oh, the joy

Friends, I have made a most wonderful discovery:

Pupusas. Nearby.

Pupusas are to El Salvador what I suppose the McDonalds hamburger is to the U.S. Except that, unlike the hamburger, they're delicious, they are not notably contributing to the destruction of the planet, and I could happily eat them every day.

Unbeknownst to me, there has always been Salvadoran food available within reasonable driving distance of me. I've driven right past it, in fact, in sad sad ignorance. All that changed last weekend when I was browsing in a used bookstore in Greenfield, MA (see? browsing in bookstores is good for you) and overheard (oversmelled?) the owner and a friend of his enjoying the Salvadoran tamales they were eating for dinner.

They were discussing how good the tamales tasted, and it was obvious how good they smelled, so I immediately asked where they'd been procured, though assuming it must have been something out of the freezer or from a trip down the interstate to those towns that actually have things like ethnic diversity and yummy food.

But no! They were from just up the street. There's a pizza place in Greenfield that has Salvadoran tamales! Of course I went there for dinner (verdict: YUM) and asked if they ever have pupusas, a food that I'm not too embarrassed to admit I sometimes fantasize about. It's one of those things that you find when you're traveling that make you think really hard about trying to sneak a local grandmother home in your luggage, because no matter what you do you'll never be able to make them taste as good at home yourself. I come down very much on the liberal end of the immigration debate for many reasons entirely unrelated to the availability of authentic foreign foods, but there's no reason to ignore the fact that a peripheral added bonus to pulling our heads out of our asses might be better eating.

Of course, no matter how open our borders, it's probably too much to hope that my very very White town (which I love for so many reasons, but NOT that one) would get any less so. Which brings us back to my thrilled surprise at being told that the place in Greenfield has a sister restaurant in Montague (just across the Connecticut River from Greenfield) that has pupusas for sale just about every day.

So last night, at the earlist possible opportunity to justify the half-hour drive to Montague (because I had to go to Greenfield for the evening anyway), I had pupusas for the first time since I was in El Salvador last December. I ordered a few to eat right then (verdict: YUMMMMM) and six to take home for a Freezing Experiment in which we determine whether they'll freeze well enough that I can go back to Montague and order them by the case.

It's not going to be a very scientific experiment, partly because I can't imagine I'll let them sit in the freezer very long. So the real experiment may be: how many reasons can I invent for going to the Montague/Greenfield area around dinnertime?