Frybread

Much of our time in Northern Arizona was spent on the Navajo Nation. You could tell by the frybread. I had my first frybread on the road from the Grand Canyon to Monument Valley, in Tuba City at the Tuuvi Café, in the form of a Navajo taco. This is frybread topped with chili and taco toppings (lettuce, cheese, tomato, onion, sour cream, salsa), served flat on a plate. It is like a ten-inch fresh hot funnel cake, slathered with chili like a chili dog. It is messy and delicious and terrible. On the Navajo nation, you can and have frybread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, digestion be damned, and sometimes we did. There are also “tortillas,” but these are frybread that is baked instead of fried, more like naan than what I would call a tortilla, and not tasty in my opinion. I chose to eat the frybread and enjoy it and feel ill later. 

In addition to the frybread, most places served delicious stews: they are brothy, like very hearty soups, and flavorful and fresh-tasting. Green chiles are in everything. Here is Deena enjoying a green chili pork stew in Monument Valley, with frybread of course.

Vacation restaurant eating involves a lot of waiting so Jordan taught us all the "here we sit like birds in the wilderness" hand game to pass the time. Amazingly I can't find a video of this online... he learned it at camp. Fists tap the table, then thumbs, then first fingers (index/middle), then two farthest fingers (index/pinkie), all to the rhythm of this little song. He is very fast. The rest of us are lame but entertained.