While we haven’t been able to do any international travel for a while, travel has certainly been on our minds.  Mainly, we have been thinking a lot about how much travel inspires us in our everyday lives back home, touching all of our senses.  In this 12 part series, Joel will take us through a journey, showing how our travels continue to inspire all of us at Zoom Vacations.

Travel Inspires Cuisine

When we conducted our first trip to the Finnish Lapland several years ago, we had the best salmon of our lives, cooked over an open fire in our lodge.  Since then, Bryan and I have been trying to recreate it.  We finally discovered that grilling salmon over a soaked cedar plank, with steak seasoning on top was pretty darn close.

We also knew that as delicious as it was, It would go perfectly over our take on elotes (grilled Mexican street corn), a special recipe we learned while in Playa del Carmen, researching our tour for New Years Eve.

As a side dish, we opted for what has become one of our favorite things after tasting it in various preparations in Peru: Quinoa.  Quinoa is a seed that’s packed with protein, fiber, and nutrients, and has become our go-to, often replacing rice in various dishes.  When we first started offering our trips to Peru 18 years ago, quinoa was hard to find back home. Now it is pretty much everywhere.