Around the world in 102 meals

Noah Galuten spent the past three months eating his way around the world -- all within a day's drive of his Santa Monica apartment.

The Associated Press reports:

The 25-year-old playwright was broke and unemployed when he decided to eat cuisine from a different country every day and write about it on his "Man Bites World" Web site.

Galuten figured he could stomach 60 traditional dishes from a different country on consecutive days until he ran out of options and was sated. But the project took him further than he ever imagined, stamping his culinary passport with food from 102 cultures by his final bite of Slovakian poppy seed cake more than three months later.

That he could cross so many borders so close to home is both a testament to Los Angeles' cultural melting pot and the help he got from strangers who invited him into their homes to share traditional meals. "If there's anywhere you should be more inclusive, it's eating," he said.

The final feast -- plum brandy, roasted chestnuts, sheep milk feta with paprika and caraway, homemade gnocchi, and a traditional Christmas soup -- was home-cooked by Peter Simon, a Slovakian immigrant who offered his homeland's best.

The end tasted bitter and sweet: The adventure was over, but he was relieved because it was exhausting -- and expensive.

The international noshing left Galuten with $4,000 in credit card debt, which he hopes to erase by writing a book about his experiences. His girlfriend, Jackie Honikman, 25, a Web designer who covered his rent and other costs, gained about 15 pounds.

When the experiment came to a close this month after he failed to find Somalian food, he returned to his own roots, where he was comforted by a childhood treat -- turkey Bolognese cooked by his mom.