal, but I heartily recommend you do, because where else can you also read about what prisoners cook up in the San Francisco jail?

Meanwhile, I can give you this teaser, as well as the wonderful photo that illustrates the essay:

From the day I arrived in cairo for twelve months of intensive Arabic study, I was sick. The city—smoggy and mobbed with nineteen million fruit vendors, knife sharpeners, cab drivers, and sidewalk lechers, all trumpeting their trades at top volume—made an immediate physical assault on my body. Always a little susceptible to stress, my stomach went into high rejection mode—every tomato slice and stray parsley leaf did me in….

Peter took the photo last year, when we visited what he dubbed “the museum that should be in a museum,” the woefully and delightfully dated Egyptian Agricultural Museum (admission 5 cents). How did the guard know I would be delighted to see wax models of every kind of food you can eat in Egypt? He wouldn’t rest till I’d fondled every piece.