He moved through the office to another impromptu meeting with other producers and editors. They were discussing the Labor Day show, a barbecue-tastic, beef-topia in Connecticut the next day. Oh, how I wished to be there among the smells, the pool, the friendly sun. I secretly imagined a petting zoo, rounds of doing the Hokey-Pokey, a performance by the Cramps, and trust falls. And rainbows, made of cake.

As I approached Tom to tell him how much I'd enjoyed my sandwich, I overheard Tony. "We need a Ukulele, and Hawaiian Shirts. Say Adam, you're about the coolest guy ever, do you possess these items?"

Well, it was something like that. It came up that I play the uke (I play depression era folk music) and that I have a small collection of genuine, 70's polyester Hawaiian shirts (I went to high school on Maui). And just like my ex-best friend's honeymoon, I'd snuck my ass onto another trip.

You know that last scene in Boogie Nights, when the characters have gone through hell or worse and they're all back together, a big family, forgetting the challenges and digging the unity at the pool with the grill flaming? Well, replace the smut with a lot of equally talented people organizing over a dozen miniature businesses a year (every episode really is a little company). This shoot was a celebration of all those fully mind-destroying, relatively Olympian feats that shows can turn often out to be (bear in mind that Big-Tony B is on ALL of them). It all works because everybody is good at what they do and everybody loves it. Well, one guy didn't like it. Tony made us eat him in a lemon-wine sauce ...

We all helped with food, setting up, holding reflectors, building up mics and jumping in the bouncy castle. I think Nari was in charge of drinking. I went to the workshop to saw and hammer some tracking targets together for a retrospective shot for the "Tony's many eccentric acquaintances" segment. Then we grilled. After Tony cooked about infinity-pounds of meat for an hour, he deserved a damn break. Naturally, he turned to the nearest person and handed me the spatula (I was closer than the table). Of course, though, he was a gent. I learned that when the burger puffs a little, it's done. Also, I learned that I come from a family that slightly overcooks food. And at the very, very end, I learned you can give a man a burger or you can teach him to grill. That, my friends, is a trust fall worth two in the bush.

"You can't shoot THAT!" says our government minder.

"What?" I ask, through my phone.

With a dirty-toothed smile, "That, um, food cart. There are many places that are much nicer. Wouldn't you rather shoot there?"

"Where?" I ask with a pleasant, but deeply evil smile on my face, knowing this game like the back of my hand.

"Um" the minder sputters "anywhere but HERE. I was told..."

My mind starts wandering to other essentials as I look at the obviously fearful look on my poor, ABNR-virgin, cameraman's face. I squint, look bored, half smile and reassuredly, but ever-so-slightly, nod. Wink to Tracey. Street scene on. Ba-bang.

"You know ___________, I need to go to the toilet. Can you help me?" I ask earnestly while doing the "little-boy-leg-shifting-pee-pee-dance."

"Yes, right this way. I can help you," he says with the authority of a bureaucrat who actually means what he is saying, but doesn't get to say it very often.

We're off. Down an alley. Thru a gate. Large door. Man in uniform. Arabic spoken. Nods all around. Down a hall. Thru another door. Smell of excrement. Bingo. Government minder waits outside.

Now remember, I still have a phone stuck to my face. It's been there for days...l.i.t.e.r.a.l.l.y. Thank god for international cells. Tracey and I came to Egypt 3 days early to scout. Crew coming in on different days from different locations. Potential logistical hell. The pollution here makes Athens or Mexico City feel like clean oases of Swiss modernity. The noise of Cairo is literally as loud as "being 10 feet from a freight train." I read that somewhere. No joke. Government bureaucrat hell. Permits. You have them, don't worry. Well, you might have them by next week. "Next week" I yell. "We're shooting tomorrow." Well, you can shoot the pyramids. Ummm, actually, no you can't shoot the pyramids. "Forget the pyramids, can we shoot in the streets of Cairo?" You can't shoot ANYthing on the street. We know of some nice restaurants you would LOVE to shoot in, though. The Hilton has a great "Middle Eastern-style" restaurant with dancing and traditional music. Very clean. Tourists go there. You'll feel safe. You will LOVE it! Ahhhhhhhhh!

