Seeking Employment As Jabba The Hut

  You know that yucky sluggish feeling, often on Monday mornings, when you’ve spent a couple of days eating too much, not getting any exercise, and you feel like Jabba the Hut?  It’s common in most humans around the holidays or after Super Bowl weekend.

   It’s also a common condition for travel writers any time the year.  Much of our responsibilities in exploring new communities and unusual cultures is to report on the food.  That means we have to eat it.  Yeah, tough job, I know, but have you really looked at some of the things the rest of the world eats? 

  In addition to a comfortable pair of walking shoes and clean underwear, a savvy travel writer always packs Tums, Imodium, Pepto, Beano and an entire medicine cabinet in their carry-on. And for some countries, a prescription for Cypro is a necessity.

   Fortunately, or not, my gastrointestinal hang-over this Monday morning is not from eating toasted crickets in a far off land, nibbling at street markets in a third-world nation or imbibing in drink that should not have been drunk.

   My Monday morning belly-ache comes from what I will call a Tummy Tour of Missouri.  It included guberburgers, booch burgers, Greek pizza, Moose Tracks ice cream, peach & pecan cake with butter cream icing, and fava beans – yes, the kind that Hannibal Lecter prefers, although I had a glass of Dr. Pepper as opposed to Dr. Lecter’s pairing with a glass of Chianti.

Guber burgers are hamburgers with warm peanut butter on top. yum!

My tummy tour was part scouting assignment for Midwest Living, a little bit of Day Trips from Kansas City, some stuff for Show Me Missouri, and a few assignments yet to be landed.  And I’m happy knowing that if those assignments don’t materialize, I’m very well qualified for the role of Jabba The Hut in the next Star Wars movie.