bear

On the last day of NaNo, my friends list said to me, "UPDATE OR I'LL SHOVE YOU UP A TREE."

*twinkles* *preens* *counts the earwormed* Congrats to those finishing NaNo, and Hanukkah Sameach to those who celebrate! Tis the season for sufganiyot, fa la la la la, la la la la!

hyounpark has been celebrating NaMcRibMo. I'm kind of glad that's almost over, too, though I suspect he'll make it a national movement the next time it comes around. >_>

Hooray, lazy Thanksgiving. Slightly overcaramelized the veg and spilled twice as much fivespice as I meant to into the sweet potatoes, but the turkey came out perfectly, and Hyoun loved the cornbread even more. Win.

Thanksgiving Menu:

* Maple slow-cooked turkey breast - just the two of us, don't need to try to wrestle a gigantic bird into the miniature oven of our tiny kitchen in the eaves :)
* Cranberry-Asian pear chutney - a regular from Kay Chun that's been on almost every one of my Thanksgiving tables since 2001? 2000? Whenever I saw the Asian American Thanksgiving article in Real Simple.
* Cider-roasted root vegetables - beets, butternut squash because they were what we had, but this goes well with any and all root veg. Also a Kay Chun recipe.
* Custard-filled cornbread - Marion Cunningham via Molly Wizenberg; I also like Heidi Swanson's update with quinoa
* Fivespice mashed sweet potatoes - boil sweet potatoes, melt butter, add fivespice to the butter, mash sweet potatoes with the fivespice butter
* Beet greens with bacon - fry bacon, saute beet greens in rendered bacon fat, chop bacon and mix back into sauteed greens
* Lemon-ginger mousse - a Joanne Chang fave.

And a loaf of rosemary garlic sourdough bread for Friday's leftovers ;)

*

So way back in October, on our first night in Toronto, we hopped the Dundas streetcar out to The Black Hoof, a charcuterie restaurant in Trinity-Bellwoods (according to Flickr, at least). (Toronto, can I just say how much I love your grid of streetcars downtown? Though the whole "step off into traffic" thing was more than a bit terrifying the first time! Luckily, the "DON'T PASS A STOPPED STREETCAR OR OUR MOUNTIES WILL STOMP ON YOUR CAR" thing seems to be pretty well-ingrained into Toronto drivers' minds.)

I started things out with beef tongue on brioche:



( So I used to be vegetarian. Really. )

*

But at the Black Hoof, tongue wasn't the most unusual meat I ate that night.

I've eaten my share of raw beef in my time - the Ethiopian kitfo; the better-known-in-the-West steak tartare.

( Yeah, this would be the part where I ate a meat that would be considered controversial in the States. With a picture of the finished dish. Consider yourself warned. )

I'd forgotten that tartare included a raw egg, though, so hyounpark passed on that particular dish. Not to worry; there was marrow on toast and an excellent charcuterie plate and a simply divine ice cider that I need to figure out how to get a bottle of:



I'm not sure I have anything particularly insightful to say about a meat that is established as "normal food" in one culture while being considered taboo in another culture - but glass_icarus linked me to vi's Gross, Weird, Inedible and troisroyaumes' Seven Things, and I recommend both pieces heartily, even if you skipped what's behind the cuts for this post.

It's just - I've been working myself up about this entry for a couple of weeks now, worried about harsh external reactions because the meat I ate in Canada comes from an animal that is idolized as a pet in mainstream American culture. Even in the course of *writing* this entry, I built up walls and provided warnings well beyond what I usually do when I blog about food, because I don't want to host a discussion consisting of "Ew, you ate $US_culturally_disapproved_meat? Nasty!" But at the same time, if I'm putting up these defenses, will the people voicing those opinions get far enough into reading to realize how rude they're being, and how classist or racist it makes them look?

*

I was talking with a newly-pregnant friend of mine last night, and we got onto the subject of what foods one can eat during pregnancy - and all I could think about afterwards wasn't the foods that I could (not) eat during those months of pregnancy and breastfeeding, but what could I best do to encourage my future offspring to be as open-minded about food as possible, and to give them as much experience with as many different food cultures as possible? (I don't have any magic answers. I'll let you know how I did in a couple of decades.)

When we were growing up, my mom was the primary cook of the family, and at home, we ate dishes like meatloaf and spaghetti and mac-and-cheese, with fishsticks on Friday - a very middle-America Catholic diet. Filipino food was what her mom cooked, and we would eat things like pancit and adobo "at Grandma's house" for holidays; when Grandma stopped being able to cook, holidays were spent at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge, and instead of siopao, we learned to order bao. But it still wasn't "everyday" food for us, and sometimes, I envied my relatives for whom it was. I was already enough of an outsider at school - if I had "weird" enough food that I liked, maybe it would be enough so that I could be left alone to read my book at lunch.

On the other hand, because of my mom's choices in marrying Not-A-Filipino ("She married him because no good Filipino boy would have her" was the narrative spread around), our family was already ostracized from the San Francisco Filipino community. So for a long time, I was perfectly sanguine claiming nothing but blood from my Filipino heritage, especially after I ditched Catholicism - because at least my half-blood status made me "interesting" to white people rather than "untouchable" to Pilis. It's only been the last few years I've decided that even if I am "merely" hapa, that I still want to claim the parts of the culture that *do* resonate with me. Food is the obvious place for me to start. :)

It's interesting for me to compare with Hyoun - he came over to the States as an infant, and his mom cooked almost-exclusively Korean food growing up. They were in the middle of Tennessee, so they would order out pizza and go to steakhouses and eat at fast food chains. But the usual nightly meal was based on 밥 and 반찬. So when I make beans and franks for dinner, or some other American dish I grew up with, Hyoun finds it ... bemusing.

In the last couple of weeks, though, I was introduced to an American home-cooking dish similar to one I grew up with: elbow macaroni, ground beef, and tomato sauce all put together into a casserole with chopped-up green bell peppers. (My family's version omits the bell peppers.) We called it "Macaroni Casserole." The other Americans? Particularly the Midwesterners and Northeasterners? Call it "American Chop Suey." Which, amusingly enough, means something else entirely in India.

And now I really, really, really want an Asian Food Writing Carnival.

[A version of this will probably show up on Camberville Chow at some point, particularly because I never did write up the Filipino Night they did at Ole last spring. But this got looong. :) ]

there are six red roses sitting on my counter and leftovers from a yummy dinner last night sitting in my fridge. (stars of said dinner included cornmeal-fried oysters with apple-bacon salsa and a goat cheese fondue; littleneck clams with mixed greens, bacon, and parm; an awesome salad with pecans and dried cherries; beef tenderloin in an orange bearnaise sauce; "duck duck goose," a dish that had duck confit, seared duck foie gras, and goose breast. desserts were a chocolate-banana bread pudding and this amazing clementine-basil sorbet that i've determined i *must* duplicate. coincidentally, i have a box of clemmies and several of my friends have ice-cream-makers. hee. :D )

six months. love you. :*

*

( rec me your best-loved books this year! )

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

- Mark Strand, The Coming of Light

*

( christmas day movies? followed by chinese food? )

6/29/23: oh, late 2002 self. I wish you could see just a *little* further down the road. if not to here, at least to fall 2003, but. my heart aches for all that you're going through, but it's what leads you to here, and things do get better. different, yes, but better.