Monday, May 5, 2008

Little fishies and weird food

It was a long haul from Hawaii to Virginia. The food was different and the recipes were strange. Luckily I'd always been interested in Southern cooking, and I love vegetables on the verge of morphing into something new and delicious. Fried okra, and green bean casserole, cornbread dressing and sweet potatoes so candied, they melt like sugar dreams. I had to find rice--the good kind (you know, that comes from Texas?) and an Asian store, and stuff I couldn't find I made.

But after a lifetime in the South, I'm back in the land of easy-access Asian food, and I can't find Red Band flour to save my life. The McDonald's touts "southern-style" chicken biscuits, and if that's a southern style biscuit, I'll eat their salads. It's overdone and crunchy, and all golden brown when everyone knows a real biscuit is sort of goldy-beige and so soft when you touch it, it comes apart in wads.

I miss the humidity and the Food Lion--but most of all I miss the Four Seasons, direct from Canada to you, fresh every night, Chinese-Vietnamese grocery store. Seattle has got to be the home of every Korean outside of Seoul, because I can't find savory mochi with sauteed garlic and fish sauce, but I can sure find "little fishies".

6 comments:

Unhinged said...

Hah, hah, hah!

Here, little fishy, fishy, fishy.

Unknown said...

Unhingey, you have not lived until you reach in the freezer case and haul out a string of frozen fishes all swimming in the same direction.

deanna said...

The year I lived in S. Carolina was great. It felt like a foreign country after Oregon and Washington. Not that I tried all the southern dishes, but I learned not to take an ice cream/jello dessert to a summer picnic! Gooey in five seconds.

Anonymous said...

Awwww, the little fishies are so cute!

Jeanna said...

Those are fish just hanging out there? You're right about the Mickey D's so called Chicken Biscuit. A true disgrace.
How do you stay so thin, btw?
If you want humidity, maybe you should have moved down here. I'm just waiting for it...any day now, and it won't stop until Freakfest.

Unknown said...

lol, Jeanna--they're flash frozen and individually tied in case you want to fr just one. And yes, they sit in the freezercase like a popsicle or something. It's very weird.

Uh...I'm not thin. I wear carefully selected clothing, lol. It sort of "hangs there"

Hi Deanna!! That's why you need some "bettercreme" the frosting of choice for bakers everywhere. It will last in a landfill until the end of time in one hundred degree heat. And it's sooooo tasty. :)