I take pleasure in eating tasty Mexican foods: savory burritos, tacos, tamales and posole. On Christmas Eve, I always exclusively desired and salivated over toasty tamales. I wasn’t interested in eating food outside my tradition.
But one evening, after coming home from my plumbing job, I discovered a food that would change my traditions. I spotted this sweet-scented bowl on my bunk, gifted to me by my cellmate. I sighed in disappointment when I opened it to see that it was a bright orange rice bowl.
It was not a typical food I would gobble. The rice was cooked in an orange drink mix, sweet and sour sauce, and Sriracha. The bowl also contained chopped sausage, pickle, yellow peppers, apple, peanuts and chicharron. This mixture towered over the puffy rice.
I didn’t want to displease my cellmate, so I dug a spoon into the fusion of sweet and spicy ingredients and then air-dropped the food into my mouth. Once it touched my tongue, the exquisite flavor sent my palate into a frenzy of astonishment.
I tasted the acidic orange drink, mixed with the sweet and spicy sauces, the tart pickle, flavorful sausage and crunchy peanuts.
I was immediately upset no one had ever offered me a rice bowl in my years in prison. As soon as my cellmate returned, I eagerly hopped off my top bunk and asked him to make it more frequently.
The next time the canteen, or prison general store, opened, I scurried to purchase every ingredient to remake the dish, or rather my very own signature rice bowls that were spinoffs of my cellmate’s. I decided on a Loco Cherry Bomb Rice Bowl and Pineapple Pinnacle Rice Bowl.
When my friends asked me what I was cooking last Christmas Eve, I answered with joy in my soul: “My very own spectacular rice bowl.”