So I'm on the phone with the network, with Tony, with our Executive Producers, with the Egyptian government, with the airline, with customs officers, with the US government, with my mom ("help!"). I keep switching calls to our "fixers" when the Arabic becomes, well, irreplaceable with English. But I have to transfer the call. I can't hand mine over ... cause it's stuck to my F***ING face!

Thank god our fixers have phones. So from within the stall, I text, "SHOOT the scene. Shoot the scene!" And then, I take my time. I pretend I'm going #2, which requires more time in a world without toilet seats or toilet paper.

Just another day on ABNR ...

It is easy to recall the day I learned that I would be one of the segment producers for "No Reservations, "I was ecstatic. What an amazing adventure! My imagination ran wild with the places we would travel, the people we'd meet, and the food ... Oh crap, the food. What was I going to do? How could I tell Anthony Bourdain, vegetarian loather, that his new segment producer had never eaten pork or any sort of red meat in her entire life? My conclusion, I couldn't. My food flaw was a serious offense and would have to be kept top-secret for three meals a day.

When I say I've never eaten red meat or pork, I mean never. From birth I have been mostly vegetarian - a little chicken here, a little fish there. My parents didn't cook meat so we didn't eat it. It was a challenging thing to hide, especially from someone like Tony. Throughout the Romania and Hawaii episodes I employed a number of maneuvers harkening back to childhood and my grandparents disdain for my eating habits. There was the chewing-and-spitting-sausage-into-the-napkin trick, the careful switching-the-plates-of-Spam, and even the under-the-table-ham-hand-off.

My main concern is not offending my host, which is why my failsafe has always been the stuff-yourself-silly-with-something. We had been prepping for our Spain show for about 6 weeks and we had a kick-ass show on our hands. Everything was perfect ... the locations, the menus, the chefs, the sidekicks, it was all there. "Spain," as Tony would say, "is triple X on the food porn." We scheduled nothing else, just loads of luscious meat. Meat, meat, meat and more meat. Granted, I may have never tasted half of what we researched, but I knew, theoretically, its importance to those carnivorous taste buds.

I fantasized how I would tell him. A scene from "Who's the Boss" where Tony is, well, Tony and I am Samantha. We would have just wrapped for the day, the crew scoffing down leftover plates of ham iberico. He notices that I haven't partaken of these piglet pieces of perfection. I look guiltily out from under my bangs. He gives me that Danza frown, "Samantaaaaa" and we burst into laughter, Tony wondering how a vegetarian could have infiltrated the ranks. I shrug smiling and eat a carrot stick. Cue the hugs and rolling credits.

Bourdain's hatred of vegetarians is no secret. I had read the interviews, seen the episodes and even heard it from the man himself. Maybe he would dress me in antlers and bow-hunt me in the next episode. Or worse, tie me to a chair in some dark, abandoned warehouse, with various cuts of meat laid out like the tools of a torture mastermind. Sausages, prosciuttos, and sirloins. Would he break me and use me as an example? String-up a meat-stuffed scarecrow to ward off future vegetarian segment producers?

It was time to get on that plane to Barcelona. I was going to come clean once and for all, no matter what the repercussions. As anticipated, I was surrounded by plate after plate of cured meat and not a vegetable in sight. Tables of ham iberico stretching like an endless pink fleshy super-highway. Tony, the crew and our hosts feasted on the bounty before them. Like admitting to an affair on Valentine's Day this was not the time for confessions. So I activated the failsafe. In this case it was sardines. I went through more fish than the feed truck at Seaworld. I ate them until I was safely out of ham's way. And that is how it went for 10 days in beautiful Spain. But this story isn't over, just to-be-continued. There will be other trips without fish or any other safety net I have used thus far. And as most of you can predict, it will now become mission number one to convert me. I guess it's all on the table now.