Having an interest in traveling is unfortunately a very expensive hobby. This might limit how often you can take journeys to different countries and cultures that can expand your worldview. However, you might be able to achieve a much smaller version of that effect by bringing elements of travel back into your home. This is made possible by the globally connected community that you’re a part of – though you might not have been making the most of that up until now.
Food is something that leads a lot of people towards travel. The different tastes and flavors can open your culinary mind, so why not think about bringing them into your home?
What You Know and Love
If the idea of trying a bunch of new foods and flavors is quite new to you, it might be a tall order to immediately jump into the deep end of different cuisines. Instead, you might turn your attention to the things that you already enjoy, and see how you can imbue those things with an exotic edge that mixes up how you enjoy them.
Coffee and tea are good examples of this, as they’re a part of your day that might be something of a routine, and so getting the opportunity to try something new each day can be an exciting spin on that ritual. Brazilian coffee might not sound all that different to you, given how much of the world’s coffee comes from that area, but scouting out the different authentic and organic options that they have available might put a spin on what you think you know.
Where tea is concerned, you might be aware of how it plays a role in different cultures around the world and how that leads to it being enjoyed differently in those places. This can help you to not only change the flavours that you’re incorporating into your routine tea slot each day, but also the way that you go about drinking it. Even a shift from teabag to loose-leaf tea might introduce a shift in what you’re used to extreme enough to rejuvenate this process.
Authentic Recipes
Perhaps you feel as though you already make an effort to eat meals that have their origins from various areas around the globe. That could be true, but it might be that the way you go about making these recipes (and the ingredients incorporated) could stand to be more authentic to give a genuine experience. This might sound like a simple semantic difference, but you might be surprised at how different the result is. After all, if you travel to the places where these meals come from, you might find that the experience of eating the local cuisine is quite different to what you’re used to from the versions at home.
While there are websites and cookbooks that can help you to make these versions of familiar meals, you might find that a good place to start is a restaurant that focuses on these more authentic experiences. This won’t be offered by every single venue that offers this genre of food, but seeking out the ones that do could be an interesting experience for you and your friends. According to some reports, this sense of authenticity is something that might be becoming more important to audiences, which might make such eateries easier to come by than they used to be – and the ingredients you need to make your own attempts equally available.
Something Different
That’s all well and good when you’re thinking about meals and foods that you might have some semblance of familiarity with, but what about those that are completely new? It might only be by going abroad do you find that you have so much experience to surround yourself with truly new culinary experiences, and trying to do the same within the comfort of your home might be more difficult due to how easy it is to simply fall back on something more comfortable and familiar. However, it is still possible, it might just mean that you have to make a more committed effort to stick to something new.
The way that you go about doing this might be something of a routine. Making new meals every single day of the week that you have no idea whether you’ll like might present some issues. You might be unsure whether or not you’ll enjoy it every day and that could prevent you from getting as excited about it, and the effort involved with making something new each day might add a level of toil to your day that you’re not looking for. Instead, incrementally adding these recipes by doing one or two per week might be a better way to go about it – potentially even involving your friends to make it more of an event.
What You’ve Tried
Of course, what you’re having doesn’t have to be entirely unfamiliar. It might be that the reason you’re so interested in bringing these tastes closer to home is that you’ve tried them while you were away and decided you’d want them more regularly. If that’s the case, you might find world food stores online that can help you to track down what you’ve had to get delivered. This can get expensive, so it might have to take the form of a more infrequent treat if you can find nowhere locally that sells what you’re looking for.
However, what this experience might also tell you is that trying something new can often lead to successful results. While you might be tempted to stick with what you know again and again whenever you have the opportunity, taking the plunge into unfamiliar territory might surprise you with yet another new favorite. Whatever the case, being aware of what you like about these foods can help you to incorporate elements of them into your home baking and cooking, bringing flavors and ideas that are present in other cuisines more closely in line with your way of doing things.
