No matter where I travel, the main attraction, the neon sign of life blinking me towards experience after experience, is that most primal of desires - food. In other words, I like to eat. Which is why I get along so well with my Dutch cohorts, who look like a female version of Scooby and Shaggy. We agree on one thing and only one thing - the weirder the dish, the better. The less we can pronounce it, the odder it smells, the harder it is to locate, the more the dish is remembered. I am a traveler who has eaten everything from bat blood to ostrich jerky, from ant heads to cockroach spaghetti, and lived through quite a number of scary bathrooms to tell you about it. But my friends have not been to too many destinations. Since we'd arrived in Mexico, I decided to challenge us with a quest. We had to try everything that isn't readily available in a Los Angeles or Dutch supermarket and then decide what was the weirdest thing to dance through our digestive tracts. Hence, tortas with Oaxaca cheese, grasshoppers, blue-corn bean and cheese flyer saucers, coconut mezcal, mole tamales and sangria. I should have stopped with the grasshoppers, but I just couldn't bear going home without one more new dish. Our last destination - hiking to the top of Teotihuacan's Temple of the Sun - left Loesje, Anne, and I exhausted, pissy and starving. My Dutch friends are not hikers. In fact the furthest these two have ever hiked was to the liquor store and back. Their lack of climbing experience is based partly on choice and partly because there are no mountains to practice on in Holland. And any of ya'll who've ever been in Holland know that the people of the Netherlands live in an altered state where a few flights of stairs is a big deal. It's the kind of country where most physical activity is a big deal and my buddies subscribe to that belief like most intellectuals do to the New York Times. Dazed and hungry from our hike, the three of us wandered the Mexican markets. The markets smell so alive! A mix of onions making sizzling love to beef, corn tortillas, sweet fruit, baking breads, Cholula, and enough cheese to make an entire country smile. Flashes of bright clothing, clusters of people begging you to buy anything and everything, flutes rising through the crowd, kids screaming bargains, laughter, the heat, and nearly hugging each person as they pass me in the small aisles between vendor's stands. If I could imagine what it must feel like to be in the womb, I would guess that it feels something like being in a Mexican market. A miniature woman, wearing a knee-length jean skirt, Ked knock-offs, a worn T-shirt, with a face that looks like water after a stone was thrown into it, cackles from a corner. I am not sure whether it is my lone blonde head or sunburned skin, my lost expression, or my awestruck eyes, but her laugh summons me towards her flower-filled wheelbarrow. Passing the mangoes, tacos and fresh squeezed fruit smoothies, I walk like a sleepwalker to her lair. In my traveler's Spanglish, I say hello and ask if the flowers are "para comer?" She nods emphatically, rubbing a thin hand over her flat stomach. Her partner in crime, who suddenly appears like a pigeon from a magic hat trick, bends over, grabs a bunch of the flowers, and pushes them in my face, mumbling "5 pesos" or in American terms, that's $0.50 for 20 half-dead flowers, to eat. Now, I was a vegetarian for quite awhile, and I've had my share of seeds, leaves, roots and grass, but I have never in my life eaten a flower. I hear Loesje and Anne complimenting the size of the mangoes. They look like the Jolly Blonde Giants walking through a field of Oompa Loompas. I wave them over to the wheelbarrow as a pair of Mexican policemen lean against a wall laughing out loud. The flower lady bends over and grabs a can from the dirty ground, and then places her lips over the edges hoping for any spare liquid. Loesje and Anne walk up asking, "What's going on?" I explain that I have no idea how we are supposed to eat these flowers, but that we are supposed to eat them, a challenge already rising in my voice. As their faces twist in nervousness, a short man in ripped jeans and an unbuttoned shirt tells us in broken English that you cook the flowers with onions and eat them like a quesadilla. I try to hold my confident grin when he pops a live ant in his mouth, and smiles at us. We try explaining that we are sleeping in a bug-infested hostel and don't have a kitchen, but he interrupts me, bulleting something in Spanish at the flower lady who is picking her teeth with a candy wrapper she picked up from the ground. Dropping her toothpick, she takes Loesje and Anne by the hand and drags them out of the market, with me closely at their tail trying to translate her drunken slurs. We race through the central square, and toward a small sleepy restaurant. She tells the tired cook to prepare the flowers for us, and since all of our Spanish sucks, we stand there looking like goofballs, with fake smiles on our faces. While the old lady begs, squeezing our cheeks like a proud grandma, we look around the restaurant that she wants us to eat in, and I begin to feel nauseous from the cockroaches and dirt everywhere. Thankfully he denies us with authority, and the old lady finally concedes to move on. Four restaurants and dozens of homemade denials later, we've got a mini-group following us through the small town as we are led by the drunk woman aching to find someone to cook us some dead flowers. Loesje and Anne want to give up, but I urge them to follow the woman, wondering what else we would possibly do in this small town. I mean, if everyone else in town is bored enough to follow us as we search for a cook, then we must be the most exciting thing here. Anne explains that it's been at least 20 minutes, just as someone whispers something to our old lady and she redirects us south. Suddenly we come upon a town barbecue-with a pool, a karaoke bar, men in speedos, and enough drunken fathers to fill three cantinas. It's an Elks party. The little old woman asks if the cook will prepare our flowers and is greeted by a welcoming "Si, como no" which gets a loud cheer from our group. We are ordered to sit, begged to buy our old lady a beer, and told to wait for our flowers to appear. Our group of followers include a couple of kids, the old woman's boyfriend, the open-shirted translator and both of the cops. They line the bar, order beers and stare at us like we are in a zoo, laughing uncontrollably when the plate of orange oily flowers and onions appears at our table. The three of us take a cohesive deep breath and begin to fork the flowers into our mouths. I feel the oil lubing my throat, while the sand grates against my teeth. We offer yummy smiles of appreciation to the whole town watching us, with great hearty laughs coming from the bar. I know that we are the joke of town. The flowers already begin to bubble in our stomachs. Knowing that we are about to have a long night of digestive warfare, Loesje announces that this takes the prize; ridiculous food and experience combined is better than either alone. We toast the group standing by the bar. They must all know how horrible these flowers taste, but they raise their beers and howl at us. We laugh with them.