The doctor says no surgery. It won’t change a thing happening with my back. He is, instead, referring me to the pain clinic hoping they’ll find solutions which are quick acting and will allow me to walk longer distances.

I think the news buoyed my spirits. Tonight I’m having friends over for dinner, and usually on the day of the dinner, I start to regret the invitation purely because of my back. Today I am raring to go.

I have a list. I always have a list. I also have a flow chart, and I am already behind my time. Talking to my sister did that. She wasn’t on any list.

Dinner will be Indian Chicken and Cashew Rice and a side of green beans for color. I don’t want to get your taste buds aroused but appetizers are blueberry, feta and honey-caramelized onion naan pizza and honey prosciutto with gouda on flatbread. For dessert I’ve already made my dark chocolate cream pie.

When I was a kid, I would have laughed if you had told me I’d be eating Indian food. Now it is among my favorites. Traveling has opened up my mind but even better it has extended my palate. I have eaten the oddest foods I would have cringed just looking at when I was young. Buying a live chicken for dinner would have grossed me out. Chicken comes in packages from the supermarket. Killing and plucking are not necessary. In South American I ate what in the United States are pets: Guinea pigs. They were tasty. In Finland I have no idea what I ate. The second language is Swedish. I just ordered what looked good.

I didn’t even know foods like hummus and falafel existed. I ate Wonder Bread not pita bread or lavash. The most exotic bread I ate back then was Italian scali bread.

On my first trip back to Ghana, I couldn’t wait until I had fufu for dinner and kelewele for a snack. They were my Ghanaian comfort foods.

Morocco was my last trip before the two and soon to be my third trip back to Ghana. Though the country is in North Africa I wasn’t eating African food. I was eating tasty, varied and delicious Moroccan food. Some of it I knew as I could translate the French names but others I chose by appearance. I never made a bad choice.

Part of the adventure of going somewhere different, somewhere new, is eating unfamiliar and maybe even unrecognizable food. That it is sometimes in a foreign language helps.

When I get to Ghana, I want kelewele and those round donuts the small girls sell. I love that in a far different country than my own I have favorite foods which don’t come from stores but from aunties, as older women are sometimes called, who cook and sell the food along the roadsides.

Stop the car!! It’s dinner time.