A tropical thunderstorm raging outside has finally compelled me to sit down with my long-neglected computer and begin the mammoth task of sorting through the thousands of pictures we've taken over the past three weeks. Of course I'll tell you all about it as soon as we're home, but in the meantime, I've put up a little taster of the three places we've visited and some of the incredible things we've eaten there. Can you guess where we've been? I'll give you a hint: they're all in Asia, all within a two-hour flight of each other, and they're three of the continent's - if not the world's - greatest food cities. Any ideas?

Welcome. I know you've had a busy few months, filling mouths and jam jars and making appearances at countless local festivals on your annual (and no doubt tiring) trek north, but I want to thank you all the same for stopping here and spending some time with us in Germany. We had one hell of a winter, and not too nice of a spring either, so your little sweet scarlet orbs of sunshine are really just what the doctor ordered - or would be if doctors here were in the habit of prescribing fruit (which I actually think they should be, but that's a discussion for another time). If you want to know the truth, there were times when it was just the promise of your visit that got me out of bed in the morning, particularly when, day after day, the only things to be found in the markets were every bit as drab and colorless as the winter landscape. I know that some people got so desperate they even fell victim to the temptations of your early-season impostors, you know, your monstrous white-shouldered cousins that fly in before you each year from places like Spain and Morocco where they seemingly like to grow things without flavor. But not me; I knew it was worth waiting for you, and even when you failed to arrive on schedule a couple of weeks ago, I knew you'd come eventually. You always do.

Let's be frank: Marseille has a whopper of a reputation. When I was 17 and traveling around Europe for the first time, my guidebook painted such a scary picture of Marseille (crime! drugs! immigrants!) that I even wondered if it was safe to change trains there. As it turned out I didn't have much choice, but I didn't spend a minute longer in either the station or the city than I had to. And in subsequent years, though I found myself in the south of France many times, I never even thought to give Marseille a second chance. That is, until one of our best friends took a job there last fall and couldn't stop raving about it. Turns out that was all the persuasion we needed to jump in the car and head south for a long-overdue acquaintance with the city.

Did you say Menu for Hope? Of course you did!