— Hilda P J

I've traveled quite extensively around the world. The United States, I've pretty much-- Well, I've got about four states left. I've never been to Alaska, Maine, Montana, or North Dakota. So couple northern states there, basically. But everywhere else I've traveled to in the United States. Overseas, it's kind of been a mixed area. I've gone to Europe, like Italy and Ireland and France. Spent a good amount of time in India around 2008 as well. And India is probably the main place that I got a good influence from food from. There was this little Canadian town called Matsqui that I went to as well, too, that was pretty influential. I did a lot of work with them at a hospital and did some training with them. But for some reason, I had to keep going back to do the training because the hospital kept disappearing. But by and large, it was mostly India. So I spent time in Dharamsala, India, which is where the Tibetan refugees came over from Tibet. And I taught English there for a while, and as a result, also took some cooking classes, learned to make momo Some very Tibetan recipes there, but then also learned to do a lot of Indian food while I was in India, besides just going to Dharamsala and Gangotri, and a couple other larger towns. The cooking there really influenced me on the cooking styles of how it was done and really developing flavor as a base to start out. So getting your oils and then blooming out spices for those as well too, really helped develop out a little bit. So some of the flavor profiles that I still use today too, and different cooking methods for those too. So, yeah, definitely have to say India's probably the one place that I've traveled that I've brought most of the food back and adopted it in my everyday life. Maybe not every day, but at least some of the methods and stuff like that as well too. So, I think it's great for traveling. It's good to travel around the world and experience different foods. I highly recommend taking cooking classes to different places when you go to them to experience local foods. I was just recently on a trip to South Dakota and saw that there were a lot of indigenous food offerings. Was looking for a course for something like that too, but haven't seen it. But just luckily, a new place in Minnesota just opened back up, from a James Beard Award-winning chef, and hopefully will be able to do something out there soon. But it's just great to be able to travel and to be able to learn from different cultures and experiences like that.