It’s rare that I go out to eat for lunch. Takes too much time, between getting somewhere, ordering, eating, socializing, … And either I’m just generally too cheap, or I don’t value the experience enough, because spending $10 or so on a midday meal doesn’t strike me as reasonable, no matter how big the portion sizes are. (Cut my portion size and charge me less: I’ll eat less, making me happier both for my wallet and for my waist line.) Today I decided to venture out, though not for a dine-in experience. I was looking for a Caribbean restaurant that I had heard mention of on Chowhound. For whatever reason, I was craving something different, some sense of culinary adventure. Jason and I used to regularly hunt out new dining experiences when we were dating, but the required marital attention to budgets and kid-friendly dining have severely limited those expeditions.

Didn’t find the Caribbean place, but did find a Latin restaurant / take-out. Latin to the point of Spanish television channel on, other patrons speaking Spanish exclusively to the wait staff, and a Spanish beer other than Corona being featured prominently. Picked an order nearly at random and headed back to the office. Ordered the rotisserie chicken, fried yucca, and fried plantains. Yum! I’ve had plantains before – I think we had them on our honeymoon. The chicken smelled wonderful and was absolutely delicious, but still, it was chicken – nothing particularly adventurous there. Yucca was a new experience. At first I thought the server had goofed – this stuff sure looked like french fries to me. Doing a bit of poking online, discovered that they’re supposed to look/taste like potatoes. And that they have vitamin C, as well as are a good source of dietary fiber.

Cora’s a fan of french fries – she’ll happily ignore the entree in any kids’ meal and scarf down the fries. That causes me no small amount of mommy guilt. But I see yucca possibilities here…. Definitely worth a venture to a Latin restaurant with our two year old – see if we can pull off the Folgers’ yucca switch. And I think I may regularly try to find other interesting dining around my work… woman cannot live by brown bag lunch alone. (Or she could, but it’s a lot more interesting if she doesn’t.)